Invoicing
Invoicing is the workflow most people automate last, because it feels like the one that needs a human. It does, for two decisions: what to charge and when to send. Everything else is gathering, numbering and filing, and that can be handed to an assistant without losing control. This page shows the job as we used to do it, the same job with an assistant in it, and the parts we used.
How we built ours
The invoice is a row before it is a PDF. Once that's true, month end is a check, not a job.
How we used to do it
- At the end of the month we'd go back through emails, the calendar and what had shipped, and work out what each client had actually had.
- Decide what to bill and at what price.
- Find last month's invoice, copy it, change the client, the dates and the lines, and give it the next number.
- Save the PDF and send it.
- Keep a list of who owed what, and check it when money landed.
Half a day, once a month, and the list was always slightly wrong.
What changed
We still set the price and we still press send. Everything either side of that stopped being ours.
How we do it now
- At month end the assistant reads the board and lists, per client, what was done and not yet billed.
- We set the prices.
- It takes the next number, fills the one template and shows us the whole draft.
- We say yes. It saves the PDF, records the invoice as a row marked unpaid, and updates the client's page.
- We send it. When it's paid we tell it the date and the row closes. What's owed is the sum of the open rows, always.
Twenty minutes, and the list can't be wrong because it isn't a list, it's the rows.
The parts
One table that every piece of work is already written to, so "what did this client have" is a query, not a memory. One invoice template. One assistant with two skills: prepare, which reads the table and drafts, and issue, which numbers, saves and records. And one design choice that makes it safe to hand over: it drafts, we approve, it never sends.
What it took us
Nothing new on the data side: the work was already being written to one table, so the invoice reads from it. The template was an afternoon. The two skills were written in plain English, the same way this page is, and have issued every invoice since.