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Show HN: A free invoice generator

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Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#41
This is great! Thank you so much.

I basically use Freshbooks.com as an invoice generator. This is way cleaner.

Some polish-level things that would make it cleaner to use for a SaaS product:

* There aren't really "quantities" or "rates". You are a customer of my product, which costs $X amount, so there is just a line with cost $X.

* Needs to comma-delimit amounts greater than $1,000

* Want to be able to put my logo where "INVOICE" is.

* Want to be able to include an "Amount Paid" below the "Total", and then have "Amount Due" under that, which is Total - Amount Paid.

Also, I want to be able to save invoices (local storage or server is fine), generate a new one this month from last month's per customer, etc. etc.

Feel free to email me (harry@periscope.io) if you want more feedback or some examples.

Also: Charge your customers money!

Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#44
post #41

This is great! Thank you so much. I basically use Freshbooks.com as an invoice generator. This is way cleaner. Some polish-level things that would make it cleaner to use for a SaaS product: * There aren't really "quantities" or "rates". You are a customer of my product, which costs $X amount, so there is just a line with cost $X. * Needs to comma-delimit amounts greater than $1,000 * Want to be able to put my logo wh…

While I appreciate everything in this list, in addition the the last item, I also want to voice support for your open sourcing this project.

The community would be grateful for your efforts, if that's an available option.

Thanks & all the best!

Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#46
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I've updated the message to reflect that fact. Thanks for pointing that out!

Cool, though I'm almost disappointed now. I was hoping you had figured out some hack to use the browser's 'print to file' functionality, omitting the sidebar and printing only the invoice part of the web page.

that can be done with a print-only stylesheet. display: none for the sidebar

Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#48
post #14

This is really good. With the boring, generic, exact-match domain you've given it I was expecting something spammy. Is your aim to go after the SEO benefits or would you consider renaming it to something a bit more characteristic?

Personally, I appreciate the descriptive domain name. It's far more characteristic of what the product is for than some random word with an arbitrary dropped/added letter/number.

edit: Further reading of this thread show how many other solutions there were, but the author couldn't find. So maybe the problem is one of marketing, and picking a descriptive domain name might be what's needed.

Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#49

Odoo Invoicing has the features you need and his fully open source. https://www.odoo.com/page/billing It implements: SSL, PDF, Export, same preview than print but no local storage. In the other hand, it has: online payments, auto generation (subscriptions), send by email or regular mail, etc. One-click demo: https://demo.odoo.com/?module=account (disclaimer: I am the author of Odoo)

I need to look into this. I feel like I've hear of odoo months back and maybe it wasn't as mature. All the apps called out that connect with it, if it delivers what it says should rival anything commercial closed source right now. Whats the best resource to get up to speed on the details of odoo, is there a long video demo perhaps?

Re: Show HN: A free invoice generator

#50
This is great, I really like how clean the interface is! I might start using this from now on.

Minor pet peeve: It would be nice to have rich text formatting for the additional notes. Formatting bank information on how to pay me would be added there, so making certain details clear would be ideal.

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