[HN Gopher] Show HN: Invoice Dragon - An open source app to crea...
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Show HN: Invoice Dragon - An open source app to create PDF invoices
Author : lanijuyi
Score : 433 points
Date : 2023-07-25 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (invoicedragon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (invoicedragon.com)
| blue1 wrote:
| Here in Italy, both paper and PDF invoices are extinct. All
| invoices are electronic transactions that follow a certain
| protocol and pass through a giant government-owned interchange,
| so that the government can control everything invoiced.
|
| Most people use this system through some SAAS platform.
| johntiger1 wrote:
| So the government can see every transaction you make?
| tjrgergw wrote:
| Wasn't there a post not too long ago here on HN for generating
| invoice PDFs from the command line? I'd favour that (because that
| could at least in principle be used part of automation) rather
| than having to type things into an HTML form.
| icouldntresist wrote:
| I'd be interested in seeing this if anyone could link me.
|
| Speaking of other invoicing software, does anyone know what
| generates those ASCII invoices you'll receive occasionally? The
| 80-column ones that look like a shell script that got piped to
| lpr? Just wondering if there was a common piece of software
| that was getting used for these or if everyone's IT dept hacked
| something together that produced approximately the same output.
| lwhsiao wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36472378
| icouldntresist wrote:
| Thank you!
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Yeah, but the TAM on that is like you, me and 5 other people
| also in this thread
| tjrgergw wrote:
| Really? I would've thought the TAM on that is the same as
| people who use GnuCash....
| jeremy151 wrote:
| I think I am exactly the target user for this, it looks great;
| looking forward to using it. In my case, I only generally work
| for one client at a time, those clients always pay immediately,
| and the invoice is generally a formality / record. Being able to
| generate one, and save/send the resulting file is really all that
| I need. Nice work.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a comprehensive accounting tool for
| personal finance or small business, GnuCash also has the ability
| to generate invoices.
|
| In my opinion, the PDF generator made by OP makes way more
| beautiful invoices than GnuCash. However, generating is only part
| of the story; tracking invoice balances and knowing who still
| owes you is another. GnuCash does both in one place, which is why
| I am plugging it here. It's worked well for my small business. It
| even gives you a nice pop-up reminder when you open the program
| that reminds you about unpaid Accounts Receivable.
| ISL wrote:
| Without checking for compatibility between the licenses -- if
| they are both open source, it is possible to combine the best
| of both tools.
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| Totally true! I would love to see that. In practice, I doubt
| that will happen because contributing to GnuCash seems to
| require a lot of nuanced understanding of their very old
| codebase and build system. OP's PDF generator is a web app,
| while GnuCash has basically no way to run in a browser.
|
| That's actually why I built GnuCash-Helper[0]. It's a web-
| based personal finance tool written with Python and Flask
| that works with GnuCash files. It's not nearly ready for
| prime time, but I use it daily, and I don't even open GnuCash
| anymore.
|
| In general, I really wish that GnuCash would get a visual
| refresh and some more modern features. It's amazing, but it
| looks very 2006, and it has bad stories for mobile and web.
| Obviously, HN readers are a different breed, but good luck
| convincing most people to run desktop-only software in 2023.
|
| Refs: 0. https://github.com/bxbrenden/gnucash-helper
| salamwaddah wrote:
| It'll be nice if I can mail the invoice to someone straight from
| the website.
| mbreese wrote:
| While I agree it would be nice, I can imagine there would be
| spam related issues at play with that feature. Namely... you'd
| never know if your invoice was received.
| bombcar wrote:
| A website can open your mail client for you, but I don't know
| if it can attach a PDF for you.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Might be possible to set a download link in the body of an
| email via an href mailto:.... ?
|
| Attaching the actual PDF might be another 'thing' that
| triggers some spam filters.
| hem123_ wrote:
| You should have a look at bizzey.com. I've switched 2 months
| ago from excel to this and it automates most of the tedious
| tasks of sending out invoices including checking if the payment
| arrived on your bank.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| I use an Excel template, fill it with the numbers and print to
| PDF.
| johntiger1 wrote:
| Yeah I also just use Excel or Google Sheets, I guess this is
| useful for those without it
| oaiey wrote:
| Feedback
|
| - Privacy would definitely forbid many people to use this. Make
| it offline, app or offline deployable ... would help. - obviously
| translations into other languages
| JulianWasTaken wrote:
| The source appears to be at https://github.com/LaniJ/invoice-
| dragon , so it presumably is already offline deployable.
