
Show HN: Invoice-o-matic – a free online invoice tool - cornet
http://invoiceomatic.io/
======
RobAley
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.

~~~
ownagefool
Most contractors I know do exactly that. These 3rd party services are called
accountants.

~~~
RobAley
And I'm saying its a bad idea to rely solely on those 3rd party services to
know whats what. Even Accountants. Certainly here in the UK, if your
accountant messes up, you're still the one liable. You then have to chase
after them for recompense, while they play the "you didn't give us enough
information" or "read the T&Cs, we're not liable" game. I've seen it happen
too many times.

By all means bring in the professionals to advise you and do the donkey work,
but educate yourself on the rules and regs. "Trust but verify" their work.

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moron4hire
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."

~~~
wikwocket
I would say over MS Word, this offers:

\- Discoverability: when I was working on my invoice template, I looked all
over the web, and found a bunch of garbage, before I eventually hand-crafted
something in Excel

\- Ease of use: Word templates can be annoying to fill out and format right,
and they won't do the math for you. Excel will, but good luck getting it to
print right every time, and heaven help you if you need more than one page.

\- Fun: When was the last time you filled out a Word template and thought,
wow, that was kind of cool!

~~~
archivator
For future reference, you can insert Excel tables (the type that do math) into
your Word document. The magic of COM!

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pistoriusp
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?

~~~
Swizec
I started my freelancing career with billable.me. Moved on to complexer tools
by now, but I definitely made a few thousand euro with the help of your free
tool.

Thanks!

~~~
jjsz
What tools did you start using after billlableme?

~~~
Swizec
I'm using InvoiceFox
([https://www.invoicefox.com/](https://www.invoicefox.com/)) these days. It's
really cool because it can remember all the different clients I have so I can
just click "Invoice Company X for Y" and it also does some analytics of
earnings and payments discipline.

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corry
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)).

------
DougWebb
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
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.

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jot
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.

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X4
_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
Note how that doesn't create a PDF.

~~~
blasphymous
How does one go about creating (and sending) a PDF from a web form (like
Invoice-o-matic and billable.me)?

~~~
nsomaru
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.

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cranefly
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.

~~~
yatendra
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
> _calculates total amount for you_ //

Pretty basic to do that in a LibreOffice or Word doc isn't it (certainly is in
LO).

~~~
X4
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.

------
Renaud
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).

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mktnghacks
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/)

------
300bps
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.

------
philbarr
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...

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bromagosa
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.

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wikwocket
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!

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jacques_chester
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
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
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.

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MarkHarmon
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)

------
reinhardt1053
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)

------
gadders
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.

------
mtrimpe
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.

~~~
PanMan
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
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 ;)

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cpursley
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?

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smagman
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
Can you try again please, should be fixed?

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tjbiddle
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.

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rurounijones
"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.

~~~
run4yourlives
Is it always raining where you live or something?

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willchilcutt
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
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 ?

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acron0
You got me. Saw the Invoice-o-matic. Saw the FreeAgent link. Evaluated the
product. Loved it. Signed up.

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

~~~
X4
hmm, this one?
[https://github.com/edoceo/imperium](https://github.com/edoceo/imperium)

Do you have a demo or screenshot?

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

~~~
tanepiper
The full FreeAgent app supports Paypal, GoCardless and Dwolla for direct
invoice payment

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

~~~
cornet
This feature is planned, hopefully will be available soon.

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ing33k
just downloaded an invoice to check the quality of the pdf, its perfect !

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

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Heliosmaster
Very nice CSS animation :)

