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

While this is good from a UX perspective, don&#x27;t rely on tools like this to make sure that you include all information on an invoice that you&#x27;re legally required to include.<p>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&#x27;re VAT registered), there is no box or prompt to include your VAT reg no.<p>I.E., never rely on 3rd party services to make sure you are complying with the law. It&#x27;s your backside on the line if you or they get it wrong.

What does this do for me that the MS Word template that comes installed with Office does not?<p>EDIT: I&#x27;m serious. I can think of several reasons why I would not want to use this, ranging from &quot;I don&#x27;t want to have to remember a specific URL for this one purpose&quot; all the way up to &quot;I don&#x27;t want to be sending my invoice data over an unsecured connection to some random statup-of-the-month.&quot;

I wrote something similar to this a few years ago:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;billable.me" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;billable.me</a><p>There&#x27;s nothing wrong with a bit of competition and it makes me wonder if this space needs something... Why do these keep appearing?

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.<p>Adds a ton of value and shows you &#x27;get&#x27; your customers before you engage them with your main pitch.<p>I also really like the personality (e.g. see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invoiceomatic" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invoiceomatic</a>).

Am I missing something, or is nobody concerned that this tool takes in all of your business&#x27; 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.<p>- The info is being sent over http instead of https, so it can be easily sniffed along the way.<p>- Even if it was encrypted, it&#x27;s probably stored in their system at least briefly. If their system is compromised, so is your banking data.<p>- 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.<p>- Who knows if the emails and PDFs are secure... probably not. That means every email relay and the networks they&#x27;re on between invoiceomatic and your client are also potential places where your banking info can be leaked.

For those not familiar with FreeAgent (the makers of this (marketing) app), they are one of the UK&#x27;s most successful SaaS startups. I&#x27;ve been fortunate enough to have been a user of their main app (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;freeagent.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;freeagent.com</a>) for two of my businesses accounts since they started back in 2007.<p>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&#x27;s a genuine joy to use. FreeAgent have almost made doing my accounts fun. While they&#x27;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&#x27;ve had questions.

<i>That&#x27;s all?</i> I expected something like duetapp or better.. :&#x2F;<p>Here&#x27;s the same, but opensource so that you can customize to your own needs.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;css-tricks.com&#x2F;html-invoice&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;css-tricks.com&#x2F;html-invoice&#x2F;</a>

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&#x27;s printing to e.g cute pdf.

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&#x27;t help having doubts about their capabilities.<p>The first thing I would expect from such a tool is either to explicitly point out the limitations of the free offer (eg &#x27;only valid for retail in the Netherlands!&#x27;), 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&#x27;s domain (taxes, legal mentions, display of business registration, etc).

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&#x27;t really help.<p>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.<p>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 <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realsupplierchoice.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realsupplierchoice.com&#x2F;</a>

For the past 2 years I&#x27;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&#x27;re even adding more accounting functions to the great functions hey have today.

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...

It&#x27;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.

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.<p>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 &#x27;message&#x27; at the top of the email instead of the bottom. But otherwise, bravo!

Great marketing by FreeAgent. Could you invade the Australia market at some point? I like Xero, but they&#x27;re a bit slow on introducing kinda-important features like quoting.

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&#x27;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. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.timetrackturbo.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.timetrackturbo.com</a>

Here another one, open-source <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonathantneal.com&#x2F;examples&#x2F;invoice&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonathantneal.com&#x2F;examples&#x2F;invoice&#x2F;</a><p>source code: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonathantneal.com&#x2F;examples&#x2F;invoice&#x2F;invoice.zip" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonathantneal.com&#x2F;examples&#x2F;invoice&#x2F;invoice.zip</a>

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

I&#x27;d love to be able to specify the subtotal after VAT is applied as well, since that&#x27;s often what you quote in practice and converting that to pre-VAT prices is a PITA.<p>VAT is also actually called BTW here, so the ability to change how VAT is called would be useful as well.

This is cool. I&#x27;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?

Great work! Unfortunately I wouldn&#x27;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?

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.

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

I scanned over the list once or twice, but I did not see in the currency list RMB (Renminbi, Kuai), China&#x27;s main currency.<p>Just wanted to give you a heads up.

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

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

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

Add the ability to upload a logo and that&#x27;s the definitive winner in that field

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

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

Very nice CSS animation :)