| ifedapo wrote:
| it's more or less offline since it's completely frontend based.
| ninja-ninja wrote:
| needed this badly haha
| dbrgn wrote:
| Looks nice!
|
| I use LaTeX for my invoices, combined with the "rechnung.sty"
| module which allows creating the typical invoice layout.
|
| The advantage is that I can use the scrlttr document class, which
| - if I call it correctly - can generate PDFs that perfectly fit
| in my country's (Switzerland) window envelopes when printed out.
|
| And because I put all my base config in a reusable and importable
| file, every .tex file with an invoice is really short,
| essentially just the address and invoice positions.
| sho_hn wrote:
| At KDE, we have to do fairly complex invoicing to recipients in
| many different jurisdictions (as a non-profit having donors and
| organizing events all over the globe).
|
| We also wrote a web app (using quart and hypercorn) for this
| that generates PDFs (it's part of our internal financial
| dashboard that does a lot of other things as well). But ours
| runs the jobs on the backend, and uses luatex via latexmk. This
| internally uses scrlttr2 as well.
|
| Screenshot: https://mero.ng/i/GKeVmAnd.png
| j_san wrote:
| Is it open-source by any chance? I would be very interested
| to see all the logic that is necessary to handle all the
| different jurisdictions. Sounds complicated!:)
| transformi wrote:
| Great job! Any planning on RTL (right to left?) ?
| figbert wrote:
| I live in the terminal and recently found
| https://github.com/maaslalani/invoice, which looks really cool.
| Still will likely stick with my own solution (a little ruby and
| some tectonic latex [https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-
| US/]), which lets me create PDFs more in-line with my aesthetic.
| berkes wrote:
| Looks good! And congrats for releasing.
|
| Some feedback from someone who recently built a very similar PoC
| invoice-generator[1].
|
| 1. I'd prefer to have it live-update an HTML view. When I stop
| typing, it shows what the invoice will look like (by approx.)
| instead of ending up with 15+ temp pdfs in my Downloads folder.
|
| 2. In the EU there's strict rules for invoices. E.g. on
| numbering, VAT inclusion and so on. Getting this right, is the
| hard part. A tool like this that works out-of-the-box for e.g.
| French Invoices or Dutch Invoice to EU company. Getting this
| right requires a lot of research and domain knowledge. Something
| that e.g. a French plumber or Dutch Webdesigner will not have.
|
| 3. The hard parts of invoicing is not generating the PDF. Nor
| filling in the blanks in a template[2]. The hard part is getting
| all the data for point 2 above and then tracking (paid, overdue,
| reminded, retracted) the invoices correctly. Most online
| bookkeeping already does all this. Integrated.
|
| 4. Including some VAT or Tax lines is a requirement in many
| (most?) jurisdictions. It now cannot handle it without some weird
| hacks (desc: "VAT 21%", amount: 1, price: "insert manually
| calculated number and don't forget to update it"). I understand
| and applaud not including these calculators. It's impossible to
| make this general; no software has done this properly; e.g.
| invoice-ninja requires the user to set this up, but still misses
| many use-cases/jurisdiction-requirements which then require hacks
| anyway. But there should really be a way to include specialised
| line-items. Discount, VAT, WhateverTax, Travelling-costs. That
| can be in- or excluded from subtotal, but do add up to the total.
|
| I send maybe 10 invoices each year, so I'm probably your target
| audience. But I am only allowed (by law) to use such a tool if
| its either flexible enough to make it fit my local requirements,
| or opiniated and tailored for these local requirements. And for
| me, the real value would be in tracking these invoices (which
| most bookkeeping tools already do).
|
| [1] my ultimate goal is to manage invoices in a web-base tool,
| have plain-text-accounting (beancount/ledger) as its "database"
| and PDF as export; something I'm now managing with a terrible
| hodge-podge of scripts, latex and whatnot. Where "manage" is to
| add medatadata&add line-items, then track them in overviews, and
| consolidate or book them accordingly.
|
| [2] e.g.
| https://extensions.libreoffice.org/?q=invoice&action_doExten...
| locallost wrote:
| I thought about using something like this for my invoices, or
| even doing something on my own, but in reality I made an HTML
| page with a bunch of "contenteditable" attributes, edit it
| directly in the browser, sometimes fiddle in devtools to remove
| some things, and print as pdf. Somehow it feels wrong because my
| mother couldn't do that, but since I can it's actually the
| fastest way to get it done for me.
