

Show HN: My side project CreateMyInvoice.com creates PDF invoices from email - SingAlong
http://createmyinvoice.com

======
6ren
Helps developers who are shy about sending invoices. It's so common, even
including its developer:

> please let us know what amount you would like to pay every month.
> <http://createmyinvoice.com/pricing>

Feedback: The pdf looks nice! I worry about parsers not getting things right
(and, er, me not getting things right for the parser, typos, mistakes etc.),
so this scares me a little. Plus, the "5 invoices" is also "5 attempts",
discouraging trial-and-error to get it right. It would be great if you could
somehow address the developer _problem_ , of asking for money, by closing the
gap even more. It does help already, great if it could help more - that is,
focus on what will help someone accomplish their task, not on the actual code
or product, what it does, how it does it. Just changing the process or steps
might help; or changing the copy on the website (the way it's presented).

e.g. If it formed a buffer between you and the customer (like a secretary), so
you just state the straightforward, factual information (no stress!), as if
talking to a friendly ally (who is on your side!), and then it takes care of
the rest of it - including sending it. But if you went that route, there needs
to be a way to check it. Sending incorrect invoices is also scary!

 _EDIT_ I don't mean the parser fails to parse in a technical sense, I mean it
didn't do what you wanted/expected. It's pretty common (think: regex
problems).

 _EDIT2_ I was thinking that a markdown-like syntax might work well, because
more familiar - but then I remembered that I often test my markdown to check
it does what I think. Same issue.

~~~
chacham15
Yea, I agree that making a solution to bridge the gap would be useful. Oooh!
Great idea: if you took the data and automatically created a webpage that the
person receiving the invoice could go to to pay the person for the amount,
etc. and then put the link in the invoice would really help the seller get his
money and it would be easier for the buyer to pay! win-win!

~~~
6ren
<https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/online-invoicing>

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jasim
I like the general idea of making email a human api for web services.

Email based invoice generation service, markdown renderers, tweet/blog from
email, post to forum etc. seem to fit into this category. Services like
event/reservation booking can also be used from email if the service has a
forgiving parser (like WolframAlpha) for the human input.

~~~
SingAlong
I agree. We've been thinking about email as an interface for a while now. It's
the most accessible interface. And every once in a while there's a discussion
on HN about this. So I guess this acts as proof of concept.

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binarymax
I highly recommend adding a privacy policy as soon as possible, so we know
(among other things) exactly how you will use the information gathered. Will
it be stored? Will you send us marketing emails? Will you sell our data? etc.

Other than that, looks great - very simple.

~~~
SingAlong
That never occurred to me. Will add it in :)

I hate marketing emails myself. Your emails will not be sold or used for
marketing purposes. I'm on your side.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
rehack
Perhaps you could also have a text submit page (form), and then allow people
to download the generated pdf? (Allows people to try out anonymously)

Also, generating in some kind of editable format, may be a good idea. For any
minor edits I want to do, on the generated invoice, or fix any errors in
generation because of its interpretation of the text.

~~~
SingAlong
Agree. Being able to edit is a very useful feature. I'll have to figure out
how to make that easier.

I've tried to keep everything thing as simple as possible for now.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
pocha
Quick tip that could be relevant for Indian businesses - Most of the invoice
recipients insist on the invoice sent on the letterhead.

While asking for an image/banner to be used as letterhead could be too
'tedious'. How about letting the user attach company logo in the email & you
process it as letterhead.

Company logo & name below it on the left, company address on the right. May be
- make the background color gray to show it as letterhead.

~~~
SingAlong
pocha, thanks!

Attaching an image was in the next iteration. I skipped it because I was about
to lose motivation and just wanted to ship something.

Will these in.

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mongol
This would not be a valid invoice in Sweden. Here, there needs to be a
reference number, VAT registration number, information about interest rate if
late payment, location of the board if the selling company is a limited
company, and probably a few more things. I think the same applies for most EU
countries. Can US invoices be this simple?

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bflesch
Looks handy. But I miss a field where I can specify payment information, such
as bank account #s, paypal info, whatever. So it would probably be nice if I
register as a "Business" with all my information and just send an Email to
your service which specifies customer name/address + products sold + tax.

~~~
SingAlong
There's no such field right now. But I get what you are saying. It'll be
immensely useful to specify payment details on the invoice.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
rudasn
While you are at it, you could add a PayPal link on the email body for the
customer to pay.

