Review HN: BillMeBob.com - Generate free invoices with no signup | Hacker News Reader

Review HN: BillMeBob.com - Generate free invoices with no signup

billmebob.com

28 pointsSingAlong25 comments

Very cool! Invoicing is a terrible (and least interesting) part of freelancing and consulting. This looks like a great MVP. I especially like that when I print it out, that there's no big "billmebob" logo at the top there.

I think it would be fair to put a self-promotional link/tagline at the very bottom of the page though.

Also, allowing me to email directly from the page would probably be nice. At the very least, just do a mailto: link with the subject and body filled in for me to just hit "send" :)

Awesome MVP, definitely keep us up to date on the iterations!

Yeah, this is awesome. Everything I need and nothing I don't. If you allowed me to upload my company's logo for each invoice, that'd be even better.

I do freelance from time to time, but not enough to justify spending any money on an online invoicing service. This does exactly what I want without having to have an account.

Bookmarked, great job!

Thanks to sgrove.

I would never have launched this app. I was a lazy bum who took his own sweet time (2 weeks) to finally add the print button and launch the next day when you told me to :)

Thank you once again sean - without whom this app would have died as a rails3 tryout app in my netbook.

Nice MVP.

I second the email option. Ideally I would be able to send the invoice to my client and myself (for my records).

I would have a preview of what the invoice would look like before making me fill out everything. If the formatting is not what I am looking for, I wouldn't want to spend the time filling out the form.

I tried it. Don't waste your time.

It’s certainly not world class but its still not the worst I’ve seen around here. Give the guy some constructive critique, give him a chance.

And what have you done that is so great?

Very clean, and simple = Time Saver (as opposed to InDesign etc). I'm glad you launched this app, and from one who has studied SaaS - it's a great business model. Kudos. I must agree, the simplicity is something I value. I will refer this to my friends. Keep up the good work, SA.

I used to do freelance web development work and invoicing was always such a pain. You either roll your own, use a paid system, or something totally bloated like quickbooks. This is great for individuals doing short projects. Great MVP. hope you pick up some adoption.

Looks nice. One suggestion, when you change from products to services, it could change the quantity to hours and per unit to per hour as a default?

Great, super easy to use. Liked it a lot. couple of suggestions:

1. White labeling - Let me get rid of the logo at the top and replace it with my own. Similar on the domain, maybe something like my_company.billmebob.com. Maybe these are things you could charge for.

2. Sign in - let me sign up after the first one and have it remember things like my company name, address, and maybe even companies I've billed before (I'm likely to do it again and don't want to repeat entering that all the time). Possibly something else you could charge for.

3. Recurring invoices - email the same invoice every month/week/etc. automatically. Probably need some kind of user account for that.

Here are two ideas that could be interesting, while keeping the product bloat-free: - Add an option to print the invoice in another language; - Add a link to a PDF version (although I could "print to PDF" if I weren't lazy).

I'll bookmark it for sure, though I am waiting for the French version of the invoices. I've had such an idea a while ago but never really went forward with it, you beat me at it ;) By the way, I love the name!

I really appreciate the simplicity. Please keep it simple. Don't listen to all the naysayers who want X,Y,Z feature. You'll end up alienating the users who actually enjoy your product.

Thanks, I will actually be using this.

That's excellent!

If you take fields for the google checkout and paypal links it would be better. If it also generated a emailable letter which could be copy pasted into an email it would be fantastic.

You also should point out what you use the data for.

I know I'd be hesitant to type my customers' addresses into such a system.

Thank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions.

The data will be used for nothing except displaying your invoice. Also, i made the urls look dirty with those random characters instead of letting people choose shorturls to keep invoice details private. There's no/will be no page anytime that would list the invoices. So they are all safe.

P.S: pdf and mailing option coming in the next few hours.

Another tack is a "don't take it off the page" javascript thing that generates the invoice without ever submitting the address to the server.

I think that the interface is very nice.

Re. privacy, it may be a good idea to disallow invoice URLs in robots.txt, using a common pattern or subdirectory.

Although simple, I do think you could use a little more design. I'm not talking about eye candy graphics. Just some CSS touch-ups would do.

A minor usability point. If you hover over an X on the left, your cursor should change to a hand. Site looks good.

It looks like an ugly version of the original Invoice Machine (which also offered free invoices without signup).

Great little MVP.

Any way of keeping track of invoice numbers? Will require a login or maybe just cookies.

would appreciate your thoughts on Invoice Bubble which is my app. It's not free, but it does have SSL security, PDF attaching, client management and stuff like that - but really simple and only $5. https://invoicebubble.com

Nice - I was expecting it to be US-centric in terms of currency or something, but it's not. Thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com