Show HN: I made it easy to create invoices

- I worry about businesses with a "pay once" model as your costs are recurring. Even if the costs are low you will need a constant flow of new sign ups just to break even. You can't ever have a stable user base that ensures the service longevity. You could have a million happy users but if there are no new sign ups then the service is at risk of closing as it's losing money. I prefer an adequate free tier and then low monthly or annual costs for power users who want more features.

- I wonder about the use case and that may limit the potential customer base. It looks like your target audience is those wanting to send a one off invoice or a handful or less manual invoices a year and have a separate accounting system that does not send invoices. I worked for a few years developing invoicing applications and the actual generation of the invoice is the easy bit. What's necessary for even a small business is the accounting, integration to other systems, tracking, reporting, reminders, payment handling, etc... In some countries it is necessary for all invoices to be electronically reported to tax authorities. A lot of small businesses or self-employed people already have highly featured accounting software that includes invoicing. So your target market for perpetual new signs (see first point) seems rather small.

Sorry if this is all rather negative. Products pivot over time and and I think you in the future you shouldn't be too committed to the pay once model as your main selling point. Perhaps cheap & simple is good enough. And good luck!

An "invoice generator" is an age-old and still pertinent inside joke in shareware circles.

Whenever someone new surfaces and says "I had enough, I want to write something of me own, I'm ready! Give me some ideas!", the answer to that is "do an invoice generator". It's a technically simple project that looks viable on the surface, but is ridiculously hard to market and monetize. It's a trap basically.

If I used your service, i wanted it to stay around and paying one time doesn't give you incentive to keep it up.

Better model:

$35 a year - which renews for free unless you hit a certain invoice amount (for example, if you invoice more that $35000, you'll have to pay again.)

Add a free trial, the first $3500 invoiced are free as a test and you have a valid offering. And you can do unlimited, watermarked tests.

Finally, consider data protection: You need to exactly explain what data you store and that - as a paying customer - I can selectively delete it.

Creating an invoice is very easy. You can more or less reuse another invoice and replicate it in Word or Excel, just replacing the information with your own and your customers.

The added value would come from integration with bookkeeping, but I see nothing about that in the linked page.

Overall, without conforming to the relevant legal framework, there is a risk of exposing both your operations and your clients, who may trust your invoicing software, to potential issues and non-compliance.

If you serve the U.S., then you need to calculate all the different sales taxes for each state. If you serve the E.U., you need to create PDF with included standardized XML soon. Don't know about other continents.

I think invoices are not about quick and pretty anymore, but there is a lot more to consider. You should make it clear what you provide and for which target customer.

I am interested, the single payment is a big plus.

Then however, the only sign-in option being google is somewhat of a turn-off for me. For a paid service, I would want to login with my own email. I am clicking away.

Back on the homepage I ask myself: Why is there no picture/pdf of an actual invoice? I only see some part of the UI.

Consider making it possible to test the tool without signing up.

Is this for use in the US? Have you looked into electronic invoicing formats which are increasingly used/required in the EU ... I am curious if there is a similar move on the way in the US.

(As an example here is what the electronic invoicing format looks like in Denmark: https://www.oioubl.info/downloads/OIOUBL_Bekendtgørelse.pdf (scroll a bit past the Danish mumble to see the structure of the XML-documents interchanged.))

OP: there could be a better middle ground - you could still offer a one-time payment, and optional subscriptions to newer versions (eg. conformity to newer regulations).

https://finance.belgium.be/en/enterprises/vat/e-invoicing/ma...

Might be nice if the last 3 words of that sentence were hyperlinked. (I know the ToS is linked at the bottom of the page, but still).

Also I'm not clear if the $35 payment truly is one-time, for access forever? If so, how will you continue to fund this once user growth levels off?

Your location matters when deciding whom to entrust with daily business minutiae and the fact there's not a single bit of info there currently implies you have something to hide.

Also, from your Terms of Service:

>If you have any questions about these Terms of Service, please contact us at support@example.com.

This makes it look like you have just been using a pre-made template (or even software?) to launch your SaaS.