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Show HN: InvoiceAtOnce – Easy Invoice Creation (invoiceatonce.com)
57 points by NubeDeArroz on Aug 13, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 50 comments



If you would rather do this using json and a command line tool: https://github.com/lambdal/envois

That's a FOSS utility I've been working on for the past two years. I use it for all of my invoices.

You can create your invoices like this:

    ./scripts/envois < scripts/invoice.json > output.html


Can you share a screenshot/sample of the output? I think that would help promote your project immensely.


Sure, I just added a screenshot in the README.


Hi, I would like to have some feedback on the website I've created. It's called Invoice At Once. It is a small service for users who need to create and print an invoice in an easy way. I think it would be useful for freelancers or any independent worker.

Any feedback or fresh ideas for improvements would be great.

Thanks...


Possible additions for registered users:

- keep all company info entered for my next visit (maybe it does, did not check)

- every invoice needs a unique incremental number so a list of previous created invoices by number would be useful - also for ease of use

- registration should still be just an option - giving extra features

Expand your market:

- other languages - because its not very nice to send my clients an invoice in English

- VAT (in Europe normally added on a separate line below the total and then another final total)

- 'make all checks payable' = interesting, in Europe we normally transfer by bank as much as possible - so add option for bank account (IBAN in case of Europe)


Great Feedback !!! Thanks for the interest and the time you took to analyse the site... I keed al the information in the localstorage so next time you enter you don t have to enter again all the data you entered last time.. Registration as an option is a great idea... I ll think about it for the future... Charges, discounts and others you can do it with the little green + in the right... Other languages, currency, etc is going to be the next update... Really appreciate your feedback...


Re: tax/VAT, the little green '+' beside the total appears to allow exactly this (and more!)


Thanks for this, the PDF invoice looks great! As someone else mentioned, an option to save company and address info in my login would be awesome.


Can you make the currency symbol a field to be customised? It wouldn't even need to be a drop-down box...


Yep... I missed that... Going to change it soon.. Thanks


Any detail on the technology you are using? How do you generate the PDF? Is this a LaTeX template?


I used PHP and TCPDF to generate the pdf...


Checklists or something like that in the description, it's useful for services.


An API would be great: POST some JSON, get a PDF back.


beautiful! a great idea.


Very nice but very US centric.


That s true... Thanks... I have to internationalyze it!! :-)


This looks fantastic. I love how easy it is to jump in and just start creating without having to log in or do anything else to get started. Very well done. I love the PDF export. So obvious, yet so many people miss it.

I have to wonder, sometimes, though. It seems like every other week there's a new invoice app out there. It's like a slightly more advanced version of the To-Do list tutorial app. I get that invoicing is a problem, but given the vast number of alternatives out there, aren't there more interesting problems to solve than Yet-Another-Invoice-App?

(Granted, here I am, typing away at Hacker News and working my day job and not creating anything useful for anyone other than my employer, but... a man can dream...)


It's one thing to make a yet-another product, but if you can differentiate yourself to selectively target a niche or introduce a new feature, that's another thing entirely. I'm not sure if this is a great example of that, but starting in a proven market is a great place to start.


Glad you liked it !!! Thanks for the feedback... I think maybe one day I can differentiate this service from others... The idea was to do something simple...

Thanks !!!


Hey, everyone has to start with something, right?


Yes.. rsrs... I am starting with this service and planning to improve it and be a better solution on each update... The idea was to start with a simple and nice solution...


Yep.


Seems pretty neat, like what you're doing here, NubeDeArroz!

I like how simple you've kept it. I built a similar service a few years ago to send invoices to clients directly: http://betterinvoices.com – we were one of the first partners with Stripe. You can hook up your stripe account and accept credit cards – free :)

Looks like one of the philosophies that we both share is not needing to log in before doing anything. I think this is very powerful – especially for people who just want to get things done. But if you're a bit OCD, you can still log in and get more.

Keep up the good work!


That's a great looking service. While so many options already exist out there, there is always the opportunity to tweak something just a little to make it the BEST option for a certain segment. In particular, some people actually want fewer features, not more. Both of these are great examples of that.


I use Better Invoices and love it!

The ability to email the invoice directly to the recipient (as well as CCing yourself and anyone else you want) is nice. I also like being able to see all the previous invoices I've sent, and marking them as paid.


Thank you !!!

I liked a lot your solution !!! Thanks for the advices...


Looks like we flooded their site. Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FHG04zc...

Invoiceto.me is a similar service that I can vouch for: http://invoiceto.me/


I need to change the hosting... I was using the free plan of Pagoda Box for developing. I am changing it on the next days. I already payed for a digitalocean server.

I know about invoiceto.me and many others similar services that do the same. The thing is I didn't want to fall in the "I had a great idea but its already done". I think I can continue improving it and offer best features.

Thanks for your feedback...


HNDoS. Seems to be better now, though (at least for me).


Glad you liked it !!!


Do you think you should add time tracking - who is the target audience here?

For me, the invoicing is almost a nice to have (both when I freelanced and as a business owner), and now I've come to expect to be able to press a button and generate an invoice. The info about the client, who the invoice gets sent to within a company, and other things only get set up per project/client. And you can do history and reports.

I've used www.GetHarvest.com, which besides invoicing, does time tracking. I think any serious business money software ends up being more than one feature and requiring lots of integrations. Harvest is one of the best business software suites I've ever seen actually.


Very nice.

That being said - is CREATING invoices really the problem in the invoicing world? I can google for "free invoice generator" and get 800 different webapps that do the same thing (Granted, this is the nicest one I've seen).

To me, the bigger problem is always remembering to send them, then managing the accounts receivable system, and knowing/finding out when the client is late in paying.


I use google docs template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V59ZXYjeAHCCQLVxJIhhJi7A...

Works great for me. Can do pdf or share with team.


edit: Apparently down-voted for including my website that already has features others are saying would be good to add. I have removed my website name. Sorry if I offended more so than others also listing their sites.

This is a great looking option. I've made a similar one with a few additional features:

•Save inputed data for future use (cached for 1 year - no registration) •Add your own logo •Generate PDF OR optimized for print.


Well done! I've meaning to create this myself. I see you also used Angular. What did you use for the PDF creation?


Thanks !!!

I used Angular, Bootstrap and PHP with TCPDF for the PDF creation.


This is awesome.

Would love to know how more about how the PDF generation works – it's something I've been struggling with!


PhantomJS can generate PDFs. It's pretty easy to use. http://phantomjs.org/


fpdf.org (php based)


http://www.tcpdf.org/

i've been using it for years.


This is nifty - I can think of at least 10 scenarios in the last year where I could have used this. Great idea!


Now that is a UX-oriented landing page. Jump straight in and use the product.


Love it! Being able to add our company's logo would be super cool too!


Only $ ? Please add edit field on currency also.


Next update is going to be that for sure... thanks for the feedback...


Is there something like this, but for CVs?


Here's a project that was on HN a while ago you may be interested in: http://jsonresume.org/


This app use HTML5 quite good.


any chance of sharing the repos?

I like slig's idea of making a CV version of this...




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