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

invoiceomatic.io

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

#71

Post by oinksoft »

xplorer wrote: post #63
oinksoft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mne…

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.

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.

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

#73

Post by 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 Take a look at how they launched, slightly outdated but funny http://www.realsupplierchoice.com/

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

#74

Post by 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.

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

#76

Post by archivator »

wikwocket wrote: post #59
moron4hire wrote: post #20

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."

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 mo…

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

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

#77

Post by Swizec »

jjsz wrote: post #24
Swizec wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

What tools did you start using after billlableme?

I'm using InvoiceFox (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.

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

#79

Post by 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).

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

#80

Post by davidjgraph »

moron4hire wrote: post #55
davidjgraph wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.
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