|
| But anyway it's a nice tool for people who want to do something
| with little fuss. Some nitpicks:
|
| * if I refresh the page, all the data is lost
|
| * custom select boxes are ok, but the list of currencies is huge.
| in a normal select box I could just type "EUR" and it would
| select that option. Here I need to scroll for a long time.
|
| * an annoying thing in general is tracking the invoice number. It
| would be nice if it would remember the last one. Of course there
| are all sorts of complexities here, like people have different
| "systems" on how it's called and how to increment
|
| * my company is always the same, so it would be nice if this data
| was saved. Sorry if it already does, I didn't see it.
|
| But thanks for sharing in any case.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I'm doing pretty much the same for all my routine paperwork,
| but with page.css for realistic preview and Mavo for the
| editing and storage part. Here's an example:
| https://papers.aedge.dev/payout/
| samstave wrote:
| Thats actually REALLY cool.
|
| If this were like a notepad++ plugin or a site where I can
| have multiple tabs of these pages - I like this for resume,
| cover letters, etc - not sure if this is something new or
| just based on something existing - but within 30 seconds, I
| loved it...
|
| So - bring moar.
| Mackser wrote:
| I started similarly. I had built a really simple HTML template
| for my invoices and I generated them using some CLI scripts and
| Airtable as a database (to keep track of customer addresses,
| invoice IDs, etc.).
|
| I didn't want to use a full-on accounting tool where everything
| is kept in the cloud with expensive monthly subscriptions and
| using Word or something along those lines also didn't work for
| me.
| albert_e wrote:
| If we don't need the UX but need to call this functionality
| programmatically-- to generate PDF account statements / invoices,
| optionally after showing a preview as a web page -- is there a
| good open source solution already available that we can integrate
| into our app.
| cuu508 wrote:
| For Python there is Weasyprint: you prepare the invoice as an
| HTML document, and Weasyprint turns it into a PDF
|
| https://weasyprint.org/
| albert_e wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| HTML Jinja templates seem to be fairly standard in this
| space.
| roastedpillows wrote:
| Looks great! I've been using Figma to generate invoices, but
| might switch to this. Was wondering if it might be possible to
| get add a date column for the line items?
| totallywrong wrote:
| This is neat, thanks.
| matthewhartmans wrote:
| Nice work Lani! Super helpful for those one off invoices! Love
| the way it works and looks - the custom templates is a nice touch
| too!
| andrewfromx wrote:
| Wow, what are the odds another invoice tool today! This one
| definitely wins for PDF design WOW factor but I like how mine
| lets you store all the client info once SaaS style
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864455
| subw00f wrote:
| I just tried it and loved the templates. One thing that I miss in
| these tools is keeping a record of the last invoices generated.
| It doesn't need to be fancy; just keeping it in local storage
| would do the job for me. Maybe I'll send a PR later :)
| boredemployee wrote:
| I was just looking for something like that! The serendipity on HN
| is real very often. Ty
| piokoch wrote:
| Seriously, without ability to add VAT? Where is invoice issue
| date? Where is Tax ID? This looks like something USA-only thingy.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Not all sales require VAT. Nor does everybody have the need or
| desire to pay VAT. This tool is fine - as long as you're
| invoicing in English that is.
| Oras wrote:
| Seriously, a VAT registered a not having an accountant tool
| that costs PS10/month? This tool is clearly for freelancers.
|
| For context, to charge VAT in the UK, you need to earn more
| than PS85k/year
| VHRanger wrote:
| This is open source, feel free to make a PR or at least file an
| issue for these concerns.
|
| I'm happy I might not have to rely no making accounts on a
| bunch of invoice making apps to make bespoke invoices at some
| point
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Seriously, without ability to add VAT?
|
| 99% of people in the US have never heard of VAT, so I'm not
| sure what you find surprising about a US-based project not
| including VAT...
| anamexis wrote:
| It's a tool built out of personal necessity that they decided
| to share with the world for free.
|
| But don't despair, contributions are welcome.
|
| https://github.com/LaniJ/invoice-dragon
| charlietango592 wrote:
| Nice work!
|
| Reminds me of Manta https://github.com/hql287/Manta, which
| unfortunately has been abandoned 5 years ago.
| eappleby wrote:
| Thanks! In the past, I've used https://invoice-generator.com/,
| which is pretty similar, but without the templates. One important
| thing they do is keep a history of the past invoices, so you
| don't need to re-type in the information and upload the logo
| (stored on users local machine without needing to create login).
