Help

Getting started

You do not need an account to start. Open Make an invoice and begin typing. You will be asked to sign up only when you want to save it or download the PDF, and everything you have typed comes with you when you do.

Your first invoice

1. Fill in your details

   The top block is what appears at the top of the invoice: your business name, email, phone and address. Once you have an account this lives under Settings, so you only type it once and every future invoice picks it up.

2. Say who you are billing

   Client name is the only part that matters. Contact person, email, address and phone are optional, though the email is what overdue reminders would go to later.

3. Add your line items

   One row per thing you are charging for. Put the count in Qty and the price for a single one in Unit price, and the amount works itself out. Unit is a free text label like ea, hr or box.

   The Tax tick controls whether that specific row is taxed, so you can charge tax on parts but not on labour on the same invoice.

4. Set the tax, discount and shipping

   Rename the tax label to whatever you call it locally, such as Sales Tax or VAT, and set the rate. Discount comes off before tax is worked out. Shipping is added after tax.

   Tax is charged only on rows you ticked. If your prices already include tax, leave the rate at 0 and say so in the notes.

5. Save it

   Press Save invoice. New invoices start as a draft, which means it is yours to keep editing and nothing has been sent anywhere.

Getting the PDF

Open the invoice and press Print / PDF. That opens the printable version, and pressing the button there brings up your browser's print dialog. Choose Save as PDF as the destination instead of a printer, and you get a file you can attach to an email or a text message.

Tracking payment

Every invoice sits in one of four states:

• Draft is unfinished. It is not counted in what you are owed.
• Sent means it has gone to the customer and you are waiting.
• Overdue is worked out for you. Any sent invoice whose due date has passed shows as overdue, so you never have to keep that list in your head.
• Paid is settled.

Use the Mark sent and Mark paid buttons as things happen. If a customer pays part of it, type the figure into Amount paid instead and the balance due updates.

The four boxes at the top of the invoice list add all of this up: what is outstanding, how much of that is overdue, what you have collected, and what is still sitting in drafts.

Clients

Saving a client means you never retype their address. Add them under Clients, or with the + button beside the client picker while you are writing an invoice.

Each client has a Notes box that is private to you. It never appears on an invoice or anything the customer sees, so it is the right place for things like how they prefer to pay or who actually signs off the work.

Deleting a client keeps their invoices. Those invoices simply stop being linked to anyone.

Recurring invoices Paid

For anything you bill on a cycle, like a monthly retainer, set it up once and let it raise itself.

1. Build the invoice you want repeated

   Make it once as a normal invoice and save it, so you can see exactly what will go out.

2. Press Repeat

   Choose weekly, monthly or yearly, how many of those to skip between each one, and the date the first copy should go out.

3. Let it run

   Each new copy arrives as a fresh draft with its own invoice number, so you get to look it over before sending. The Recurring tab lists every schedule, and you can pause, resume or delete any of them without touching the invoices already raised.

If the computer running the site is off for a while, nothing is lost. When it comes back it works out which dates were missed and raises those invoices then.

Monthly schedules handle short months sensibly. One set for the 31st falls on the 30th in a month that has no 31st, rather than spilling into the following month.

Overdue reminders Paid

Rather than chasing people yourself, the site can email a customer once their invoice is late. It only ever contacts someone when all of the following are true:

• The invoice is marked sent, not draft.
• Its due date has passed.
• There is still a balance owing.
• The client has an email address saved.

Turning it on

1. Pick your chase days

   Under Settings, tick the reminder option and set how many days after the due date to send. The default is 3, 7 and 14.

2. Connect your mailbox

   Reminders go out through your own email account, so they come from you and land in a normal inbox rather than a spam folder. Fill in your provider's outgoing server and your address.

   Use an app password, not your normal one. Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail all issue these from their account security pages, and they can be revoked without changing your real password.

3. Send yourself a test

   Press the test button. It emails you and tells you plainly what went wrong if anything did. Nothing is sent to any customer until that works.

Each reminder is sent once and only once. If a customer pays, the chasing stops immediately.

More than one business Paid

If you run several things, each gets its own name, logo, tax settings, clients, invoices and numbering. Two businesses can both have an INV-0001 without clashing.

Add one with the + Business button in the top bar, and use the dropdown beside it to switch. Everything on screen follows whichever one is selected. An invoice always prints under the business that issued it, even if you have since switched to another.

Branding

Upload your logo under Settings and it sits at the top of every invoice. Keep the file under 400 KB.

On a paid account you can also choose the colour used for the invoice heading and the stripe along the top, and the small InvoiceMeFast line at the bottom of the page is removed.

FAQ