Ask HN: An invoicing platform specifically for Freelancers
Over the past few months, I have been building an invoicing platform designed from the ground up, specifically for freelancers.
Removing all the bloat from free-to-use platforms and only including the features you want to see. No more forced payment methods, which take 4% of your hard-earned cash, and no more over-complicated UI's that include all the features dedicated to small business owners.
I'm including all core features, such as customer management, invoice tracking, payment statuses, finance metrics, and various optional payment methods. I want to hear what other features people would like to see.
Some ideas that I have already validated are: - customer health scores - Invoice-opened notifications - quick invoice creation - time tracking and invoice item management - customer/user invoice collaboration
This will be a platform built specifically for YOU, so your input will be the core of this project.
Long-time freelancer here.
As a solo freelancer I never had enough clients and projects at one time to need anything more complicated than a spreadsheet to produce invoices. Solo freelancers have hard limits on billable time and number of clients/projects they can juggle at once.
Freelancers running a business by hiring other freelancers will need something more than invoicing, because they will have payroll and taxes to contend with.
Freelancers who mainly use piecework sites like Fiverr or Upwork don't have to invoice, because those sites do it for them.
Some of my customers have their own time/work tracking systems that I have to use, but then I don't have to invoice.
Since 2014 I have freelanced through an agency that does invoicing for me. They use Google Sheets for time tracking and handle the rest for me.
Ideally freelancers move their long-term clients to retainer arrangements, which makes invoicing even easier, or not necessary at all.
As for paying for credit card or PayPal, I always added that in to my invoices, passing it along to the customer transparently. They could choose to pay by bank transfer (free for me) or in the old days by paper check. If they used a credit card they paid the processing fee. No one ever complained about it.
I have seen lots of invoicing tools, and lots of low-end CRM systems, targeting freelancers. None of them seem worth the trouble to me. Tracking time and sending out invoices just doesn't seem like a hard problem, and I want something with the least friction, so I use a spreadsheet.
Thanks so much for sharing your perspective—it’s incredibly valuable to hear from an experienced freelancer! It sounds like simplicity and low friction are your key priorities, and it’s great to hear how you’ve streamlined your invoicing over the years.
Out of curiosity, if there were an invoicing platform designed to be as effortless as a spreadsheet but with added features like automatic payment reminders, integrated time tracking, or transparent expense tracking for clients, would that spark your interest? Or are there specific pain points you’ve encountered (even minor ones) that you think invoicing tools haven’t addressed well?
I may occupy a small niche of freelancers. I generally have long-term clients on retainer, or I charge by task/deliverable. I rarely have to track my time in detail. When I do I track in 30 minute increments, so I don’t need per-minute time tracking.
I have never had a client who needed payment reminders. I invoice net 15 days. Because I’m doing business with clients I trust I don’t worry about no-pay/slow pay.
I generally don’t incur expenses for my clients. If they need to pay for something I have them pay directly, so the domain name or hosting account or whatever goes in their name on their credit card. I don’t resell or mark up those kinds of things.
I suppose other freelancers have different needs but I have never needed anything more than a spreadsheet template that I can save as PDF from and send by email.
Just a single data point (also an ex-freelancer), I would not pay for such a product. The only time I paid for such a product was 10+ years ago (getballpark, surprisingly, they still exist)
1. As a solo-freelancer, I only need a PDF invoice for my client. I need a few fields (ie: xxx hours @ xx/hour - $xx,xxx). I don't need metrics, tracking or customer management.
2. I will never consider an invoicing platform as my payment platform. I never understood it, understood why people do it or what the advantage is. You can give your bank account or PayPal details and that's it. Why risk your hard earned money through some third-party?
It's obviously not going to be something that everyone needs, like any customer base, different people require different things. But I'm glad you shared your feedback.
There were times when I didn't need a platform to do my invoicing, and a simple PDF would have sufficed but I love my toys! And that includes software. I love using an app or a website that is a joy to use, especially for mundane tasks.
Again, I think I said this in another comment but this all started out from scratching my own itch. I have used many other tools in the past, and I just think they can be designed better. The idea being that if I want to use it, then so will other people.
As a former freelancer, I have a couple of questions because I struggle to see the value in validated ideas (perhaps it’s just me, and you’ve conducted a significant number of interviews for research):
Customer Health Scores: How would these scores be tracked? I feel that, at some point, freelancers naturally act as salespeople and already have a sense of the state of their relationships with clients. However, I don’t fully understand how this function would work. If it’s simply a matter of manually noting it down myself, I fail to see the advantage of this feature.
Various Optional Payment Methods: I already use a basic payment system, as do many freelancers, such as PayPal, Payoneer, and Wise (I’m based in Europe, so this is my go-to options). Another question is about freelancer platforms with integrated payment systems, like UpWork or Fiverr. I believe there’s a strong need for integration with such platforms; otherwise, it may not be convenient for regular freelancers.
