Excellent Plugin – Must Use with WooCommerce Extension

Thanks so much for your feedback! We are always looking to make Sliced Invoices better and we will consider adding the capabilities you mentioned in future updates.

No matter how many features we build into the free plugin, there’s always one more feature we don’t have yet, and somebody who gets mad about it. Apparently all the things Sliced Invoices does do are worth nothing because we didn’t have one more feature.

1) We have an established system for making feature requests here: https://slicedinvoices.com/developers/feature-requests. Leaving a 1-star review instead does not encourage me to want to develop new features.

2) We have a separate WooCommerce integration called Woo Invoices. Did you even try it? If you did you would have noticed two things: 1) to add line items, you have to do so from the order, *not* from the invoice. The invoice will be updated automatically based on the order, not the other way around. We even put a message about this right at the top of the page to remind you. 2) Tax calculations are pulled in from WooCommerce. So again, if you want to change tax settings, change the order, *not* the invoice.

3) The whole purpose of Sliced Invoices IS to help professionals and small business do their billing! (i.e. what you call “ad hoc” services.) You make it sound like this is just some small side feature, but it’s actually the core of what we are all about. If that’s not what you’re looking for, if what you need is WooCommerce-specific functionality beyond the simple integration we offer, then why not find some other plugin specifically made for that purpose? I don’t understand why you would trash us for simply being what we are, as opposed to being some other kind of plugin that apparently you think we should be.

It’s not that we’re advertising some feature “X” that doesn’t work — if we were I could understand the bad review. No, this is simply a review that says to me “thanks for putting a huge chunk of your life into developing this free plugin but it’s all garbage because you only did 97 of the 99 things I need, so I’m going to punish you by trashing your rating here.” Like Paul Kerin says, “Try mowing your neighbours lawn for free for 12 months, and then have him complain about the quality of the job you do”. That’s all this review does.

This is an open source project so if you want to encourage new development, there are lots of better ways to do it. But a review like this one doesn’t help anybody.

David Grant
Developer of Sliced Invoices

Also for anyone else reading this, it’s interesting to note that @bobteree has written 6 plugin reviews so far, each and every one 1-star. One has to wonder if he is ever happy about anything, or if he just enjoys spreading misery to the rest of the community.

Hi David,

I happen to LOVE Sliced Invoices. It is a GREAT addition to our WooCommerce store and allows our customers to request a shipping quote, rather than choosing a payment option (which is CRITICAL for our business). Our lives would be a whole lot more complicated without it!!!

@kyledparsons Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it. ??

Cheers,
David

1) We have an established system for making feature requests here: https://slicedinvoices.com/developers/feature-requests. Leaving a 1-star review instead does not encourage me to want to develop new features.

2) We have a separate WooCommerce integration called Woo Invoices. Did you even try it? If you did you would have noticed two things: 1) to add line items, you have to do so from the order, *not* from the invoice. The invoice will be updated automatically based on the order, not the other way around. We even put a message about this right at the top of the page to remind you. 2) Tax calculations are pulled in from WooCommerce. So again, if you want to change tax settings, change the order, *not* the invoice.

3) The whole purpose of Sliced Invoices IS to help professionals and small business do their billing! (i.e. what you call “ad hoc” services.) You make it sound like this is just some small side feature, but it’s actually the core of what we are all about. If that’s not what you’re looking for, if what you need is WooCommerce-specific functionality beyond the simple integration we offer, then why not find some other plugin specifically made for that purpose? I don’t understand why you would trash us for simply being what we are, as opposed to being some other kind of plugin that apparently you think we should be.

It’s not that we’re advertising some feature “X” that doesn’t work — if we were I could understand the bad review. No, this is simply a review that says to me “thanks for putting a huge chunk of your life into developing this free plugin but it’s all garbage because you only did 97 of the 99 things I need, so I’m going to punish you by trashing your rating here.” Like Paul Kerin says, “Try mowing your neighbours lawn for free for 12 months, and then have him complain about the quality of the job you do”. That’s all this review does.

This is an open source project so if you want to encourage new development, there are lots of better ways to do it. But a review like this one doesn’t help anybody.