| You should consider adding something similar. Without it, I would
| not consider switching.
| jaredtking wrote:
| Thanks for the shout-out! We have a free API as well for
| generating invoice PDFs: https://invoice-
| generator.com/developers
| aldarisbm wrote:
| the form input boxes, are extremely slow. I'm running it on
| safari, but the letters are lagging behind every stroke. Are you
| re rendering the PDF after every stroke?
| Rossimac wrote:
| Checked. Only rendered when a Preview is requested.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I think people are misinterpreting this -- it looks fine for,
| say, the first 20 invoices if you suddenly find yourself needing
| to generate them. There are plenty of more complex options once
| the transaction count and tax situation gets too onerous for
| copying into Excel.
| agjmills wrote:
| Looks great, but you can't scroll the currency select box on
| iPhone
| awb wrote:
| This looks nice and simple.
|
| I got frustrated with the invoicing landscape being too complex
| and pricy and have been using a Google Sheet for the last ~10
| years. It has an export to PDF button and then I email the PDF to
| the client. It's easy enough for any grid-style design which is
| all you need with an invoice.
|
| What advantages does Invoice Dragon have over a Google Sheet?
| kykeonaut wrote:
| I actually created an over-engineered LaTex template for my
| invoices, and it was such a pain in the arse. I can't believe I
| never thought of using Google Sheets or Excel.
| apelapan wrote:
| Did you do it entirely in LaTeX or some hybrid?
|
| I use Python scripts to generate LaTeX
| invoices/offers/payslips from yaml files. It works very
| smoothly.
|
| Of course it is more effort than using the built-in templates
| from the bookkeeping software, but it looks _much_ nicer and
| I only do a few per month so it is not many minutes wasted.
|
| The effort spent building up these scripts to their current
| level is perhaps impossible to motivate with any rational
| arguments... But I had fun doing it!
| bombcar wrote:
| Excel default invoice templates are great, and you can begin
| programmatically improving them from there. Excel can even
| have a separate sheet of "standard line items" you can
| reference, do the math for you, etc.
| progx wrote:
| Advantage: None.
| ifedapo wrote:
| Probably the fact that you don't have to do it with Google
| Sheet if it's not your Jam.
| kunley wrote:
| Oh, what about VAT?
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'd love to hear what people are using for sending invoices (with
| follow up emails if it's not paid) and collecting payment
| (ACH/CC). I've used Wave Accounting and Stripe for my invoices
| but I hate paying the Stripe invoice+tax fee but it's still less
| than the Amex fee on Wave so I put up with it. Maybe these are
| the best tools available to me at this price point and for my
| usage (4-6 invoices a year, $2-10K/ea) but I'm open to
| alternatives.
| emilecantin wrote:
| I self-host Pancake, I like it.
| steelcm wrote:
| I use FreeAgent. It connects with all my business accounts and
| does automatic transaction matching to invoices. Sends emails
| and follow-ups. It also figures out all the tax things for me
| in the UK, not sure about other countries though.
|
| https://www.freeagent.com/
| philsnow wrote:
| Completely unrelated, but reading "FreeAgent" just now
| released a core memory for me of reading USENET in the 90s
| with the free version of Forte Agent. This site has the
| 16-color image that IIRC was the basis of the icon for Free
| Agent: http://www.diginfoserv.com/agent.html .. I think the
| icon was just zoomed in on the lady at the table?
|
| _edit: wow, of course there was a 16 bit version available:
|
| > Agent is fully supported by the Agent Support Team and is
| available in 16 bit and 32 bit versions._
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I use e-mail with the invoice attached as a PDF for sending
| invoices, and I receive all my invoices in this way also.
| hersko wrote:
| I've been using Zoho-books for my minor accounting needs. It's
| been great (and free!).
|
| https://books.zoho.com/
| SpikedCola wrote:
| Self-hosted InvoiceNinja 4 & Stripe integration. Works great,
| sends follow-up emails, adds gateway fees to the invoice.
| twostorytower wrote:
| I'm using Wave as well and I really like it. I only accept
| check or bank transfer (I don't mind the 1% fee). It's very
| feature rich for a free product.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I use Harvest with an option to use Stripe for payment.
| gorlilla wrote:
| We self-hosted invoiceninja for a few years. I liked it enough,
| but it wasn't perfect by any means.
| nubela wrote:
| What do you not like about InvoiceNinja?
