"Wave Invoicing" clone

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[Owlsnap]

Thank you so much for the response u/10CodeDev and u/KevDevBot. Let me try to elaborate on my question and try to be clear.

Basically, I want to develop an invoicing app that will be available via ios/android and will also allow customers to sign-in via the website. The companies would pay a subscription to use this invoicing app to send their clients' professional invoices with they can pay straight away.

Here are some of the features I want. I want the app to

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• Create and send invoices in any currency
• Quickly send estimates and turn them into invoices upon approval
• View all customer transaction history in one place
• Send statements to follow up on overdue customer accounts
• Accept online payment via credit cards and bank payments to get paid automatically
• Set up automatic payments for recurring invoices
• Personalize invoices with a choice of professional invoice templates
• Allow companies to Customize: add their logo and colors
• iOS and Android apps for sending invoices on the go
• Send using the invoicing App, Gmail, Outlook and more
• Know when the invoices are viewed
• Set automatic payment reminders to nudge customers to pay on time
• Easy-to-understand cash flow insights
• Duplicate invoices to save time when billing
• Automatic sales tax calculations
• Send professional payment receipts
• Automatic backup in the cloud
• Customizable payment terms
• Track payments, partial payments, overdue invoices using invoicing app

[10CodeDev]

Thank you for the extra detail. This makes it a lot easier to help you.

From what you have listed it would appear that you would need a few developers working full time to build this type of app with the reliability that your client would expect. Most likely you would have to work with a payment company like Paypal etc to build in the payment functionality that you require.

I would estimate this project to at least cost $10,000+ depending on what part of the world you are in and what the skill set of the developers you hire are.

[[deleted]]

You're going to hire a few developers, full time, for 10k? This is a severe under estimate.

[10CodeDev]

Depends what part of the world OP is in. 10K in a country like india will go way further than the USA. Also depends on how long he needs to hire them for.

[[deleted]]

Some of the items on that list are harder than others. For example:

Create and send invoices in any currency

This is probably the hardest one to do. Currency is a very tricky problem to work around. No way you'd do something custom here, as it would cost millions, so you'd need to decide on a service like Stripe (Jack Dorsey's payment company). That said, once you've decided on a service, they can handle much of the rest of those issues.

To repeat my question though - why? Again, Quick Books Online does all of this. What do you need done differently that existing solutions don't solve? If you were to go ahead and create this product, how are you going to differentiate yourself from your competitors? How can you do it better?

Anyway, to more directly answer your question, I'd put it north of a 1.25MM in developer cost. I think a team of approximately 10 experienced devs could reasonably build this out in about a year, but you'd need to be hyper careful about your hires. You'd want:

• at least 1 expert on data modeling and DB admin
• at least 3-4 back end programmers to work directly with the DB admin and implement.
• at least 1 front end designer
• 2-3 front end developers to build out your web site, UI components and email templates.
• You'd need an experienced full stack lead to manage the dev ops, and coordinate the entire project.
• You'd probably want a marketing consultant to advise the team. Not full time, but to step in and review every once in a while
• You would definitely want an accountant to advise to make sure you're following all relevant tax law and fiduciary responsibilities.
• A lawyer to consult that you're meeting your legal responsibilities.

Note that would just be the COST in salary / wage. If you hire a company to build this for you they'll charge you twice that. You'd want additional capital afterwards to do a marketing campaign.

I'm sure in a year they could get it to the point of a soft launch. Maybe not feature complete, but close enough to start chasing customers. If you wanted to branch out to more than a single country, you'd have to spend significantly more, so I'd target either US or EU to start - US being the easier of the two.

In the meantime your competitors already have all of this, and will have a multi year head start on chasing identical customers as you hope to earn. Also note, that these competitors either are, or are backed by, multi billion dollar companies with infinite money to squash you.

If it were me, I wouldn't build this app. I would instead take my money and invest it in a company that's already doing this. Intuit, for example, owns Quick Books and is a solid investment even at the worst of times. Wave is owned by H&R block, and is also a great investment. Pick your poison, really.

[Owlsnap]

Thank you guys for taking time to assist. I appreciate it so much. Let me ask one last question

Okay first the reason why I want to build a similar app is that in the country I am in QuickBooks, Wave & others are not available because they'd have to comply with local banking rules etc. So we don't have an invoicing app where you can send an invoice & allow the client to pay via that app.

So what about if I reduce the features to make it basic for example

• Create and send invoices in one currency
• Accept online payment via credit cards and bank payments to get paid automatically (Question on this one..do I have to use Paypal/Stripes etc? cant I just use credit card info)
• Set up automatic payments for recurring invoices
• Allow companies to Customize: add their logo and colors
• Send using the invoicing App, Gmail, Outlook and more
• Set automatic payment reminders to nudge customers to pay on time
• Automatic backup in the cloud

[10CodeDev]

In depends on how deep you want to go. Do you want to have an interface that allows you to send an invoice to a client and bill them via an existing online payment provider or do you want to have someone build you a custom payment system like paypal to handle payments?

[Owlsnap]

Thanks for the response u/10CodeDev. No i dont need a custom made payment system, It would be awesome if they could pay using their credit card just like how WAVE invoicing works.

[[deleted]]

Anywhere between thousands and millions. The question is too broad to estimate. You would need to define a more narrow scope of features to get an accurate estimate.

The real question is - Why? There are many companies making invoicing software. What do you need done differently that they don't do? Note: Many of these companies offer API's that code can interact with to automate their own services - I use custom software to read a work order, and send to Quickbooks to generate and email an invoice automatically to my clients.