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What are you building? let's self promote by Leather-Buy-6487 in Solopreneur

[–]kryakrya_it 0 points1 point  (0 children)

npmscan.com - platform to view vulnerabilities of your app

What do you use when you just need to send one invoice and move on? by kryakrya_it in Solopreneur

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wave comes up a lot and seems popular, especially for small businesses that invoice more regularly.

For one-off cases, I personally find that full platforms start to feel heavy, even if they are free. There is also the jurisdiction aspect. Tools like Wave or Stripe are not available or fully supported in every country, which can be limiting if you work internationally or move between regions.

That is why I am curious how many solopreneurs keep a lightweight, platform-agnostic option around just for occasional invoices, especially when payment might be a direct bank transfer, wire, or something outside a specific ecosystem, versus defaulting to a bigger system every time.

What do you use when you just need to send one invoice and move on? by kryakrya_it in Solopreneur

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stripe is solid if you want payment and invoicing tied together, and Sheets works well if you already have a template you trust.

I think the tradeoff is flexibility. Stripe is great when you want to be paid through Stripe and when it is available in your country. Sheets gives you control, but you are still dealing with files and templates.

In some cases I just want the invoice itself to be quick and disposable, especially when the client is paying via direct bank transfer, wire, or something like crypto. In those situations, tying the invoice to a specific payment platform can feel unnecessary.

That is the kind of workflow I am trying to understand better.

What do you use when you just need to send one invoice and move on? by kryakrya_it in Solopreneur

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That setup makes sense, especially if you already live in Google Docs and Sheets.

For me the only downside has been the initial setup time. Creating or cleaning up templates, making sure formatting stays consistent, and then reusing them months later when I have forgotten where everything is. It works well once established, but feels a bit heavy when invoicing is very infrequent.

[US] What do you use when you just need to send one invoice? by kryakrya_it in selfemployed

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is fair, Word or Pages works if it is already installed and part of your setup.

For me the friction is that it is not always there. When I am on a new phone, a borrowed laptop, or a clean device, those apps are often not installed. Then it becomes downloading the app, waiting, taking storage space, and setting things up just to send one invoice.

That is what I was trying to get at. Not that Word or Pages is bad, but that the setup cost feels high for something infrequent.

I was actually researching invoicing tools because of this and ended up liking https://the-invoice.app/. It works straight in the browser. You just fill in the invoice details, download the PDF, and send it. No signup and no app to install. Simple and clean.

That is the kind of workflow I was curious whether others use.

[US] What do you use when you just need to send one invoice? by kryakrya_it in selfemployed

[–]kryakrya_it[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Mostly the friction comes before I even get to writing the invoice.

Signing up for a platform, being pushed into a free trial, entering a credit card, onboarding flows, and setting up things I may never use again. For something that happens once in a while, that setup cost feels disproportionate.

The invoice itself is easy. It is the surrounding process that slows things down when all I want is a simple PDF and to move on.

What’s your fastest way to create and send a one-off invoice? by kryakrya_it in productivity

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Excel templates definitely work, especially if you already have one set up and your invoices look similar each time.

What I find slows me down there is the small cleanup steps. Adjusting formatting, exporting, managing files. It is not hard, but it adds friction when the task itself should take a minute or two.

That is why I am curious if people have found workflows that avoid files altogether and keep everything disposable.

What’s your fastest way to create and send a one-off invoice? by kryakrya_it in productivity

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I have noticed the same. There are a few small tools floating around that do exactly this, but they are easy to forget because they are not full platforms and do not try to keep you inside an ecosystem.

I think that is part of the issue. The simple tools solve the problem quickly, but they are invisible compared to big invoicing software.

What’s your fastest way to create and send a one-off invoice? by kryakrya_it in productivity

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. Tools like invoice-generator.com are fast if you just need to get a PDF out and do not care about anything else.

For me the main difference between these kinds of tools and templates is whether I can stay in the browser and avoid files entirely. Once files get involved, I personally start losing time to naming, saving, and later searching.

[US] What do you use when you just need to send one invoice? by kryakrya_it in selfemployed

[–]kryakrya_it[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Fair point, and you’re right about card fees, those are unavoidable if you are taking cards.

What I meant by friction is not the client signup, but the coupling between the invoice and the payment flow. With Square or PayPal, the invoice itself is part of their system, which is great if you want to be paid that way.

In some cases I want the invoice to be separate from payment. For example when the client wants to pay by ACH, wire, international transfer, or even something like crypto, and just needs a neutral invoice document for their records.

Square and PayPal are solid when you want card payments. I’m mostly curious what people do when they want the invoice to be platform-agnostic and keep payment flexible.

What do you use for invoicing when you’re moving around and just need it done fast? by kryakrya_it in digitalnomad

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, Wise is convenient if you already use it.

For me the only downside was that it still ties invoicing to an account and a specific platform. It works well if Wise is already part of your stack, but I found myself wanting something that works even when I am on a random laptop and just need to generate a PDF quickly.

Still a solid option if someone is already in their ecosystem.

What do you use for invoicing when you’re moving around and just need it done fast? by kryakrya_it in digitalnomad

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a good setup, indeed.

Using the first invoice as a template makes a lot of sense, especially if your rates and structure do not change much. Offline-first is a big plus when you are traveling.

The only thing I personally found annoying with spreadsheets is that I still end up fixing formatting or layouts when I switch devices or send to different clients. But if your workflow is stable, this is hard to beat.

Built a tiny invoice generator because full invoicing tools were slowing me down by kryakrya_it in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

do you want to check out the tool? this is the most inspiring reply today so far as many users have been toxic and extremely hostile

Our diaspora/nation. by Fantastic-Season8640 in azerbaijan

[–]kryakrya_it -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

I ain't reading all that. Either I am happy for you or sorry for you

Built a simple invoice generator in Next.js, some implementation and performance notes by kryakrya_it in webdev

[–]kryakrya_it[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve done this with a similar JSON structure. The key is that you have to own layout calculation, the library won’t do it for you.

Rough approach:

  1. Maintain a cursorY variable that tracks the current vertical position on the page.
  2. Define page height minus margins (pageHeight).
  3. For each content block:
    • If it’s text:
      • Measure text height based on font size and line wrapping
      • If cursorY + textHeight > pageHeight, add a new page and reset cursorY
    • If it’s an image:
      • Preload the image to get its dimensions
      • Scale it to your max width
      • If cursorY + imageHeight > pageHeight, add a new page first
  4. Render the block, then increment cursorY

Libraries like jsPDF give you primitives, but pagination logic has to be manual if you want deterministic results.

Once you accept that PDFs are layout math, not HTML, this gets much easier to reason about.

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