| sigio wrote:
| I've been self-hosting invoice-ninja for a number of years
| now... quite like it. Coupled with integration with Mollie
| payments all invoices also have a payment link and most smaller
| invoice payments are processed automatically.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Belgian company, very complete offering ( used to be called
| OpenERP) - https://www.odoo.com/
|
| Note: I have OpenERP v7 still running for free ( well, except
| my VPS).
| mxuribe wrote:
| While i have only heard of Odoo and never actually used nor
| set it up, i thought it is more of a bugger, comprehensive
| ERP system...which might be overkill if one only needs an
| invoice generated here or there...no?
|
| EDIT: * bigger
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| You can use the modules you want.
|
| If you only want the invoicing module, I think it's free in
| the cloud.
| mxuribe wrote:
| That sounds cool!
| melicerte wrote:
| Nice effort, this is my feedback:
|
| * On a short invoice (let's say, 4 invoice lines) Font used for
| rendering invoice lines is way too big and space between invoice
| lines too large. I understand the font size and base line are
| adaptive to the number of lines but invoices with low number of
| lines are then not rendered very nicely
|
| * Size for the description field is way too limited. Most of the
| description lines we used are larger than what is accepted in
| this field.
|
| * Missing a "product reference id" column
|
| * Probably not intended for B2B EU users as a few important
| pieces of information are missing like company number (the one of
| the invoicing company and the one of the company being invoiced,
| payment conditions, bank account, payment reference to be used
| with the bank transfer and, most importantly, no automatic
| computation and display of the VAT.
|
| Best of luck with your project !
| peterbhnews wrote:
| A lot of the complexity of invoicing isn't in the PDF generation
| (which this tool does a wonderful job of doing, nice work!) but
| on the side of tracking which invoices are open vs. paid, which
| ones are aging, whether there are discounts that can be applied
| for early payment, and of course integration with whatever
| accounting tools you're using.
|
| But this looks like a great, simple tool for people who need to
| occasionally send an invoice or two. Thanks for sharing it.
| bokstavkjeks wrote:
| While true, it's often two distinct processes. I work with
| implementing ERP systems, focusing on accounting and
| financials. Most systems I see use the ERP system to generate
| the invoice data and for tracking the invoice status with a
| separate service to create the PDF (and electronic) invoices
| through an integration with the ERP system. The ERP system is
| usually pretty good at invoice tracking but customising the
| invoices can be both time consuming and expensive. Among larger
| enterprises there's definitely a market for software that can
| produce PDF invoices, even without tracking, although they
| would probably have to support creating PEPPOL BIS compliant
| XML documents as well.
| conductr wrote:
| I could be wrong, but if the business is using ERPs (to the
| extent of hiring implementation specialists), they're likely
| already too big for this type of software. In it's current
| form anyways, this feels like something small business uses
| to appear professional, big and/or well polished. The bigger
| company would use the ERP solution because it integrates with
| their general ledger, etc. and at that scale putting any
| focus on 'pretty invoices' is probably just a waste of time.
| It's really better to focus on getting them paid quickly.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I think it depends. Sometimes, for some people, making the
| actual invoice _is_ the hard part.
| toshk wrote:
| I would understand it more as an api service, or JS lib to plug
| into a project. Although still hard for me te imagine the case
| where you have invoice that's not attached to your
| administration somewhere. Unless you just have excel or
| something.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > but on the side of tracking which invoices are open vs. paid,
| which ones are aging, whether there are discounts that can be
| applied for early payment, and of course integration with
| whatever accounting tools you're using.
|
| In my experience
|
| - you either did work for someone who _does_ pay invoices, or
| _doesn 't_
|
| - if you are boned when the last invoice isn't paid, you are in
| very deep trouble. That means you're not in the "invoicing"
| business, you're in the flipping business
|
| - so optimizing for the best case, well, you don't need to
| really track this stuff, or offer discounts for early payment
| or whatever
|
| > of course integration with whatever accounting tools you're
| using.
|
| Of course, you could be charging enough money that you don't
| really have to think about your costs.
|
| The kind of person doing that has the bandwidth to install and
| use open source tools.
|
| So ironically, the person who is arguably the _best_ B2B
| customer, making tons of money, lots of bandwidth, pretty
| sophisticated, is the person _most_ likely to use a simple open
| source invoice PDF generating tool. And that 's why these
| things get adoption. That's why open source thrives.
|
| I don't know if Invoice Dragon will make _money_ but its users
| are necessarily going to be great. Because the person who gets
| the most out of it is running a great business.