Overall Complexity: While you describe this as an invoicing tool, it seems a bit overwhelming. I’m actively searching for a tool like this, which is why your post caught my attention in the feed. Perhaps it’s just my preference, but I tend to enjoy simple tools that serve their purpose effectively. For instance, I’ve researched similar products and tried a few free trials: https://turbodoc.io/ and https://bookeeping.ai/en. You might consider looking into tools like these, as I believe they meet invoicing needs quite well, though companies may still need time to refine them further.
The idea behind customer health scores is that the platform will keep track of things in the background related to each customer, such as;
- How long does it take them to pay upon receiving an invoice? - How many invoices have been paid late and require auto-reminders to be sent? - How much revenue have they brought in?
Then, at the end of the year, when you're planning out your year ahead, you can use these metrics to find which customers are worth focusing on or who you might consider dropping if you are fortunate enough to be overloaded.
This feature, plus everything else, will be designed to be as unobtrusive as possible while giving you value when needed.
The various payment options idea has come around from noticing that some of the platforms that offer "free" plans, require you to use their payment options. For example, Square has a free plan but doesn't allow you to send an invoice that doesn't include their payment method, which takes a percentage of the invoice.
I want to give the user flexibility to include Stripe, PayPal, or their bank details for a direct transfer.
I'm glad that you bring up simplicity. It's going to be at the core of everything. My ethos when building anything is that a tool should be a frictionless as possible whilst giving value. If I do my job right, then you should spend as little time as possible within the tool.
I haven't looked at https://turbodoc.io/ or https://bookeeping.ai/en. But will definitely dive into them. If interested, I do have a basic landing page setup to capture emails for people that want to be notified when I launch. It doesn't really give much away at the moment, I was just thrown together https://helloinvoice.co
I've used Freshbooks for a few years now to handle these kinds of challenges and I'm about to close out my account. Like a lot of the other people here, it's overkill for what I really need and I've also found that the businesses I work with rarely use the payment links it generates. I end up needing to export PDFs and send them over to ap@ or finance@ addresses anyways, at which point why bother having a tool?
I'm planning a trial run with HubSpot as a replacement so I can continue to have some structure, which speaks to another problem you'll run into. If you already know you need a platform, why not just go for a full CRM with most of those features baked in from the start?
Honestly, one of the reasons for working on a tool like this is that I have tried several other tools in the past, and they've never really been precisely what I'm looking for. As they say, if you want to start a saas company, start by scratching your own itch.
In researching my platform, I have looked at Freshbooks, and it's, honestly, one of the closest to the one I'm building. They have a lot of great features but also come with quite a lot of bloat, which could be removed or streamlined in a more targeted tool. I don't want to create just another tool that targets a wide client base but only includes the things that I/we actually need.
What were some of the features that you did/didn't like about previous platforms? Also, what are you trying to find when switching to Freshbook?
Didn't you just post another thread about this very recently?
I did yes. But by my own admission I didn’t really give much context or information so posted again to give more substance. My first post on HN and I didn’t do the best job.
Thinking about this some more, I would have to agree with the other commenter, as a solo freelancer, I didn't have too many clients at once that necessitated having multiple invoices in flight at a time, I had an invoice template that I simply changed for each new invoice I needed to issue. They paid via direct bank transfer so I never needed to mess around with payment fees. I originally was going to use Stripe but paying 1% per invoice? Yeah, not gonna happen, just to send them an email or PDF.
Perhaps this makes more sense for designers who might work on many projects at once. I believe the founder of designjoy is one such type of person, he makes 1 million a year by himself due to the number of clients he has.
Something else you might look at is someone who does website design for companies with a subscription maintenance fee. If they have 10+ sites, it might be hard to get everyone to pay on time, but then again, they might already know how to set up Stripe themselves. However, for those who don't or want one unified platform, your application might fit that need.
In short, look for people who have many multiple clients at a time rather than software freelancers who might usually only have a handful at a time. A good distinction might be billable hours based freelancers vs project based ones.
Also, definitely make this a paid app from the start with perhaps a free tier or trial, don't start off fully free as it will be a major headache to convince free users to switch to paid. I know that struggle.
You make a really good point about solo freelancers often managing just a few clients and not needing a complex invoicing system. It’s something I’ve heard echoed by others as well. Targeting designers or freelancers with a high volume of clients makes sense and is something I've had in the back of my mind.
Having these discussions in a more designer-oriented forum would be very beneficial.
And yes, the founder of Designjoy is an absolute legend! It’s incredible how he’s scaled his business as a one-person powerhouse. (I've even considered a development approach to this as well).
As for the subscription model, I completely agree with you; it’s a tricky decision for many startups. I’ve decided to steer clear of a completely free plan as well. Instead, I’m focusing on offering a short free trial to help users see the benefits before committing. I genuinely believe the platform adds real value and holds up against some of the more established companies, so a free plan isn’t on my radar.
Out of curiosity, are there other pain points that you've had in the past with invoicing, even with a lower number of clients?
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