8 ms·

Show HN: Invoice-o-matic – a free online invoice tool

128 points by cornet 13y ago

philbarr 13y ago
Very nicely done! I was about to ask how you intend to monetise this, if at all, when I saw the link to the main FreeAgent site, clicked, and thought - hey, that looks pretty useful actually...
jacques_chester 13y ago
Great marketing by FreeAgent. Could you invade the Australia market at some point? I like Xero, but they're a bit slow on introducing kinda-important features like quoting.
- lancewiggs 13y ago
  The nice thing about Xero is that if a feature is missing there is nothing stoping you from developing (and selling) it yourself.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    True. I know of at least two companies who have quote integration, but basically I only quote every few months. I don't feel like paying another monthly fee for that.
- tanepiper 13y ago
  FreeAgent does work in Australia - you can sign up for a Universal account, AUS $ is supported.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I don't mean multicurrency support; I get that from Xero. I mean GST, BAS, the whole shebang. Generally the tricky part of moving into a national market isn't the currencies, it's the tax laws.
ing33k 13y ago
just downloaded an invoice to check the quality of the pdf, its perfect !
X4 13y ago
That's all? I expected something like duetapp or better.. :/ Here's the same, but opensource so that you can customize to your own needs. http://css-tricks.com/html-invoice/ http://css-tricks.com/html-invoice/
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  Note how that doesn't create a PDF.
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    Note that pretty much everyone has a PDF printer driver installed nowadays.
  - blasphymous 13y ago
    How does one go about creating (and sending) a PDF from a web form (like Invoice-o-matic and billable.me)?
    - nsomaru 13y ago
      I would take POST data, and plug it into a templating system (like Django's), which is using something like LaTeX to define the basic properties of the document and populating with data and logic from Django. Basically a mix of two markups in one file. Meh, there's probably a better way to do that.
    - X4 13y ago
      Eh, easy. http://jspdf.com/ http://jspdf.com/ You can create a file with javascript at the client side, without creating load on the server.
  - boothead 13y ago
    phantomjs could fix that for you. http://phantomjs.org/ http://phantomjs.org/
- boothead 13y ago
  Referencing my comment below. Here's a phnatomjs example that will render a webpage to pdf: https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/rasterize.coffee https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/rast...
ozh 13y ago
Add the ability to upload a logo and that's the definitive winner in that field
- cornet 13y ago
  This feature is planned, hopefully will be available soon.
bromagosa 13y ago
It'd be even greater if you could edit all the content, including table headers and field titles, so that users could, for instance, translate their invoices into different languages.
corry 13y ago
Love this lead gen strategy - offer free super simple tool to your target audience, and you get lots of opportunities to convert them to your full tool. Adds a ton of value and shows you 'get' your customers before you engage them with your main pitch. I also really like the personality (e.g. see https://twitter.com/invoiceomatic https://twitter.com/invoiceomatic).
Heliosmaster 13y ago
Very nice CSS animation :)
pistoriusp 13y ago
I wrote something similar to this a few years ago: http://billable.me http://billable.me There's nothing wrong with a bit of competition and it makes me wonder if this space needs something... Why do these keep appearing?
- mikegirouard 13y ago
  Ditto, but I never made it public. I think things like this are nice because they are fun to design and build, but they also provide real value.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  I think because it's a relatively easy idea to come up with, and the implementation details aren't earth-shattering. A year ago I was fixed on making a similar business called MeteorBill and worked part-time on it for a couple months before scrapping it .. I'm happy I did now, as my market research was clearly incomplete, and my UI was startlingly similar to yours and OP's. No great loss, I learned Erlang/OTP and Mnesia via that project.
  - xplorer 13y ago
    I am interested in understanding why you decided not to continue with your business ? It looks like OP's company is doing pretty well. Customers would not be an issue for you. If you look at the number of employees OP has it is a possible market to persue. Competition exists everywhere.
    - oinksoft 13y ago
      I also wasn't so enamored anymore with the idea of spending lots of time on software to help people bill each other. Silly of course, as it's a real need, but I realized it just wasn't where my head was. Could I have made the business work? Maybe, but it would've felt like nothing but work.
- swombat 13y ago
  There's a big political push in the UK for "electronic invoicing". This makes sense in that context.
cranefly 13y ago
I dont get it. How is this so much better than having a, say, rtf document template on your own computer and emailing attachments from there? Or if you want to email a pdf there's printing to e.g cute pdf.
- markyc 13y ago
  it's just one step instead of 2,3, etc better mousetrap :)
  - cranefly 13y ago
    Ok thanks, I'd just wondered if i was missing something.
- yatendra 13y ago
  It reduces chances of calculation mistakes as it calculates total amount for you whereas you would need to do it manually in a document template.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >calculates total amount for you // Pretty basic to do that in a LibreOffice or Word doc isn't it (certainly is in LO).
    - X4 13y ago
      yep I agree. The premise is that one has to totally unable to create a template with your favorite Office tool. Heck you could do that in Excel and that's already an insult. This is completely useless without a system behind.
moron4hire 13y ago