| mhss wrote:
| > The kind of person doing that has the bandwidth to install
| and use open source tools.
|
| > ironically, the person who is arguably the best B2B
| customer, making tons of money, lots of bandwidth, pretty
| sophisticated, is the person most likely to use a simple open
| source invoice PDF generating tool
|
| That doesn't make any sense to me. If you have a thriving
| profitable business you usually just pay for invoicing
| software. Why would you invest time fiddling around with an
| OSS tool? just because you have the bandwidth doesn't mean
| you'll use it on that. Most people will prefer spending the
| time on something else that is core to their business or just
| their personal lives.
|
| Open source thrives for many reasons. I hardly see what you
| described as one of them.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| We see this pattern a lot.
|
| It's like twitter. You can write an app that works just like
| twitter in a short amount of time. A week tops. But that's not
| the hard part. Moderation, getting the product profitable, etc,
| are the hard parts.
|
| People often get a bit of tunnel vision and don't realize
| there's a whole bunch of behind the scenes stuff that's the
| real hard part. No reason to feel bad about it, it's a human
| thing, not just (the proverbial) you.
| samstave wrote:
| > _You can write an app that works just like twitter in a
| short amount of time. A week tops. But that 's not the hard
| part. Moderation, getting the product profitable, etc, are
| the hard parts._
|
| You can buy a Twitter for 44 billion dollars, thats easy -
| but moderation and user management, not tanking the profits
| into the red, not killing the brand with weird behavior -
| these are the hard parts.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Perhaps I chose that example for a reason ;-)
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| <<insert>> not cutting the brand off the building as a
| seemingly random decision is also easy but who are we to
| judge...
| ehutch79 wrote:
| I mean, if you're not paying rent, you might want to pack
| up the shit that's hard to grab in a hurry
| stOneskull wrote:
| > You can buy a Twitter for 44 billion dollars, thats easy
|
| i'll have to try it one day
| blauditore wrote:
| It's not like Twitter was beloved before, and neither are
| people actually leaving the platform (except for the dozens
| who care a lot).
|
| Like most content on Twitter, the discussion around it is
| mostly a loud minority complaining.
| wsatb wrote:
| Are people actually not leaving? I had not used Twitter
| in about a year and a half until last week. I went there
| and it took 20 seconds to load the web app, then after I
| logged in it was Elon getting promoted, ads that look
| like mostly spam, and everyone with a blue check mark. I
| left because I thought the platform was deteriorating
| then and it is much, much worse now.
| blauditore wrote:
| The question is always: What's the alternative? People
| who are either addicted to what they get from Twitter, or
| whose job depends on it, have no other place to go. Of
| course there are other platforms, but those only have a
| tiny fraction of the user base, meaning less content and
| less attention.
| nacs wrote:
| A ton of people have moved to Threads from Meta which is
| the most direct competition.
|
| Then there is of course Mastodon and the upcoming
| Bluesky.
| soneca wrote:
| I would guess that people who are addicted to it or whose
| job depends on it are not the majority of Twitter users.
|
| I agree that even out of those groups, there are not a
| lot of people deleting accounts and moving to other
| places. But, my perception is that a lot of people are
| indeed spending much less time on Twitter. Twitter
| competitors are not only Mastodon or Threads. It is also
| YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Netflix and alikes, advocacy
| for consuming less social media overall, etc.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > You can buy a Twitter for 44 billion dollars, thats easy
|
| Go for it.
| beezlewax wrote:
| This is really useful as it is for a small business starting
| out - before they get to the stage where they need this
| complexity
| asah wrote:
| Also, connecting to calendar, timekeeping, etc systems
| including google sheets.
| carabiner wrote:
| Make LLM or something that can parse invoices for all sorts of
| random vendors, car parts, pencils, in multiple languages, from
| shitty scanned PDF's, and you have a billion dollar company.
| stevetodd wrote:
| Yep: bill.com
| dsr_ wrote:
| It won't be a problem if it occasionally sends a serial
| number instead of a total, right?
| FredPret wrote:
| This would be a fantastic way to give your customers a bear-hug
| and slowly pull them into a full ERP system.
|
| I have personally seen myself and other business owners issue
| invoices that are unconnected to any system early on - just
| generating it using some ill-suited tool like Word.
|
| But once your customer enter their invoice data in Invoice
| Dragon, it's a simple matter for you to set up a "payment due"
| reminder for them. And then add on outstanding balance per
| customer. And so on, and the next thing you know, it's an ERP!
