I built 80% of an invoicing app myself — then had to rebuild it properly

Hi everyone 👋

I’m Bela, founder of Invoice Guru. I didn’t come from a tech background — I started this as a tradesperson who was fed up with doing invoices late at night after physical workdays.

I taught myself everything from scratch and ended up building around 80% of the product on my own, before eventually handing it over to professional developers to help finish and harden it. At that point, I learned a tough but valuable lesson: big parts of it needed to be rewritten properly to scale.

All in, there’s already 1,300+ hours of professional development in Invoice Guru — and it still feels like the beginning. There’s a long list of features planned, but I’m very conscious about not overbuilding and focusing on what really matters first.

I’d love to hear from this community:
What features do you consider absolutely non-negotiable in an invoicing app for small businesses or freelancers?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences and feedback.