What does this do for me that the MS Word template that comes installed with Office does not? EDIT: I'm serious. I can think of several reasons why I would not want to use this, ranging from "I don't want to have to remember a specific URL for this one purpose" all the way up to "I don't want to be sending my invoice data over an unsecured connection to some random statup-of-the-month."
- davidjgraph 13y ago
  On the second stage there's a link to the generated PDF, you could download that and send, instead of having them do it for you.
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    If they've generated a PDF, then they had to have you post the info to their server to run the PDF generator. I'm a little concerned about whether or not you know this and just forgot for this simple example, or don't know this about how web apps work. You should just assume that any web app you're using is collecting your data, even if you don't "save" or setup an account. EDIT: I assume this because I have written ones that maximally collect data, so I just assume others have done the same.
    - davidjgraph 13y ago
      On draw.io we produce PDFs of diagrams both client and server side. It's not at all hard to do it client-side. The point you really wanted to make was that a server would be required to echo the PDF back to the user.
- danpat 13y ago
  Depending on how anal you are, and how complex your invoices are, one good reason to use a tool over a Word template is simply adding the numbers up properly. I joined a small business that was doing them in Word. After reviewing the last 12 month of invoices (about 200), I found about 5% of them had simple math errors, i.e. the Total did not match the sum of the line items. Sure, you can get it right by hand, but why bother when using software can eliminate the adding-up step entirely?
mtrimpe 13y ago
I'd love to be able to specify the subtotal after VAT is applied as well, since that's often what you quote in practice and converting that to pre-VAT prices is a PITA. VAT is also actually called BTW here, so the ability to change how VAT is called would be useful as well.
- iaskwhy 13y ago
  BTW is such a great name for a value added tax: "Oh, by the way, here's x more!"
- davidjgraph 13y ago
  Well, there's the up-sell :). FreeAgent does these things of details in the pay-for tool, including setting the invoice language, which translates the VAT field, for example.
- PanMan 13y ago
  Do you quote companies, or people? When I quote companies, I never include VAT (I guess you are also Dutch). Including VAT makes you sound more expensive, and the client can deduct the VAT anyway. So quote without VAT for companies.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    I was actually speaking on behalf of one of their target markets, as me repeatedly having to ask my personal trainer to correct his VAT calculations came to mind ;)
- cheapsteak 13y ago
  I'm not sure if they just added the feature, but you can change "VAT" to something else in the settings
willchilcutt 13y ago
I scanned over the list once or twice, but I did not see in the currency list RMB (Renminbi, Kuai), China's main currency. Just wanted to give you a heads up.
- cornet 13y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. We've got the spanners out and are tweaking her now. Edit: We've had a look and there is already support for CNY. Are invoices normally specified in RMB ?
reinhardt1053 13y ago
Here another one, open-source http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/ http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/ source code: http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/invoice.zip http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/invoice.zip
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
RobAley 13y ago
While this is good from a UX perspective, don't rely on tools like this to make sure that you include all information on an invoice that you're legally required to include. For instance, in the UK (which appears to be where this company is based), all invoices for VAT registered companies must carry their VAT Registration Number. However with this tool, even if you select to include VAT in the settings (which you must do if you're VAT registered), there is no box or prompt to include your VAT reg no. I.E., never rely on 3rd party services to make sure you are complying with the law. It's your backside on the line if you or they get it wrong.
- davedx 13y ago
  Indeed. Here in the Netherlands I need to include a line stating "The VAT is transferred to you" if I'm invoice clients outside of the EU, because I do not charge them VAT. These kind of options can be tricky.
- afcapel 13y ago
  You can include your VAT number, or any other info you want, in the field for your company details.
  - RobAley 13y ago
    My point was that you need to know what you legally need to put on there in advance. While this particular tool allows you to create a complete, legal invoice, it doesn't give you all the info you need to do so. You still need to do the leg work and make sure you know whats what.
- ownagefool 13y ago
  Most contractors I know do exactly that. These 3rd party services are called accountants.
  - wikwocket 13y ago
    It's always good advice for any consultant or company to have their accountant (and lawyer, if applicable) review anything related to their field. It's why we have them. However I would not criticize a tool for not covering all the p's and q's of every country's tax and legal code. If every startup/SAAS had to handle all these cases, we would have far fewer of the cool services we use today.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
smagman 13y ago
Great work! Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to use it since I would need there are two taxes to calculate in my jurisdiction. Also, I rename VAT to something else, it stays VAT on the PDF?
- lylo 13y ago
  Can you try again please, should be fixed?
webbruce 13y ago
I think one big hold up usually is payment for invoicing...and a payment solution that is fee-free.
- tanepiper 13y ago
  The full FreeAgent app supports Paypal, GoCardless and Dwolla for direct invoice payment
jot 13y ago