| unfocused wrote:
| You are correct. I'm in the process of trying to find software
| to manage the collection of 1000s of fines. It's a very niche
| area. It's not even the payment part, as we have that part
| completed, it's the tracking and "attempting" at contacting
| people which may or may not want to be found!
| doctor_eval wrote:
| What you're describing is accounts receivable. As you say,
| it's a separate function relative to invoice generation and
| payment.
|
| It's not an overly complex problem to solve in the general
| sense but it is very easy to underestimate the complexity,
| and this often leads to half baked systems.
|
| I've got a ton of experience in this area, reach out via my
| profile if you would like to connect.
| svennek wrote:
| Not to forget book-keeping.... In the EU for example VAT
| handling (and associated payments to the gov)
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Also the tax law may be complicated and/or requiring on-the-fly
| reporting
| XorNot wrote:
| Also fun when I was contracting was dealing with accounts
| departments which insisted on exact hourly rates, while my
| contract was specified as a per day rate.
|
| So to put a number which added up accurately I wound up with
| 5-7 digit fractional hourly rates.
| bombcar wrote:
| A quick and dirty invoice generator is great for people who
| usually do point of sale or cash transactions and once in a
| while need to produce an invoice so a business can pay (vs it
| being expensed).
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i never understood the difference between a "bill" and an
| "expense". my confusion in understanding comes from the idea
| that a small retail trader for example, pays for 2-3 things.
|
| either capital goods, or purchases of trading goods or
| expenses. Now, all of these are technically purchases". Just
| that your accounting ledger defines the further
| classification. Now, all of these require "invoice", at least
| in india, that means you can't just say "i paid inr 500 for
| fuel" without a receipt/invoice. So what is a bill and how is
| it different than being expensed?
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a case of before or after the payment occurs - some
| businesses want it all handled via invoice so they can
| check things first.
|
| Usually it's just internal processes - Uber can be
| expensed, gas cannot.
| esquivalience wrote:
| The difference is that a bill is saying "I've done this
| work for you: now pay me". Or "I've given you these
| products: now pay me".
|
| But an expense claim is saying "When I was doing what you
| asked me to do, I had to pay some money on your behalf, so
| please refund me".
| doctor_eval wrote:
| A bill is an invoice you send to someone else, to request
| payment.
|
| An expense is an invoice someone sends to you for payment.
| This "invoice" might be as simple as a docket from a cash
| register.
|
| If you receive an invoice from someone, it can be
| classified as an expense if it's legitimately part of your
| business - depending on local law. If it is an expense then
| it's deducted from your income so that you don't get taxed
| on it - you should only be taxed on profit, not revenue.
|
| If it's not a legitimate business expense then you can't
| deduct it from your income and the tax you pay is higher.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Yeah -- this is nice but doesn't save anyone from having to pay
| a zillion bucks for some custom ERP integration
| neilv wrote:
| When I was independent consulting, GnuCash managed my invoicing
| and accounts-receivable well enough.
|
| I tracked my hours for a billing period by starting a new
| invoice in GnuCash, and just adding a line item to it per day.
| Each line item was updated throughout the day, with very quick
| notes to myself of what I did.
|
| At the end of each day, I'd print a draft invoice of the
| unbilled hours thus far, as backup.
|
| When it came time to invoice, GnuCash supports/ed custom
| invoice scripts, so I'd copied&modified a stock invoice script
| to do what I want, including hiding the notes to myself, and
| complying with the occasional format change requests from
| client. I'd print to PDF or paper.
|
| For a client that also wanted a separate summary of what I did,
| I'd copy&paste the hidden notes into an editor, and then
| rewrite that as a concise one-to-few sentences.
|
| As soon as I emailed/mailed the invoice, the GnuCash accounts-
| receivable functionality would take over. The complexity in how
| it represented the data was a little scary, but it worked.
| teekert wrote:
| It does look great but indeed, at this point, I would be
| extremely happy with something that allows me to customize and
| make GnuCash invoices look nice.
