The invoicing app I built because I was tired of losing money to card fees
Three years ago, I watched a mate charge £500 to fit a new boiler. His invoice app took £12.50 in card fees. He got £487.50. I remember him saying, 'That's half a cup of coffee I'll never have.' It stuck with me. Last month, one of our Invoicr users sent an invoice for the same amount and paid £4 in costs instead. The difference isn't just maths. It's the difference between profit and just scraping by.
Bank-to-bank was obvious. Everyone else missed it.
When we started building, we looked at what UK sole traders actually needed. Not what tech companies thought they needed. Not what worked in San Francisco.
Card payment processors take 1.5% to 2.5% on every transaction. For a £500 invoice, that's £7.50 to £12.50 gone before you've even paid tax. I built Invoicr around UK open banking instead. It's the same technology your bank uses when you check your balance on your phone. Bank-to-bank payments cost us a fraction of that, so we charge you a flat fee. Around £4 on £500. That's it.
The first time a customer used it, they messaged us: 'Did that really just work?' Yes. It really did.
The people who need this most are the people everyone forgets
Invoicr exists for plumbers, electricians, gardeners, cleaners, mobile mechanics, tilers, decorators, and handymen. The people who fix your boiler at 7am. The electrician who rewires your kitchen. The plasterer who shows up on a Saturday.
These are the tradespeople who run their entire business from a van or a toolbelt. They don't have a finance department. They don't have time for spreadsheets. Most of them don't even want to think about invoicing, let alone spend £20 a month on a subscription they barely use.
That's why we made the Free tier genuinely free. Five invoices a month, three customers, bank-to-bank payments included. If that's all you need, you pay nothing. Not nothing with a card processor percentage attached. Nothing.
Mobile-first means it actually works in a van
I designed Invoicr for iOS from the ground up. Not desktop-first with a mobile version bolted on. I wanted an app that works when you're standing in someone's kitchen with a muddy boot on and a customer asking, 'Can you send me an invoice?'
You hit create. You type the amount. You add a photo if you need to. You send it via WhatsApp if you're on Pro. The customer gets a secure link, clicks it, and pays you bank-to-bank from their phone. The money lands in your account. No fees eating the margin. No waiting three days to know if they've paid.
We've had users tell us they invoice jobs while standing on site and have payment cleared before they finish their tea. That's not flashy. That's just useful.
VAT and CIS aren't afterthoughts; they're built in
UK tradespeople live in a different tax world than freelancers elsewhere. If you're in construction and covered by the Construction Industry Scheme, you need to track what portion of your invoices get deducted at source. If you're VAT-registered, you need proper receipts and returns.
Most invoicing apps treat this like an optional extra. We built it into the core. On the Business plan, you get VAT and CIS compliance built in. You also get accountant export. I've heard from enough bookkeepers to know that when an accountant can pull your data directly instead of asking for screenshots, everyone's life gets better.
One user told us he'd spent two hours every month sorting invoices before submitting them to his accountant. Now he hits export once and sends it over. Two hours back every month. For some people, that's the whole point of paying for software.
The conversation that changed how we think about reminders
Early on, someone asked if we'd send automatic payment reminders. We thought that was a nice-to-have feature. Then a customer (a decorator with a 20-person workload) said, 'I don't want aggressive chasing. I just want to know which invoices haven't been paid and send a friendly nudge at the right time.'
That's what we built into Pro. Automated reminders that go out at intervals you choose. No shame. No pressure. Just a gentle, 'Hey, we sent this over, wanted to make sure you got it.' Turns out that simple approach catches most of the invoices that would've slipped through the cracks.
The same philosophy runs through everything. We're not trying to be fancy. We're trying to solve the actual problem.
What we're not trying to be
Invoicr isn't an enterprise accounting suite. If you need invoicing plus payroll plus expense tracking plus project management plus your mum's phone number, this isn't it. Go to one of the massive platforms.
We're also not trying to be Stripe. We're not card-processor adjacent. We're the thing that sidesteps card processors entirely. Bank-to-bank is the whole point.
And we're not chasing people's debts for them. Automated reminders help, but at some point, if someone won't pay, that's a conversation you have or a choice you make. We're just here to make invoicing fast and cheap.
Three years on, we've got users in every corner of the UK trades. The numbers speak for themselves. But what keeps coming back to me is that message: 'Did that really just work?' Maybe your question is different. Maybe it's whether an app built specifically for plumbers and electricians and cleaners will actually get your invoicing right.