For those not familiar with FreeAgent (the makers of this (marketing) app), they are one of the UK's most successful SaaS startups. I've been fortunate enough to have been a user of their main app (http://freeagent.com http://freeagent.com) for two of my businesses accounts since they started back in 2007. The positive difference FreeAgent have made to running my businesses is on a par with that of Heroku. They saved me days (possibly weeks) of time and provided a user experience that's a genuine joy to use. FreeAgent have almost made doing my accounts fun. While they're not a replacement for having an accountant, they do have accountants on their team who have worked promptly with my accountant and I when we've had questions.
gadders 13y ago
I was just about to comment and say "This is all well and good but I use an integrated tool called FreeAgent to manage my freelance business." and then noticed this is created by FreeAgent. I have to say, for UK folks, that run a small business or are IT Contractors, FreeAgent is a very useful tool.
300bps 13y ago
For the past 2 years I've used Freshbooks. I work full time at a company and only have 3 side customers so I use the free option. It works unbelievably well. They're even adding more accounting functions to the great functions hey have today.
wikwocket 13y ago
Very cool, and more importantly, a fun take on a dry subject! It might be nice to add a preview option though. Sure I can email it to myself, but lower the barrier of use as much as possible to drive adoption. Edit: Just got the email sent to myself. Again, very cool. Some ideas for enhancement might be allowing me to upload a small logo for the PDF, letting me save my company info, and maybe putting the 'message' at the top of the email instead of the bottom. But otherwise, bravo!
mikejharrison 13y ago
A purchase order-o-matic would be a great addition too.
rurounijones 13y ago
"Warning All machines of the future need a modern browser and javascript to be turned on." Smartarse comments like that instantly sour me when visiting a new site.
- BCM43 13y ago
  Agreed. I was interested, but after that message I don't really want to deal with them. If this is how they deal with prospective customers, I don't really trust them.
- run4yourlives 13y ago
  Is it always raining where you live or something?
cpursley 13y ago
This is cool. I'm actively looking for a invoicing tool for my SaaS app that my users can use to bill their clients. The key requirement is that that the invoicing tool easily integrates with Quickbooks. Any suggestions?
MarkHarmon 13y ago
Shameless plug: I also wrote a free site for invoicing and it has the ability to include vat reg no. One of the pages that isn't published yet is the invoice designer, which looks very similar to invoice-o-matic. Nice job by the way! The main difference on mine is the ability to save invoices, aging and reporting. http://www.timetrackturbo.com http://www.timetrackturbo.com
tjbiddle 13y ago
Project link? Cool idea - Hate wasting time on small things like this; but not comfortable putting my, or a clients, information in a public site. Would love to host this myself.
mktnghacks 13y ago
Main issue that I can see with this is compliance. As some people commented these free invoicing templates are great, but if you happen to invoice someone in Mexico or anywhere else in the world this template won't really help. The reason why we are seeing so many startups in this space is because all major companies, such as Ariba that provide e-invoicing tools are charging suppliers for sending e-invoices, which is ridiculous. Tradeshift (Disclaimer I do work for Tradeshift ), was one of the first startups that emerged in this space because they provide free and fully compliant e-invoicing software for small businesses. Take a look at how they launched, slightly outdated but funny http://www.realsupplierchoice.com/ http://www.realsupplierchoice.com/
DougWebb 13y ago
Am I missing something, or is nobody concerned that this tool takes in all of your business' contact info and banking info? In the US, the bank name, account number, and a smidge of personally identifying info for the account holder is sufficient to create an electronic check against the account, and there is no protection for the account holder for any funds that are removed. - The info is being sent over http instead of https, so it can be easily sniffed along the way. - Even if it was encrypted, it's probably stored in their system at least briefly. If their system is compromised, so is your banking data. - The PDFs that are generated have to be stored on their system, at least briefly, in order to be sent out via email. They can be compromised too. - Who knows if the emails and PDFs are secure... probably not. That means every email relay and the networks they're on between invoiceomatic and your client are also potential places where your banking info can be leaked.
- tmzt 13y ago
  I'm doing something similar, but storing the PDFs in Redis and serving them from Openresty/Nginx. If you use the password function in Redis it would be a little harder to compromise than leaving the PDFs on the filesystem.
edoceo 13y ago
I use a PHP GPL app called Imperium. Meets legal requirements and provides financial reports for my CPA.
- X4 13y ago
  hmm, this one? https://github.com/edoceo/imperium https://github.com/edoceo/imperium Do you have a demo or screenshot?
acron0 13y ago
You got me. Saw the Invoice-o-matic. Saw the FreeAgent link. Evaluated the product. Loved it. Signed up.
Renaud 13y ago
This looks like what a good web designer with little knowledge of actual accounting requirements would do. Not what I would expect from a company specialising in accounting software. It makes me seriously doubt that they can actually fill my accounting needs, so instead of creating a lead, I can't help having doubts about their capabilities. The first thing I would expect from such a tool is either to explicitly point out the limitations of the free offer (eg 'only valid for retail in the Netherlands!'), or, if you expect users to believe you are capable of fulfilling their invoicing needs, you have to ask which business sector and which country you are creating invoices for, and actually update the template to suit the legal requirements of the user's domain (taxes, legal mentions, display of business registration, etc).
- qbertstwin 13y ago
  This reply is so HN.

