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

invoiceomatic.io

51–60 of 92 posts

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

#51
post #21

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

I'm not sure if they just added the feature, but you can change "VAT" to something else in the settings

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

#54
post #40

While this is good from a UX perspective, don't rely on tools like this to make sure that you include all information on an invoice that you're legally required to include. 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 mus…

Most contractors I know do exactly that. These 3rd party services are called accountants.

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

#55

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."

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 ones that maximally collect data, so I just assume others have done the same.

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

#57
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.

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 'message' at the top of the email instead of the bottom. But otherwise, bravo!

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

#58

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."

Depending on how anal you are, and how complex your invoices are, one good reason to use a tool over a Word template is simply adding the numbers up properly.

I joined a small business that was doing them in Word. After reviewing the last 12 month of invoices (about 200), I found about 5% of them had simple math errors, i.e. the Total did not match the sum of the line items.

Sure, you can get it right by hand, but why bother when using software can eliminate the adding-up step entirely?

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

#59

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 more than one page.

- Fun: When was the last time you filled out a Word template and thought, wow, that was kind of cool!

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

#60
post #40

While this is good from a UX perspective, don't rely on tools like this to make sure that you include all information on an invoice that you're legally required to include. 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 mus…

Most contractors I know do exactly that. These 3rd party services are called accountants.

It's always good advice for any consultant or company to have their accountant (and lawyer, if applicable) review anything related to their field. It's why we have them.

However I would not criticize a tool for not covering all the p's and q's of every country's tax and legal code. If every startup/SAAS had to handle all these cases, we would have far fewer of the cool services we use today.

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