Invoicing without the accounting software headache
A lot of invoicing software starts with a simple idea and gradually turns into a full accounting system — payroll, inventory, job scheduling, reporting dashboards, bookkeeping workflows and twenty menu items you will never open. That is genuinely useful if you need it, but plenty of Australian sole traders and small trade businesses do not.
Most of the time the job is much smaller than that:
- Send a quote and get it accepted
- Turn the accepted quote into an invoice
- Break out labour, materials and any call-out fee
- Show your ABN and GST correctly
- Send it while the job is still fresh
- See what has been paid and what has not
- Follow up the ones that are overdue
That is where InvoiceSent fits. It keeps the invoicing side of the business simple and leaves the rest alone.
Built for the way tradies actually work
You are not always sitting behind a desk. A plumber is under a sink, an electrician is finishing off on site, a mechanic is standing beside a vehicle and a builder is moving between jobs all day. Waiting until you get home to deal with paperwork is how invoices end up going out a week late — or not at all.
InvoiceSent is designed so an invoice takes a couple of minutes on a phone: add the customer, add the work, add the parts, send it. The sooner that happens after the job, the sooner you get paid, and the less likely you are to forget what was actually done.
Structuring a trade invoice
Trade invoices are rarely one line saying “work completed”. The clearest ones break the job into its parts, because a customer who can see what they are paying for asks fewer questions and pays sooner.
Labour
Show the hours, the rate and the total rather than a single lump sum.
Materials and parts
List them separately, or group them as a single “materials as per quote” line if the detail is not useful to the customer.
Call-out and travel
If you charge a call-out or travel fee, give it its own line. Buried inside a labour total, it is the line most likely to be queried.
A worked example
| Description | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hot water system replacement — labour (4 hrs @ $110/hr) | $440.00 |
| Rheem 315L storage tank — supply and install | $1,280.00 |
| Isolation valve replacement and pipework | $180.00 |
| Emergency call-out — after hours | $250.00 |
| Subtotal | $2,150.00 |
| GST (10%) | $215.00 |
| Total | $2,365.00 |
For a full breakdown of what belongs on the invoice, see the invoice template for Australian tradies.
Australian business details, done properly
Your invoices should look like they belong to an Australian business, not like a form built for somewhere else and translated afterwards.
| Setting | What InvoiceSent does |
|---|---|
| ABN | Shown on your invoices, from your company profile |
| Currency | AUD, formatted correctly |
| GST | Configurable rate, shown as its own line with subtotal and total |
| Not GST-registered | Leave it off — no VAT terminology to work around |
If you are registered for GST, the invoice shows the subtotal, the GST component and the total separately, which is what your customer needs for their own records. If you are under the $75,000 turnover threshold and not registered, you simply do not add it.
Quotes, and which plan they are on
For a lot of trades the job starts with a quote, and the useful part is not writing the quote — it is not having to write everything out a second time when the work is done.
Quotes and quote-to-invoice conversion are on the Pro plan. On Free and Starter you create invoices directly. If your work usually starts with a written quote, that is the plan to look at; if you invoice after the fact, you may never need it.
| Free | Starter | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited invoices | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated payment reminders | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quotes & estimates | — | — | ✓ |
| Quote → invoice conversion | — | — | ✓ |
See the full plan comparison for everything else.
Knowing who still owes you money
Sending the invoice is half the job; getting paid is the other half. InvoiceSent tracks what has been paid and what is still outstanding, so you are not relying on memory, a spreadsheet, or scrolling back through your bank account trying to work out whether anyone ever paid invoice 1047.
Nobody enjoys chasing money, particularly when the work is already done. Automated payment reminders, on Starter and Pro, keep the follow-up consistent and polite without you having to remember who is overdue — which is usually the reason overdue invoices stay overdue. If you would rather write your own, there are reminder templates here.
Repeat customers
Most trade businesses work for the same people again and again: property managers, landlords, homeowners, builders and other contractors. Keeping customer records means the next invoice starts half-finished, and it removes the small errors that come from retyping an address or a business name every time.
When InvoiceSent is the wrong tool
There are excellent job-management and accounting systems available to Australian trades. If you run multiple crews and need dispatching, scheduling, inventory, payroll and deep accounting integration, one of those will serve you better, and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.
InvoiceSent is deliberately narrower. It suits a plumber working alone, a two-person electrical business, a mechanic running a small workshop, a landscaper, a painter, a carpenter — anyone whose requirement is genuinely: do the work, send the invoice, get paid.
Less admin, more actual work
You did not start a trade business to spend your evenings formatting invoices. Create the invoice, send it, see what is outstanding, follow up what is late, and get back to the work that earns the money.
InvoiceSent. Simple invoicing for Australian tradies and small businesses.
Last reviewed: July 2026