128 points by cornet 13y ago

Very nicely done! I was about to ask how you intend to monetise this, if at all, when I saw the link to the main FreeAgent site, clicked, and thought - hey, that looks pretty useful actually...

jacques_chester 13y ago

Great marketing by FreeAgent. Could you invade the Australia market at some point? I like Xero, but they're a bit slow on introducing kinda-important features like quoting.

lancewiggs 13y ago
The nice thing about Xero is that if a feature is missing there is nothing stoping you from developing (and selling) it yourself.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  True. I know of at least two companies who have quote integration, but basically I only quote every few months. I don't feel like paying another monthly fee for that.
tanepiper 13y ago
FreeAgent does work in Australia - you can sign up for a Universal account, AUS $ is supported.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I don't mean multicurrency support; I get that from Xero. I mean GST, BAS, the whole shebang. Generally the tricky part of moving into a national market isn't the currencies, it's the tax laws.

ing33k 13y ago

just downloaded an invoice to check the quality of the pdf, its perfect !

X4 13y ago

That's all? I expected something like duetapp or better.. :/ Here's the same, but opensource so that you can customize to your own needs. http://css-tricks.com/html-invoice/ http://css-tricks.com/html-invoice/

andyhmltn 13y ago
Note how that doesn't create a PDF.
- moron4hire 13y ago
  Note that pretty much everyone has a PDF printer driver installed nowadays.
- blasphymous 13y ago
  How does one go about creating (and sending) a PDF from a web form (like Invoice-o-matic and billable.me)?
  - nsomaru 13y ago
    I would take POST data, and plug it into a templating system (like Django's), which is using something like LaTeX to define the basic properties of the document and populating with data and logic from Django. Basically a mix of two markups in one file. Meh, there's probably a better way to do that.
  - X4 13y ago
    Eh, easy. http://jspdf.com/ http://jspdf.com/ You can create a file with javascript at the client side, without creating load on the server.
- boothead 13y ago
  phantomjs could fix that for you. http://phantomjs.org/ http://phantomjs.org/
boothead 13y ago
Referencing my comment below. Here's a phnatomjs example that will render a webpage to pdf: https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/rasterize.coffee https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/rast...

