Billkeep
Everything it does, in full
Billkeep covers the documents a small business has to produce, the money it is waiting on, and the money it owes. There is a full set of double-entry books underneath — they keep themselves, and the daily screens never mention them, because the people this is for did not sign up to learn bookkeeping.
Four kinds of document, one editor
An invoice, a quote, a credit note and a repeating template are the same screen with different rules behind them. Learn it once.
- Invoices — numbered, dated, frozen when you finish them.
- Quotes — no due date, never counted as money owed, and they turn into an invoice without retyping a line.
- Credit notes — copied from the invoice they cancel and pointed back at its number. The original is never touched.
- Repeating invoices — a template plus a schedule, which produces drafts and only drafts.
Finishing a document freezes it
The client's details, your business details, the tax rates and the payment methods are all copied onto the document at the moment you finish it. Change a rate next year and last year's invoice still says what it said.
Numbers with no gaps
The next number is allocated when you finish, never while drafting. A document that has spent a number can be cancelled but not deleted, because a hole in a numbered sequence is the thing an audit asks about.
A change of mind is allowed
Unlock a finished invoice, correct it and finish it again: it keeps its original number and its original issue date rather than jumping to today's.
| What | How many | How much |
|---|---|---|
| Site visit | 2 | $150.00 |
| Materials | 1 | $412.50 |
Per-line discount and per-line tax live behind the tune control, and open by themselves when the document already carries one.
Three questions, and the rest folds away
Most invoices are a description, a quantity and a price. Everything else Billkeep can do is real, and rare, so it waits behind a control rather than filling the screen for the ninety per cent of documents that never need it.
- Quantities to three decimal places — 1.5 hours is exactly 1.5 hours.
- A discount on a line, or one on the whole invoice, spread back across the lines so the figures still add up.
- Saved items: the things you sell often, pulled onto a line in one tap.
- The totals move as you type and nothing is written down until you save.
Your payment link, printed properly
Billkeep does not process payments, so there is no account to open and no percentage to lose. You bring the link you already use and it goes on the document as something a customer can actually act on.
A link for this one invoice
Payment gateways mint a fresh link per sale with the amount already in it, so each invoice can carry its own. It prints first, ahead of your standing methods.
Standing methods
Bank details, a PayPal.me address, a UPI ID — the things that do not change per invoice. Set them once and they print on everything.
A QR beside the button
Drawn as vector, so it survives being printed small. Handing somebody a piece of paper they can scan is the whole point of putting it there.
Checked twice
Only https:// is accepted. A bare domain is upgraded, and
anything else is refused — once when you save it and again before it
is printed.
It opens in their browser
Never inside the app. An embedded checkout is exactly what would make a record-keeper look like a payment processor.
Payments recorded by you
Full or part. A part payment shows as a balance everywhere afterwards, and deleting a payment asks first, because that is the action that moves money on the screen.
A straight answer about the money
Late, part-paid and outstanding are worked out from the payments you recorded and today's date, every time they are shown. None of it is stored, so none of it can go stale.
- Owed — what is out there, with quotes excluded, because an offer is not a debt.
- Ageing — how late, in buckets, counting the balance rather than the original total.
- By client — where the work actually came from.
- Tax charged — by rate, for filing, read from each document's frozen breakdown.
Billkeep says plainly on that screen that it does not know your tax rules. That line is load-bearing: it is the difference between a summary and tax advice.
The rules, and why
- It makes drafts, never finished invoices. Finishing spends a number and freezes something a customer will be sent; neither should happen while nobody is watching.
- Each draft is dated the day it was due, not the day it was generated — the issue date is the tax point, and a catch-up dated today would misstate a return.
- Month arithmetic clamps. 31 January plus one month is 28 February, not 3 March.
- There is no background job. Due drafts are made when you open your invoices, and a long absence catches up at most twelve of them — and says so.
The retainer sets itself up once
Weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, from any invoice's own menu. Editing the template changes the ones still to come and leaves the drafts already made alone, which is what a price rise actually means.
A set of books nobody has to keep
Every document you finish and every payment you record posts itself to a double-entry journal. You are never asked to understand that — you are only asked for it the day somebody wants a profit and loss.
- Six statements — profit and loss, balance sheet, cash movement, trial balance, what is owed, and the tax position.
- A chart of accounts that arrives filled in, named in plain words with the formal type beside each one.
- Bills, suppliers and purchase orders, so what you owe is tracked as carefully as what you are owed.
- Bank and cash accounts, with a statement to square off against and transfers that can never be miscoded as income.
- More than one currency, at rates you set yourself and that are frozen onto each document.
- Light and dark, chosen in the app or on this site — it is one setting, and the two halves never disagree.
The app opens in Simple mode and none of this is on the screen. Pro mode, one switch in Settings, is what puts it there — and because the postings happen either way, it reveals the whole history rather than starting one.
Nothing in the journal is edited
A wrong entry is reversed and both stay on the page, the same rule the invoice numbering follows. That is the difference between a set of books and a spreadsheet.
The reports cannot drift
They are read out of the journal rather than kept beside it, so a figure on a report traces back to the document that put it there.
Older records are brought in
A browser that already held invoices gets them posted the next time it opens, so the books do not start empty beside three years of real documents.
Kept on your device
In this browser, or on your phone. Not on a server we run, and not conditional on a subscription being current.
Out in one file
Everything as plain JSON, plus CSV for a spreadsheet. The same file restores on the phone and in the browser.
The same books on every device
Sign in and they are in step, both ways, with nothing to switch on. Your changes go up a second or two after you make them, and anything you wrote on the other device is here within seconds of you looking. An invoice you have already issued is never altered, and nothing you delete comes back.
A history of what happened
Created, finished, shared, paid, cancelled — each with a date. The answer to "when did I send that?" is written down.
More than one set of books
Two businesses are two separate sets of records. Nothing is copied across, and switching between them is one control in Settings.
Import a client list
A CSV out of whatever you used before. Column names are matched explicitly, never guessed, so nobody's phone number ends up in the tax number field.
Browser and Android, honestly compared
The two share the same records and the same document format. They are not identical, and it is better to say which is which than to let you find out.
| What | In the browser | On Android |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices, quotes, credit notes | Yes | Yes |
| Clients, saved items, payment methods | Yes | Yes |
| Tax rates and groups | Yes | Yes |
| Repeating invoices | Yes | Yes |
| Totals, ageing and sales reports | Yes | Yes |
| Backup, restore and CSV | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud copy and sign-in | Yes | Yes |
| More than one business | Yes | Yes |
| Works with no connection | Yes | Yes |
| The document as a PDF | Through your browser's print dialogue | Rendered by the app |
| Expenses and receipts | Yes | Yes |
| Photos of receipts | No — a camera is a phone's job | Yes |
| Statement of account | Yes | Yes |
| Reminders written for you | Yes | Yes |
| Marking a document as sent | Yes | Yes |
| Double-entry books and the journal | Yes | Not yet — but its documents post, so the books are there in the browser |
| Profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance | Yes | Not yet |
| Bills, suppliers and purchase orders | Yes | Not yet |
| Bank accounts and reconciliation | Yes | Not yet |
| Dictating an invoice | No — see below | Yes |
| Buying a plan | No — Google Play handles it | Yes |
Why dictation stays on the phone
Voice invoicing needs microphone consent, speech recognition that runs on the device, and a key held somewhere a stranger cannot read it. A key put into a web page is a key given away, so it is not there.
The fastest way to judge it is to use it
Nothing to install, no card, and your records stay in this browser already there when you open it anywhere else.