Easy invoicing is something all of us want, no matter what type of business we run and which country we’re operating from. RUPEAL may not sound familiar to you, but the name InvoiceXpress will definitely ring a bell if you’ve been looking into online invoicing apps. InvoiceXpress is a product of RUPEAL and was started by Portuguese entrepreneur Rui Alves.
That’s right, InvoiceXpress its foundations can be found in Portugal, which proves both that we all need convenient invoicing methods and that Portugal isn’t just known for its struggling economy. We decided to have a chat with Rui about his product, his company and his plans for the future.
Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and what you do at InvoiceXpress?
My name is Rui Alves, I’m the CEO of the company. I’ve got the responsibility of managing all product development and marketing (sales and partnerships).
Why did you decide to develop online invoicing software?
Back in 2007, after I started my own company (RUPEAL) and started to have customers, one of my first needs was to create and send invoices. So I started to look around for a software solution. They were either are too expensive or too complex, or both! So I decided to put a small team together and develop online invoicing software by ourselves. We literally scratch our own itch!
Which software integrations do you offer for your invoicing app?
With InvoiceXpress, our customers are able to get paid through credit card due to our integration with a payment gateway service. This allows them to create and send invoices and when they’re paid via credit card, the invoices will automatically be marked as “paid”. This is great because the easier it is for your customers to pay, the faster you will get paid. We also provide an integration that allows you to send automatic reminders before and/or after and invoice is due, via email and text message. Finally, customers from Portugal can get paid trough what we call “referência multibanco” (roughly translated: a reference code that you can pay at the ATM or online banking).
Which types of businesses does your software serve best?
At the moment, we’re targeting from micro to small-medium services based companies and freelancers. That’s our core audience. With our range of plans we strongly believe that all of their needs are addressed and will be attended.
What makes your software suited for US businesses as well?
InvoiceXpress is completely translated to English and is capable to create invoices in USD. There’s no reason US businesses shouldn’t be using InvoiceXpress, so go ahead: try it out!
What’s in store for the future for InvoiceXpress?
We have an extensive roadmap of features and improvements, but unfortunately it’s a closed one. I can tell you that we’re planning on releasing a Reports feature that will allow InvoiceXpress users to get and analyze multiple types of reports (sales per item, client, month, trimester…). The rest is still secret. Sorry!
What cloud apps do you use at RUPEAL?
Too many to list, but definitely a lot of Google Apps, Dropbox for storage and backing up, Basecamp for project management, Mad Mimi for email marketing, Survs to create and send surveys to our clients, Wufoo to create forms for internal purposes, and lately we started using Salesforce, a CRM app, and we’re mesmerized with it.
What is it like to run a start-up in Portugal?
It’s tough. Portugal is in a really bad shape economically speaking. You can’t get funding, you don’t have a large market, so it’s really tough!
What advice would you like to give to other start-ups?
Hiring is your number one priority. You really need to be very careful when hiring your first employees. I would say that it’s the single most important process that a startup founder and manager should take care. All the rest will solve itself with the right team.
Anything else you’d like to tell to our readers?
We’d love for you to try out InvoiceXpress – first 30 days free – and send some feedback! Also, have a nice day everyone.
Daniel C.
Sander D.
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