ozh 13y ago

Add the ability to upload a logo and that's the definitive winner in that field

cornet 13y ago
This feature is planned, hopefully will be available soon.

bromagosa 13y ago

It'd be even greater if you could edit all the content, including table headers and field titles, so that users could, for instance, translate their invoices into different languages.

corry 13y ago

Love this lead gen strategy - offer free super simple tool to your target audience, and you get lots of opportunities to convert them to your full tool. Adds a ton of value and shows you 'get' your customers before you engage them with your main pitch. I also really like the personality (e.g. see https://twitter.com/invoiceomatic https://twitter.com/invoiceomatic).

Heliosmaster 13y ago

Very nice CSS animation :)

pistoriusp 13y ago

I wrote something similar to this a few years ago: http://billable.me http://billable.me There's nothing wrong with a bit of competition and it makes me wonder if this space needs something... Why do these keep appearing?

mikegirouard 13y ago
Ditto, but I never made it public. I think things like this are nice because they are fun to design and build, but they also provide real value.
oinksoft 13y ago
I think because it's a relatively easy idea to come up with, and the implementation details aren't earth-shattering. A year ago I was fixed on making a similar business called MeteorBill and worked part-time on it for a couple months before scrapping it .. I'm happy I did now, as my market research was clearly incomplete, and my UI was startlingly similar to yours and OP's. No great loss, I learned Erlang/OTP and Mnesia via that project.
- xplorer 13y ago
  I am interested in understanding why you decided not to continue with your business ? It looks like OP's company is doing pretty well. Customers would not be an issue for you. If you look at the number of employees OP has it is a possible market to persue. Competition exists everywhere.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    I also wasn't so enamored anymore with the idea of spending lots of time on software to help people bill each other. Silly of course, as it's a real need, but I realized it just wasn't where my head was. Could I have made the business work? Maybe, but it would've felt like nothing but work.
swombat 13y ago
There's a big political push in the UK for "electronic invoicing". This makes sense in that context.

cranefly 13y ago

I dont get it. How is this so much better than having a, say, rtf document template on your own computer and emailing attachments from there? Or if you want to email a pdf there's printing to e.g cute pdf.

markyc 13y ago
it's just one step instead of 2,3, etc better mousetrap :)
- cranefly 13y ago
  Ok thanks, I'd just wondered if i was missing something.
yatendra 13y ago
It reduces chances of calculation mistakes as it calculates total amount for you whereas you would need to do it manually in a document template.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  >calculates total amount for you // Pretty basic to do that in a LibreOffice or Word doc isn't it (certainly is in LO).
  - X4 13y ago
    yep I agree. The premise is that one has to totally unable to create a template with your favorite Office tool. Heck you could do that in Excel and that's already an insult. This is completely useless without a system behind.

moron4hire 13y ago

What does this do for me that the MS Word template that comes installed with Office does not? EDIT: I'm serious. I can think of several reasons why I would not want to use this, ranging from "I don't want to have to remember a specific URL for this one purpose" all the way up to "I don't want to be sending my invoice data over an unsecured connection to some random statup-of-the-month."

davidjgraph 13y ago
On the second stage there's a link to the generated PDF, you could download that and send, instead of having them do it for you.
- moron4hire 13y ago
  If they've generated a PDF, then they had to have you post the info to their server to run the PDF generator. I'm a little concerned about whether or not you know this and just forgot for this simple example, or don't know this about how web apps work. You should just assume that any web app you're using is collecting your data, even if you don't "save" or setup an account. EDIT: I assume this because I have written ones that maximally collect data, so I just assume others have done the same.
  - davidjgraph 13y ago
    On draw.io we produce PDFs of diagrams both client and server side. It's not at all hard to do it client-side. The point you really wanted to make was that a server would be required to echo the PDF back to the user.
danpat 13y ago
Depending on how anal you are, and how complex your invoices are, one good reason to use a tool over a Word template is simply adding the numbers up properly. I joined a small business that was doing them in Word. After reviewing the last 12 month of invoices (about 200), I found about 5% of them had simple math errors, i.e. the Total did not match the sum of the line items. Sure, you can get it right by hand, but why bother when using software can eliminate the adding-up step entirely?