~~~
SingAlong
That's an awesome idea. That way it can handle payments too.

Thanks for your 2 cents and more :)

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hilko
I love this idea and have also been thinking often of similar email-based
solutions. Very cool, but here's some feedback anyways.

The main problem is inevitably the syntax. It very quickly becomes too
complicated, and with email you have the additional problem that you don't get
instant feedback on submission.

In your case, the syntax might be simple enough to not be an issue. However,
for many people (me included), it would probably still be easier, less error-
prone and quicker to use a web interface with instant feedback. And since the
type of person using this service is likely to be quite fast and proficient,
there's little advantage to your solution over a web-based interface.

I do think there's a way to add value for users like me, though. Three things
I like about email could be leveraged (more): 1\. I always have email open 2\.
I tend to use email for quick, short messages that have more permanence than
chat. 3\. I tend to use email to keep track of things. For example, I don't
open my billing app (Billings OSX) to see if I already sent out an invoice, of
if it's due. Instead, I just search in gmail to see _if_ I sent out the
invoice, and _when_.

What you could add to this project to make it worthwhile to me, and I suspect
many others, is the idea of _partial_ invoices. I would send an email with one
or more items, and these would then be added as items to this 'account'.
Finally, I can send out an invoice with the total items by logging into your
web interface, or through email.

It would greatly benefit me to send an email with something like:

"50 mins, implement login system, clientname"

It would be vastly preferable to my current approach where I load up the
application, navigate to the client, and add the item, or alternatively where
i add this item to my task app.

------
czzarr
You should put up real pricing plans instead of asking people what they'd like
to pay. They probably have no idea and won't bother answering.

~~~
PaulJoslin
I disagree. I thought it was a clever idea to ask people what they would pay
for the service. It's a simple service, pricing it would be hard unless people
tell them how much it's worth to them.

The question isn't. 'What do you think this service is worth?' - the question
is 'How much would you be willing to pay for this?'.

The key difference being, I may like to use the service if it was $5 a month,
but not if it was $50 a month - on the other hand someone else may do
thousands of invoices and be happy to pay $100 a month.

The feedback he'll get will let him guage the size of the market, the prices
people will be prepared to pay and allow him to offer a reasonable plan.
Without this prior research he could over price or under price the product
substantially.

If on the other hand, no one gives him any feed back on how much they'd pay -
I'd take that as clear sign that either the market isn't there for people
willing to pay for this or he's targeting the wrong market with his marketing.

------
jasim
Invoices aren't a uniform bunch. Its general format changes very much based on
the industry and location.

The two options would be to either target a niche audience initially and grow
from there, or focus on building a general purpose solution that can cater to
a dynamic range of requirements. The second option might not be particularly
wise in the early stages.

~~~
SingAlong
Sent it out to freelancers like myself before posting on HN. I had no other
audience in mind.

Agree that there's a lot of competition for general purpose market.

------
krmmalik
My mother-in-law would love this. Is there a way, she could get a pre-filled
email each time that she could just edit and then send off?

She sends just a few invoices at the end of each month, but each month she has
to be reminded what to do. Your project is much simpler, so hopefully she'll
find it easier to remember what to do.

~~~
SingAlong
I made this with Gmail canned responses in mind. So anyone could save the
template and then send an invoice.

Someone else also told me the same thing about being able to receive a pre-
filled email and sending it back. I'll look into this one.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
krmmalik
ok, great. Thanks!

------
blahpro
Looks awesome! Congratulations. Feature requests:

1) the ability to set some kind of reference/invoice ID

2) the ability to set (grey/faint) footer text for legal bumpf (company
number, VAT registration number, legal name etc etc)

~~~
blahpro
Also, I think there might be a typo on your "Guide" page. Did you mean to have
"Customer name and address" and "Invoice items" at the end of the "me" and
"customer" addresses, respectively?

~~~
SingAlong
Ah! Thanks for catching that. Fixed it.

------
scottmagdalein
"The service is free for 5 invoices a month. If you plan to send more, please
let us know what amount you would like to pay every month."

Excellent way to figure out how much to charge.

------
tocomment
Can you tell us a bit about the technologies you used? How do you
programmatically receive email? How do you parse the email?

