Beta of "a startup" I'm working on: Billable. Easy invoicing.

http://billable.co.za

by pistoriusp • 16 years ago

55 46 16 years ago

billable.co.za

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

I've still got a ton to implement; but I would love some feedback!

dotcoma2• 16 years ago

I would appreciate if I could also change the words INVOICE, Invoice #, Date, Item, Description etc. - you know, it would be useful for those of us living in non English-speaking countries :)

tomjen3• 16 years ago

You can already do that now.

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

I've added it to my list.

shaddi• 16 years ago

A proper date picker for the date field would be good. Also, it took me a second to figure out you could edit the whole thing (if it hadn't been a Tell HN type thing, I would have bounced).

I like this idea, and the interface. Lots to do obviously but a cool start.

bartman• 16 years ago

Having 1 item with a price tag of $10.50 will display a total of $10.5. I'd have expected $10.50 :)

tyweir2• 16 years ago

Further, 21 items that cost $55.1 total $1157.1000000000001

colkassad• 16 years ago

This is nice. I really like how easy it is to just bust out an invoice. I'm using google docs for my sidework and it's somewhat of a pain. However, it's offset by ease of access, storage and retrieval.

Some obvious suggestions: pdf/doc exporting and emailing, maybe an option to send to google docs for storage (and/or store them on your end through some kind of account service).

Keyframe• 16 years ago

Just some comments on what would it take to be usable, for me at least:

- two boxes, one with my company info (address, act. info etc) and same for the company that gets the invoice - I see INVOICE text is editable - great, because I don't send out invoices unless they are paid, instead companies get "proposal" or "offer", and same stuff but with "invoice" when paid. This is due to tax - Tax box that calculates on total amount

- Amount due -> Total amount

- Shipping and handling - it can be as an item though

- Item and description can be one box

- custom logo image - this is mostly due to formatting. Large BILLABLE and box right to it can be both for "my company" info and other company info. Box that is below BILLABLE could be committed or re-purposed for notes. INVOICE header can be a bit higher with information for: INVOICE (or OFFER/PROPOSAL, brief company info and logo)

- save as pdf

here is an older real invoice I distributed out (note it's in croatian though, but you should get an idea): http://www.vga.hr/temp/old_temp.pdf My newer ones are more leaner.

adziki• 16 years ago

it seems like a nice sub-component of a larger CRM website. Would your startup offer any further functions for a small business?

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

Yeah, we want to do a ton of apps in a similar fashion. Supremely focused on getting things done in the simplest way.

MJR• 16 years ago

How would this be different than any of the other online invoicing apps out there?

...Freshbooks, Invoice Machine, Less Accounting, Billing Orchard, CashBoard, BlinkSale, Bill My Clients, Harvest, Invoices Made Easy, Simply Bill, Simply Invoices... There are a lot of options in this space.

mburney• 16 years ago

I have tried a couple of those and they had too many features for me -- overcomplicated.

laktek• 16 years ago

Try CurdBee(http://curdbee.com), if you want simple, but not a toy invoicing solution ;)

J-L• 16 years ago

add computation of U.S. sales tax/GB VAT/DE Umsatzsteuer/...

delano2• 16 years ago

I like that everything is on the first page. Is it going to stay that way?

proexploit• 16 years ago

I love this idea. With everything on the front page, immediately usable, it would be my first choice for invoicing. If you add required user accounts and a huge site around it, I've got no reason to switch (optional user accounts obviously wouldn't bother me and I think some people would want them).

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

Once I've got the PDF generation done I'll work on this next.

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

Yup, it won't change. I just need to figure out how to tell folks that they can edit in place.

delano2• 16 years ago

You could put the blinking caret in price field.

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

First thing I notice is that your site remind me of this demo that Chris Coyer published on his website: http://css-tricks.com/examples/EditableInvoice/

What would your app offer beside a single editable page?

WalkerWilliams• 16 years ago

Chris actually has some interesting elements there that you should consider - terms etc. are important to a lot of independent contractors.

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

Yup, absolutely his idea inspired me. It was the single creative element that made me realise that I can make invoicing a bit better than the other folks.

Besides a history and autocompletion... I can't think of anything else to improve this app.

grigory• 16 years ago

Are you planning on adding PDF export? Or, at least, something like "email this invoice"? I don't interact with my clients in person, so just the ability to print an invoice is clearly not enough to make me use your app.

marksands07• 16 years ago

http://billmebob.com/ has been around for a while and seems to work fine for me. You need to find and implement a reason for me to switch, but I like what you have so far!

charlesdm• 16 years ago

Looks clean. What is the reason you went with a .co.za domain?

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

I'm a South African.

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

Just to expand on this a bit - The South African webspace is a not very interesting and maybe a bit dead; we have a few gems and I would like to add my own voice to that.

Also... I'm looking for very rich South African clients :)

punnned• 16 years ago

Great Idea.

I actually needed something like this a while ago. started using intuit's Billing Manager.

Suggestions: Tax options, custom logo, and pdf generation. Also predictive text on previously used line items stored in cache might be handy.

admorphit• 16 years ago

Awesome instant interaction - though for me to switch, I'd still want an account so I needn't fill out the generic info each time.

ElbertF• 16 years ago

It would be nice if it could remember my changes (company name, address). Perhaps save them and provide or short URL or update URL in real time (/#field=value&field2=value2) so it's bookmarkable. Being able to add custom fields to the top would be good too (client number for instance).

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

I'm using local storage; when you leave the page it should remember all that information - As soon as I've got the user accounts down I'll make it happen.

count• 16 years ago

The first time a visitor shows up on the site, maybe have a box hanging over the middle (light-box style - darken the content of the page), explaining you can just edit in place, no accounts, etc.

It feels...weird to be able to do all that without logging in, especially for this kind of data/form.

smysore• 16 years ago

what is the longer term vision for the product? what's the next feature that you're planning?

dpatru• 16 years ago

So how will you make money from this site?

pistoriusp12• 16 years ago

I'm not sure yet. I was thinking of maintaining it at as free service to provide advertising for my pay for products and any other products that I launch in the future.

jmcnevin• 16 years ago

There was an OS X app that does something similar to this called Billable, but they recently renamed the app Profit Train. Not sure if that's something that should be on your radar or not as you move forward.

furyg3• 16 years ago

There is very nice piece of mac software which does what you're doing... and unfortunately has the same name :(

Beta of "a startup" I'm working on: Billable. Easy invoicing.

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