mtrimpe 13y ago

I'd love to be able to specify the subtotal after VAT is applied as well, since that's often what you quote in practice and converting that to pre-VAT prices is a PITA. VAT is also actually called BTW here, so the ability to change how VAT is called would be useful as well.

iaskwhy 13y ago
BTW is such a great name for a value added tax: "Oh, by the way, here's x more!"
davidjgraph 13y ago
Well, there's the up-sell :). FreeAgent does these things of details in the pay-for tool, including setting the invoice language, which translates the VAT field, for example.
PanMan 13y ago
Do you quote companies, or people? When I quote companies, I never include VAT (I guess you are also Dutch). Including VAT makes you sound more expensive, and the client can deduct the VAT anyway. So quote without VAT for companies.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  I was actually speaking on behalf of one of their target markets, as me repeatedly having to ask my personal trainer to correct his VAT calculations came to mind ;)
cheapsteak 13y ago
I'm not sure if they just added the feature, but you can change "VAT" to something else in the settings

willchilcutt 13y ago

I scanned over the list once or twice, but I did not see in the currency list RMB (Renminbi, Kuai), China's main currency. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

cornet 13y ago
Thanks for the heads up. We've got the spanners out and are tweaking her now. Edit: We've had a look and there is already support for CNY. Are invoices normally specified in RMB ?

reinhardt1053 13y ago

Here another one, open-source http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/ http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/ source code: http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/invoice.zip http://www.jonathantneal.com/examples/invoice/invoice.zip

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

RobAley 13y ago

While this is good from a UX perspective, don't rely on tools like this to make sure that you include all information on an invoice that you're legally required to include. For instance, in the UK (which appears to be where this company is based), all invoices for VAT registered companies must carry their VAT Registration Number. However with this tool, even if you select to include VAT in the settings (which you must do if you're VAT registered), there is no box or prompt to include your VAT reg no. I.E., never rely on 3rd party services to make sure you are complying with the law. It's your backside on the line if you or they get it wrong.

davedx 13y ago
Indeed. Here in the Netherlands I need to include a line stating "The VAT is transferred to you" if I'm invoice clients outside of the EU, because I do not charge them VAT. These kind of options can be tricky.
afcapel 13y ago
You can include your VAT number, or any other info you want, in the field for your company details.
- RobAley 13y ago
  My point was that you need to know what you legally need to put on there in advance. While this particular tool allows you to create a complete, legal invoice, it doesn't give you all the info you need to do so. You still need to do the leg work and make sure you know whats what.
ownagefool 13y ago
Most contractors I know do exactly that. These 3rd party services are called accountants.
- wikwocket 13y ago
  It's always good advice for any consultant or company to have their accountant (and lawyer, if applicable) review anything related to their field. It's why we have them. However I would not criticize a tool for not covering all the p's and q's of every country's tax and legal code. If every startup/SAAS had to handle all these cases, we would have far fewer of the cool services we use today.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

smagman 13y ago

Great work! Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to use it since I would need there are two taxes to calculate in my jurisdiction. Also, I rename VAT to something else, it stays VAT on the PDF?

lylo 13y ago
Can you try again please, should be fixed?

webbruce 13y ago

I think one big hold up usually is payment for invoicing...and a payment solution that is fee-free.

tanepiper 13y ago
The full FreeAgent app supports Paypal, GoCardless and Dwolla for direct invoice payment

jot 13y ago

For those not familiar with FreeAgent (the makers of this (marketing) app), they are one of the UK's most successful SaaS startups. I've been fortunate enough to have been a user of their main app (http://freeagent.com http://freeagent.com) for two of my businesses accounts since they started back in 2007. The positive difference FreeAgent have made to running my businesses is on a par with that of Heroku. They saved me days (possibly weeks) of time and provided a user experience that's a genuine joy to use. FreeAgent have almost made doing my accounts fun. While they're not a replacement for having an accountant, they do have accountants on their team who have worked promptly with my accountant and I when we've had questions.

gadders 13y ago

I was just about to comment and say "This is all well and good but I use an integrated tool called FreeAgent to manage my freelance business." and then noticed this is created by FreeAgent. I have to say, for UK folks, that run a small business or are IT Contractors, FreeAgent is a very useful tool.

