Invoicing for freelancers who bill by the hour

Turn your notes into an invoice your client can read.

Paste the notes you kept, a time-tracker export or a git log, then enter your hours and your rate. It writes up each piece of work in plain language and emails your client a PDF with your payment links on it.

Start free See a sample invoice

Free plan: 3 drafted invoices a month. No card.

Reads: Your notes, a time-tracker export, or a repo’s commit history.
You set: The hours, the rate and the dates.
Client gets: An email with a PDF invoice and your payment links.
Price: Free for 3 drafted invoices a month. Pro is $12.

A designer's week

Your notesExample Coffee Co. rebrand

Invoice INV-4HT8WQ2Nto Example Coffee Co.Draft

- mon 11/2 - kickoff w/ Dana, went thru old menu + signage
Nov 2Kickoff call and review of the existing menu and signage1.5 h$127.50
- tue - 3 logo directions, rough
Nov 3Three logo directions sketched for review4 h$340.00
- wed - Dana picked #2. refined it, built palette
Nov 4Refined the chosen logo and built the color palette3.5 h$297.50
- thu - menu layout
- thu pm - 2 rounds of changes on menu
Nov 5Laid out the new menu, with two rounds of changes4 h$340.00
- fri - exports, brand sheet
Nov 6Exported the final files and wrote a one-page brand sheet2 h$170.00

You enter

HoursRate

15 h × $85.00$1,275.00

Fig. 01 · A sample week: six notes in, five invoice lines outChange the hours or the rate

From what you jotted down to a sent invoice

You already wrote down what you did, somewhere: a notes app, a time tracker, a commit log. What's left is turning that into something a client will pay without writing back to ask what it was for.

01 / 03
Give it your record of the work
Paste your notes or upload the file. A time-tracker export goes in the same box, and so does a git log. The app says what it read before you go any further, so there are no surprises in the draft.
Getting started
```
Date,Duration,Description,Billable
2026-11-02,1:30,Kickoff call,Yes
2026-11-03,3:00,Stakeholder interviews,Yes
2026-11-03,0:45,Interview notes,Yes
2026-11-04,2:15,Process map - order intake,Yes
2026-11-05,2:00,Findings deck,Yes
2026-11-06,1:00,Readout w/ ops team,Yes
2026-11-06,0:30,Bookkeeping,No
```
Read as a time export: 6 entries, 6 within the dates above, 10.5 hours tracked. 1 entry marked not billable left out.
Fig. 02 · A pasted time-tracker export, and what the app says it read
02 / 03
Enter the hours and the rate
The hours are yours to decide. It doesn't guess them. It divides your total across the work in the range and writes each line the way you'd explain it to the client, not the way you jotted it down.
Client
Example Coffee Co.
Project
Rebrand
Dates
Nov 2 to Nov 8, 2026
Hours
15
Rate
$85 an hour
Lines
One per day, or one per theme of work
Fig. 03 · Everything you enter for a draft
03 / 03
Check it, then send
Nothing goes out until you've read it. Change any line by hand, or ask in the chat beside the draft: “merge the two menu lines”, “move an hour to Friday”. Sending emails the PDF to your client and a copy to you.
From
Your Studio via Invoice
Reply-to
The address you sign in with
To
accounts@example.com
Subject
Invoice INV-4HT8WQ2N from Your Studio — $1,573.00 due November 23, 2026
Attached
The invoice, as a PDF
Fig. 04 · The email your client gets, as the app writes it

Not hoursA flat fee, a per-item charge or an expense goes on the same invoice. The draft writes the hourly lines, and you add the rest before sending.

By handYou can skip the draft and write an invoice line by line. That is free and unlimited. To make one without an account, use the free invoice generator.

What your client receives

An invoice that explains itself

This is the app's own invoice template, filled in with the designer's week from the top of the page, plus a fee and an expense added by hand. Your business name, logo and accent color go where the placeholders are.

Every hourly line has a date and says what was done, so nobody has to write back asking what the hours were for.
A flat fee or an expense sits on the same invoice, on a line of its own.
Your client never needs an account. The invoice arrives as a PDF attached to an email in your business’s name.
They pay you directly, by PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay or your own Stripe link. The money never passes through this app.
When an invoice goes unpaid, sending a reminder is one click.

Fig. 05 · The sample invoice, drawn by the template the app uses

For anyone who bills their time

The product is the same for everyone. What differs is the record you start from and what else goes on the invoice.

Privacy

It gets what you give it, and nothing more.

Notes about client work are often confidential, so this is the part to be exact about. A draft needs to know what you worked on and when. That goes to the AI model to write the lines, and your notes are not kept afterwards.

One caveat: what you paste is sent as written, so leave out anything the invoice has no use for. From a git repository only the commit history is read, never the code. Invoice does not use what you send to train a model.

Read the full security page

Sent to the AI model: The record you provide: your notes, your time entries, or commit details
The project name and the dates
Your hours and your rate
Not kept afterwards: Your notes
Your time-tracker export
Never read: The contents of files in a repository
Diffs

Fig. 06 · What a draft sends, and what it leaves alone

How it compares

Most freelancers invoice hourly work from a template or from a time tracker. Here is how this differs from both, and when one of them is the better choice.