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| Also in some (most?) countries, regulations impose a strict
| versioning of invoices and a strict irrevocability process
| (meaning you cannot edit an invoice after its been delivered).
| To be compliant with the laws, as a company you need to prove
| you are using a system which is compliant with theses
| constraints.
|
| For instance in France, it has been mandatory to use such
| compliant software since 2018 for all companies.
| golemotron wrote:
| > To be compliant with the laws, as a company you need to
| prove you are using a system which is compliant with theses
| constraints.
|
| My brother-in-law, Wallace, in the back office, is a system
| compliant with all of those constraints.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I would assume this would be for cases where your are using
| that same software to report income, expenses, tax etc. But
| in Invoice Dragon (i.e. just a template) case you would be
| keeping a copy of the invoice for later reference in
| calculations, the same as a handwritten invoice, no? It's
| just "typing it up" for you. This isn't accounting software,
| just a template.
| mongol wrote:
| In Sweden, this applies to the accounting system - bookings
| need to be immutable but there is no certification of the
| software. The invoice generation is not covered, they need to
| state due date, VAT number etc, and the invoices need to be
| booked in the accounting system but can be typed on a
| typewriter, or written by hand even, as far as I know.
| xorcist wrote:
| How does that work? Are you not allowed to fill out an
| invoice with pen and paper?
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Many EU countries still allow for individuals/small companies
| to choose to use simpler book keeping, without going through
| all that bureaucracy. And realistically this types of tools
| are probably targeting that population...
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Many EU countries still allow for individuals/small
| companies to choose to use simpler book keeping, without
| going through all that bureaucracy.
|
| Not really. Well, only if you are a really really small
| company (read below VAT threshold).
|
| Once you're VAT registered the tax authorities will want
| the irrevocability.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Nothing is irrevocable, when it's on my machine
| Roark66 wrote:
| There is no such thing as irrevocability in IT(unless we
| talk about physical retail sale registers every retail
| business has to have - these are certified standalone
| hardware devices that print receipts and store the
| transaction details in write once memory). At least in
| this EU country the requirement is that you keep the
| original file for the retention period and you present it
| on request. If you mess with it in the meantime and you
| get caught you're essentially falsifying financial tax
| records. It doesn't matter if you keep your invoices in
| .txt files on a hard drive or in a cloud based
| "irrevocable" system But if you're doing retail your
| accounting data better matches with the printout from
| that hardware device that logs all the sales.
|
| However, having said that the complexity in doing small
| business accounting (at least here in Poland) is not in
| generating invoices, but in accounting for them correctly
| with regards to VAT. Is this just a domestic
| sale/purchase? Is it an EU goods or services
| purchase/sale? Is it the same but for outside EU? Is the
| client a company or an individual? Does he/she want to
| return a item. Did you send an invoice, but never got
| paid? (you're still on the hook for the VAT) All those
| things matter and affect how you're supposed to record
| your VAT. In many cases of cross border transactions you
| end up recording VAT in a special way so it cancels out,
| but you need to report the right amounts. The logic to
| not mess this up is what makes people pay for this
| software. There is nothing stopping you doing all of it
| in Excel if you want, but if you mess up... It might be
| expensive.
| elric wrote:
| Who ensures the software is compliant? How does the process
| work?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'm looking at using https://bigcapital.ly/ exactly for these
| reasons.
| bencyoung wrote:
| If anyone's in the UK I can recommend our product Paycada for
| this (https://www.paycada.com/)
| nkotov wrote:
| Bloom (https://bloom.io) solves a lot of this, but without the
| open source part.
| trojan13 wrote:
| This is nice. Actually a lot nicer than my hacked together
| 'invoice-generator.js' NodeJS-Tool I have used before. I think I
| am switching!
| p0d wrote:
| Well done and thanks for sharing.
| VadimPR wrote:
| Canva works surprisingly well for small enough invoices for a
| solo consulting gig.
| Mackser wrote:
| This is really well made! I know from my experience building
| Cakedesk [1] that the requirements of invoices vary greatly from
| country to country and from user to user.
|
| Some things you can add to appeal to more people that are useful
| to most:
|
| * Keep track of clients and personal info so the user doesn't
| have to type the address / invoice IDs every time
|
| * Allow users to keep track of which items are paid/unpaid
|
| * Allow users to declare sales tax on the invoices
|
| * Allow users to upload their own HTML-based invoice designs
|
| * Allow users to add subitems to items
|
| Good luck with the project, it looks well-made and it will be
| useful for many people!
|
| [1]: https://cakedesk.app
| breadwinner wrote:
| Unicode chars don't display correctly in the PDF, unfortunately.
| Hope this can be added.
| aspyct wrote:
| Ooh, just when I needed one! Will try it, thanks for sharing :)
| hydroid7 wrote:
| Proudly using Latex for PDF generation!
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