There is a common way a one-person business ends up paying for software it barely uses.
You start doing paid work. A customer asks for an invoice. You search for "invoice software", and everything that comes back is an accounting suite — bank feeds, chart of accounts, payroll add-ons, sales tax reports. You sign up for the cheapest plan, send your invoice, and from then on you pay every month for a ledger you open once a quarter.
If that's you, it's worth separating two jobs that the software has bundled together: getting paid and keeping the books. You need the first one every week. You may not need the second one at all — or you may need it once a year, from an accountant.
What sending an invoice actually takes
Strip an invoice back to what the customer and the tax office care about, and it needs five things:
- Who it's from — your business name, address, and tax ID if you have one.
- Who it's to, and what for — line items, quantities, prices, tax.
- A number and a date, so both of you can refer to it later.
- A way to pay — ideally a link that takes a card or a bank transfer.
- A record of whether it was sent, opened and paid.
That's the whole job. Notice what isn't on the list: a general ledger, bank reconciliation, depreciation schedules, payroll.
What the default options cost
Here are the list prices for the tools people usually land on (checked October 2, 2026):
- QuickBooks Online Simple Start: $38/month. A full accounting product; invoicing is one part of it.
- FreshBooks Lite: $23/month, for up to 5 billable clients. Invoicing-first, with accounting on top.
- Wave Starter: free to use, and paid for through payment fees — 2.9% + 60¢ per card payment and 1% per bank payment.
- Square Invoices (free plan): free to use, 3.3% + 30¢ per card payment.
The free options aren't really free; they move the cost into the fee on every payment. That's a reasonable trade if you invoice rarely and for small amounts. It gets expensive quickly on large invoices paid by bank transfer, where a 1% fee with no cap is $50 on a $5,000 job.
When you do need accounting software
Be honest with yourself about this list. If any of these are true, a real accounting product earns its keep:
- You run payroll for employees.
- You hold inventory and need to know what it's worth.
- You file sales tax in several places and want it calculated from your books.
- You have an accountant who works inside your QuickBooks or Xero file.
- You need bank reconciliation across several accounts every month.
If none of those apply, what you need is a way to send invoices and get paid, plus a clean export for whoever does your year-end.
What we built for this
We added a plan for exactly this case. Invoicing is everything in our Pro plan — unlimited scans, document search, exports — plus sending invoices and getting paid:
- Up to 500 invoices a month, unlimited customers
- Card and bank-transfer pay links on your own Stripe account, at Stripe's prices with 0% added by us
- Pay links that don't expire, and a clear status for each invoice: sent, viewed, processing, paid
- Draft an invoice from a photo of a job sheet or quote
At the time of writing it's $14.88 a month, or $119.88 a year. It deliberately doesn't do the bookkeeping half: syncing invoices and supplier bills into QuickBooks is part of our Business plan, for people who do keep books in QuickBooks.
And if you only send a few invoices a month, you may not need a plan at all. Every ScanThisText account can send three invoices a month free, with the same card and bank-transfer pay links.
The question to ask
Before your next renewal, look at what you actually used last month. If the answer is "I sent some invoices and checked whether they were paid", you're paying for a ledger you don't keep. That's fine if you value it. It's worth knowing either way.
Every account can send three invoices a month free. Compare the plans.
Prices from QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Wave and Square, checked October 2, 2026. List prices; introductory discounts not included.