Three ways to invoice hourly work, compared
	A template or spreadsheet	A time tracker with invoicing	Invoice
Line items come from	What you remember, typed in	Timers you run while you work	The record you already keep: notes, a time export or commits
While you work	Nothing to do	Start and stop a timer	Nothing to do
The hours	You add them up	Measured by the timer	You enter the total, and it is divided across the work
What the client reads	Whatever you write	Time entries or task names	A dated line for each piece of work, in plain language
Suits	A few invoices a year	Teams, and anyone who needs measured time	Solo freelancers who bill by the hour

If a template is all you need, there is one here: the free invoice generator makes a PDF from lines you type, with no account.

It's the wrong tool if

You need sales tax or VAT on the invoice, or a currency other than US dollars. Neither is supported yet.
You need measured time. It never tracks time; you tell it the hours.
Several people need to bill from one account. An account is one person.

Who makes it

I built it for my own invoices

I'm Luna. I build web apps and Shopify stores for clients as Blue Nebula, and most of that work is billed by the hour. Every invoice used to start the same way: scrolling through git log to remember what I'd done, then rewriting it in words a client would recognize.

I wrote this to do that part for me, and I send my own client invoices with it. It began with git, because that is where my work is recorded. It now reads notes and time-tracker exports too, so it works for anyone who bills by the hour.

Run by: Blue Nebula, a one-person studio
Support: Email mail@bluenebula.dev. I answer it myself.
Status: The Free plan is open. Pro is priced but not on sale yet.
Audit: No outside security audit yet. The security page says what is and isn't protected.

Free to start, one paid plan

Writing invoices by hand is free and unlimited on both plans. What differs is how much of the drafting is done for you.

Free

$0a month, for good

For the occasional invoice.

AI-drafted invoices: 3 a month
Edit a draft by chat: 10 messages a month
Invoices and reminders emailed: 5 a day
Clients, hand-written invoices and PDFs: Unlimited
Command-line tool: Included
Slack bot: Not included
Remind every unpaid invoice at once: Not included
Emails without the "Sent with Invoice" line: Not included

Start free

Pro · Opens soon

$12a month

For freelancers who bill every week or two.

AI-drafted invoices: 100 a month
Edit a draft by chat: 100 messages a day
Invoices and reminders emailed: 50 a day
Clients, hand-written invoices and PDFs: Unlimited
Command-line tool: Included
Slack bot: Included
Remind every unpaid invoice at once: Included
Emails without the "Sent with Invoice" line: Included

Pro is not on sale yet. The price above is the price it opens at, and every account is on Free until then. Email me when it opens

How the limits work

Free tools, no account needed

Not ready to sign up? These work on their own, and nothing you type into them is sent anywhere.

Common questions

Something else? Email mail@bluenebula.dev.

What is Invoice?

Invoice is an invoicing tool for freelancers who bill by the hour: designers, writers, consultants and developers. You give it a record of the work, which can be your own notes, a time-tracker export or a repository’s commit history, and enter your hours and your rate. It drafts dated line items a client can follow and emails the invoice as a PDF.

What can it draft an invoice from?

Three kinds of record. Notes you paste or upload, in your own words. A CSV export from a time tracker, where the tracked hours are offered as your total and entries marked not billable are left out. Or the commit history of a git repository, through GitHub, the command line or a pasted git log.

How does it decide how many hours to bill?

It doesn’t. You enter the total hours and your rate. The draft divides your total across the work it finds in the date range, and you can change the hours on any line before you send. With a time-tracker export, the tracked total is offered as a starting point.

Do I need a time tracker or a GitHub account?

No. A few lines of notes typed in your own words are enough. A time-tracker export or a GitHub connection only saves the typing.

Can one invoice have hours, a flat fee and an expense?

Yes. Besides hours at a rate, a line can be a flat fee or a per-item charge (a quantity at a price), or an expense passed on at cost. The draft writes the hourly lines; you add the others before sending.

Can I edit the invoice before my client sees it?

Yes. Nothing is sent until you choose Send. You can rewrite any line, change its date, hours or rate, add lines of your own, and take off a deduction as a percentage or a fixed amount. You can also ask for changes in the chat beside the draft.

What does my client receive, and how do they pay?

An email in your business’s name with the invoice attached as a PDF. The invoice lists the ways you take payment: PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay or your own Stripe payment link. Clients pay you directly and never need an account.

What is sent to the AI model, and is it kept?

Drafting is done by Anthropic’s Claude, through Anthropic’s API. A draft request sends the record you provided, the project name, the date range, and your hours and rate. Notes and time exports are used for the draft and are not stored on the server afterwards; the invoice lines written from them are. From a repository, only commit history is read, never file contents. Invoice does not use your data to train a model.

How much does it cost?

The Free plan includes 3 drafted invoices a month, and invoices you write by hand are unlimited. Pro is $12 a month for 100 drafted invoices, the Slack bot, and reminders for every unpaid invoice at once. Pro is not on sale yet, so every account is on Free for now.

Does it handle sales tax, VAT or other currencies?

Not yet. Invoices are in US dollars and have no tax lines. If you need VAT or sales tax shown on the invoice, this is not the right tool today.

Can I make an invoice without creating an account?

Yes. The free invoice generator on this site draws an invoice from lines you type and saves it as a PDF from your browser. It does not write the lines for you, send the invoice or keep track of whether it was paid; an account does those.

Send this week's invoice from this week's notes.

The Free plan covers 3 drafted invoices a month, which is one client billed every two weeks.