I needed invoicing software, but everything I could find was bloated, so I built it myself.

This blog post is about the design values of Invio and the process of going from concept to project.

This project idea arose to me while I was on holiday, and came from my need for invoicing software because of my pc flipping hobby. At first this was not even a project idea just a need, so I went looking for existing invoicing software that would fit my needs, the problem was that they all fitted my needs but also stretched far beyond my needs, I personally couldn’t find invoicing software aimed at freelancers and small businesses, they all tried to be everything at once. I didn’t need all that functionality, so I wanted to build my own solution

After that I moved on to the brainstorming phase, what should my app be capable of, and maybe more importantly what should it not. I figured this out by defining my target audience, in this case that is freelancers and small companies, I chose this target because firstly I personally fall within it, and secondly I couldn’t really find any existing solutions for this. So after having defined who my app was for I moved onto deciding my core values.

“Less is more” - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

For this app I wanted the main focus to be on making invoices nothing more, nothing less. The app should be able to do anything you need but nothing more, it for example shouldn’t be a CRM, inventory management solution, time tracking or anything like that. Just invoices.

Another thing I wanted to avoid with this project is SaaS, I’m sure there are already paid invoicing apps out there with the same ethos, but I wanted to provide that free and for everyone, I don’t like paywalls, I don’t like arbitrary limits, I don’t like upselling, I don’t like it when human psychology is used against us to spend more.

After coming up with these core values I moved on to figuring out what I moved onto how, what tech stack was I going to choose, how should the backend be mapped out etc. For the tech stack I chose Deno + Hono + Fresh, I chose this because I wanted a modern tech stack but also one that I could easily learn.

You can check out the project here Invio

That’s all, thanks for reading!