~~~
SingAlong
Inbound emails are with the help of the lovely guys at PostMark -
<http://postmarkapp.com>. They have webhooks. That'll post inbound emails as
JSON to your app.

Other than that, Rails + Postgresql + Nginx + Redis

~~~
tocomment
Wow I hadn't heard of postmark. That would make processing emails from users
really easy!

Now I just need to think of a business idea where I process emails from users.
Hmm, how about a service where users can forward emails and it automatically
creates an appointment on their calendar?

~~~
SingAlong
There's also Mailgun.net. Infact I co-wrote a mailgun ruby client sometime
back <http://github.com/hashnuke/mailgun>

------
JagMicker
Seems like a novel idea. My suggestion would be to change the design of the
website. Make it vertical instead of horizontal --- i.e. input above the
output. That way it'll display properly on an iPhone. Clearly you have the
technical chops... Now you need to find a good designer to work on your
bootstrap theme!

------
mamcx
Damm cool!

Don't be afraid to put a price man.

Also, work for a better looking page (maybe take a look at themeforest.net,
huge selection, several good pages).

BTW, is possible to make this working for iOS without internet connection?
That is something I'm looking for for ages..

------
troels
Being able to enter payment information (bank account number to transfer to)
would be helpful.

~~~
blahpro
Perhaps this could be implemented using a general-purpose comments/notes
field?

------
mnicole
Even as a designer, the process of creating new invoices isn't this easy even
when I have a pre-existing template, so this is awesome. Is there a
possibility that I could upload my own layouts and make them available for
myself others down the road?

------
sdqali
This looks awesome. The elements on your pricing page could do with some
Bootstrap love.

~~~
SingAlong
I was using bootstrap on the site before. I kept tweaking it and realised I
had to do a lot of tweaks to get it to a state I need. So I removed it in
favour of custom design.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll style up the pricing page soon.

~~~
bpatrianakos
I just sent you an email about this but did you know that the design of your
site is almost identical to what I just recently launched
(<https://writeapp.me> \- once you register an account and log in you'll
definitely know what I mean). Colors, layout, buttons... errily similar.
Honestly, definitely not saying you did it on purpose and even if it was on
purpose I don't mind. In fact I'd be flattered! I'm just pretty amazed at how
2 different people came up with something so seriously similar.

Edit: I see you just signed up for an account (I get texts when new users sign
up) so you probably never saw my design before which makes this even more
awesome. By the way, I'm really diggin' CreateMyInvoice. Awesome work.

~~~
SingAlong
Thanks.

Bill and me sorted this over email. The similarity in design was a co-
incidence because the design is very simple.

------
NIL8
Straightforward and entirely useful. Why couldn't you have created this
sooner?

:)

------
phames
Looks great! Lovely idea. What feedback have you got about pricing so far?

~~~
SingAlong
As of 2 hours - none.

------
sorich87
Suggestion: make the "me" section optional after the first email.

~~~
SingAlong
It is optional after the first email. I just never mentioned it on the site
for the sake of skipping details.

Incase you don't specify a "me" section, the details from the previous invoice
will be used. You can try it out right now.

Thanks for chipping in :)

------
ightwave
I prefer unit pricing eg. 0.08/invoice and say 0.02/invoice for online
payments feature

don't charge per month or for whitelabel (charging for reselling is ok) free
tier

------
epaga
Is there a "comments" possibility for a note to the customer?

~~~
SingAlong
There's none now. But since a lot are requesting for it, I'll have to give in
and add it soon :)

Thanks for the feedback.

------
SingAlong
Quick tip: You don't have to specify the "me" section from the second invoice
onwards unless it's different. Your previously saved name and address will be
used :)

------
Goopplesoft
Very cool use of email style API. Why not have a textbox where people could
paste that email if they just wanna download it?

------
BilalBudhani
Cool stuff ... Simple and useful. Loved it :)

------
khadim
Akash, simple and smart service.

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tnorthcutt
Neat.

CHARGE REAL MONEY FOR THE VALUE YOU'RE PROVIDING.

PLEASE!

------
smiler
Needs support for PO number

~~~
SingAlong
Post box number? You can send add it in the address itself. Did you mean that
PO number has to have a different style?

~~~
polymatter
I read it as Purchase Order number.

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bedspax
Like the semplicity

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pknerd
Simple outstanding.

------
snoldak924
Awesome!