David Grant
Developer of Sliced Invoices
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Is there a reason you have gotten so personal? If you are going to be in the product management business, you need to value basic feedback like feature requests. Sorry it was made in the wrong place. It’s a one star because it’s unusable for me and my client, no other reason. I edited my reply and gave you three stars if that helps. My goal is not to discourage development at all. I provided very specific feedback, not randomness.

I would happily pay for an add-on but did not find one that met my needs. If I missed one of your premium add-ons, this could have been a chance to educate me and get me to purchase an add-on.

I am not mad. You seem to be frustrated. I took the time to install and test your software. I USED it and configured all backend settings.

I will surely check out the WooCommerce add-on. I went with your better adopted product that seemed to also be “for WooCommerce.” So perhaps pointing me to your other software would have been nice without all the commentary. I will check it out as it has two features of the three! Not bad. In fact, since it is architect-ed from the order >>> invoice and not a quote/invoice turning into an order, that is an excellent thing and probably better. By ad hoc, I meant running a consulting company of professional service or something, not a company with 2000 auto parts (like my client) with 1,000’s of customers. So if you want to create an invoice/quote from an existing customer and can’t, it’s a deal breaker for my client…He wants to pull up all the Bill to, Ship to information of a customer and sell more products from his catalog.

If (and I don’t know), the plugin is geared more towards pro-services or something, then perhaps it can be branded as such. I just took it to be a generic plugin for a product store like my clients.

Since you seem to be an engineer…let me walk you through my purchase behavior. I was looking for a WooCommerce compatible plugin that provided invoice functionality. Then I saw yours based on keyword searches at www.ads-software.com (e.g. woocommerce invoice). Your other plugin did not rank as highly as it seems to be newer, less reviews, etc.

So apologize for the one star. You have built alot. It’s tough to shop for plugins! You do it quickly. I didn’t mean to offend, just offer feedback…I get your one-star feedback. Noted.

Trying your WooCommerce plugin. It seems to be an extension, but is it? Do you even need Sliced Invoices installed? Thanks

Yes our WooCommerce integration (Woo Invoices) is an extension, you have to already have the main Sliced Invoices plugin to use it. Also it’s a free add-on… wasn’t trying to sell you anything.

I’m not sure why Sliced Invoices would have come up in a search for “woocommerce invoice” since we don’t even have the word “woocommerce” anywhere on our plugin page. (Woo Invoices does, but not Sliced.) But who knows how www.ads-software.com decides the search results. WooCommerce is really not our focus, even though people do use our Woo Invoices extension and benefit from it.

I do take reviews personally because 1) Sliced is my baby (I admit it), and 2) most people don’t realise how much bad reviews actually hurt a plugin. It hurts our search rankings here on www.ads-software.com and it discourages new people from trying the plugin, which I can actually see when the number of daily downloads drops. Most of the time even if I respond to a review, the original poster never comes back to reply or update it, so basically we’re just stuck with it forever, fair or not. So I appreciate you at least coming back here, and 3-stars hurts less than 1-star, so thanks for that.

And I do value user feedback… I’ve been able to make a lot of improvements over time based on input from users through support tickets, emails, and the WP forums. However I definitely prefer having conversations with people where I can actually interact with them, instead of reviews which are usually one-sided and permanent. (Again, people almost never come back to follow up on them, no matter what I do.)

If you’re interested and have time these 2 articles are really good at explaining what things are like from my side of the fence. Maybe they better explain why yes, I do feel a lot of frustration in this business. For whatever that’s worth.

There’s a wrong way to give plugin feedback on www.ads-software.com
How to Leave a Good Bad Review

Also for whatever it’s worth, regarding your first item, “The only way to create an invoice/quote with EXISTING user is to see a non-alphabetized list of emails and usernames”… actually that’s not the only way. You can also add clients through the main Users page in your WP admin. Just open any existing user and fill in the appropriate information on their profile. If you enter something in the “Business/Client Name” field, that will register them as a client. There’s more info in our docs here: https://slicedinvoices.com/support/clients/