300bps 13y ago

For the past 2 years I've used Freshbooks. I work full time at a company and only have 3 side customers so I use the free option. It works unbelievably well. They're even adding more accounting functions to the great functions hey have today.

wikwocket 13y ago

Very cool, and more importantly, a fun take on a dry subject! It might be nice to add a preview option though. Sure I can email it to myself, but lower the barrier of use as much as possible to drive adoption. Edit: Just got the email sent to myself. Again, very cool. Some ideas for enhancement might be allowing me to upload a small logo for the PDF, letting me save my company info, and maybe putting the 'message' at the top of the email instead of the bottom. But otherwise, bravo!

mikejharrison 13y ago

A purchase order-o-matic would be a great addition too.

rurounijones 13y ago

"Warning All machines of the future need a modern browser and javascript to be turned on." Smartarse comments like that instantly sour me when visiting a new site.

BCM43 13y ago
Agreed. I was interested, but after that message I don't really want to deal with them. If this is how they deal with prospective customers, I don't really trust them.
run4yourlives 13y ago
Is it always raining where you live or something?

cpursley 13y ago

This is cool. I'm actively looking for a invoicing tool for my SaaS app that my users can use to bill their clients. The key requirement is that that the invoicing tool easily integrates with Quickbooks. Any suggestions?

MarkHarmon 13y ago

Shameless plug: I also wrote a free site for invoicing and it has the ability to include vat reg no. One of the pages that isn't published yet is the invoice designer, which looks very similar to invoice-o-matic. Nice job by the way! The main difference on mine is the ability to save invoices, aging and reporting. http://www.timetrackturbo.com http://www.timetrackturbo.com

tjbiddle 13y ago

Project link? Cool idea - Hate wasting time on small things like this; but not comfortable putting my, or a clients, information in a public site. Would love to host this myself.

mktnghacks 13y ago

Main issue that I can see with this is compliance. As some people commented these free invoicing templates are great, but if you happen to invoice someone in Mexico or anywhere else in the world this template won't really help. The reason why we are seeing so many startups in this space is because all major companies, such as Ariba that provide e-invoicing tools are charging suppliers for sending e-invoices, which is ridiculous. Tradeshift (Disclaimer I do work for Tradeshift ), was one of the first startups that emerged in this space because they provide free and fully compliant e-invoicing software for small businesses. Take a look at how they launched, slightly outdated but funny http://www.realsupplierchoice.com/ http://www.realsupplierchoice.com/

DougWebb 13y ago

Am I missing something, or is nobody concerned that this tool takes in all of your business' contact info and banking info? In the US, the bank name, account number, and a smidge of personally identifying info for the account holder is sufficient to create an electronic check against the account, and there is no protection for the account holder for any funds that are removed. - The info is being sent over http instead of https, so it can be easily sniffed along the way. - Even if it was encrypted, it's probably stored in their system at least briefly. If their system is compromised, so is your banking data. - The PDFs that are generated have to be stored on their system, at least briefly, in order to be sent out via email. They can be compromised too. - Who knows if the emails and PDFs are secure... probably not. That means every email relay and the networks they're on between invoiceomatic and your client are also potential places where your banking info can be leaked.

tmzt 13y ago
I'm doing something similar, but storing the PDFs in Redis and serving them from Openresty/Nginx. If you use the password function in Redis it would be a little harder to compromise than leaving the PDFs on the filesystem.

edoceo 13y ago

I use a PHP GPL app called Imperium. Meets legal requirements and provides financial reports for my CPA.

X4 13y ago
hmm, this one? https://github.com/edoceo/imperium https://github.com/edoceo/imperium Do you have a demo or screenshot?

acron0 13y ago

You got me. Saw the Invoice-o-matic. Saw the FreeAgent link. Evaluated the product. Loved it. Signed up.

Renaud 13y ago

This looks like what a good web designer with little knowledge of actual accounting requirements would do. Not what I would expect from a company specialising in accounting software. It makes me seriously doubt that they can actually fill my accounting needs, so instead of creating a lead, I can't help having doubts about their capabilities. The first thing I would expect from such a tool is either to explicitly point out the limitations of the free offer (eg 'only valid for retail in the Netherlands!'), or, if you expect users to believe you are capable of fulfilling their invoicing needs, you have to ask which business sector and which country you are creating invoices for, and actually update the template to suit the legal requirements of the user's domain (taxes, legal mentions, display of business registration, etc).

qbertstwin 13y ago
This reply is so HN.