BillDesk
Offline invoicing & time tracking for freelancers.
▎ BillDesk is a local-first desktop invoicing app for freelancers, consultants, and small businesses. It brings invoicing, time ▎ tracking, projects, clients, expenses, mileage,ne offline workspace — every record stored locallyin SQLite, so your data never leaves your computer. Generate professional PDF invoices, track billable hours on hourly or fixed-price projects, work in multiple currencies (USD/EUR/GBP), and see profit & loss, revenue by client, and invoice aging at a glance. Runs on Windows and macOS with a 7-day free trial and a one-time $29 lifetime license — no subscription, no cloud , lock-in.
Key features (bullets): Professional PDF invoices · Time tracking for billable hours · Hourly & fixed-price projects · Client management · Expense & mileage tracking · Reports (P&L, revenue by client, invoice aging) · Multi-currency (USD/EUR/GBP) · 100% offline / private local storage · Windows & macOS
Pricing: Free 7-day trial → one-time $29 lifetime
Platforms: Windows 10/11, macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel)
Categories/tags: invoicing, invoice software, freelance, time tracking, expenses, accounting, self-employed, offline, desktop app, privacy, one-time purchase
"Alternative to": FreshBooks · Wave · QuickBooks · Bonsai
4 Comments
Local-first for invoicing holds up better than the offline critique above gives it credit for, but there is one thing I would think hard about before leaning on that EUR in the multi-currency line.
Structured e-invoicing is going mandatory across the EU on a rolling, country-by-country timetable. Italy has required it for years, Germany already requires businesses to be able to receive a structured invoice, and Belgium, France and Poland are all phasing in over the next couple of years. Under those regimes a PDF is not an invoice, it is an attachment. The invoice is an XML document conforming to EN 16931, and a freelancer billing a business in those countries will eventually be asked for one.
The good news for your architecture: generating that XML is a pure local transformation of data you already hold. No network, no cloud, no change to your positioning. The hybrid formats (ZUGFeRD, Factur-X) even embed the XML inside the PDF, so the file still looks like the PDF your users expect. Where offline genuinely stops working is delivery, because France and Poland route invoices through a network rather than email.
Which is the version of the critique above I would actually take seriously. Not that offline repels the working freelancer, but that in two or three of your target markets the regulation, rather than the user, is what eventually asks for a connection.
"Offline" is a feature for privacy-conscious users or those with unreliable internet. But the freelancer who needs invoicing wants payment links, automatic reminders, client portals, and cloud sync across devices. "Offline" suggests no connectivity, no integrations, no collaboration. The buyer who would pay $15/mo wants online convenience, not offline isolation. Your positioning attracts the privacy purist and repels the working freelancer.
The one-time license is interesting in a category where recurring pricing is almost the default.
Curious whether early users are choosing BillDesk mainly to avoid subscriptions, or because keeping invoicing and client data entirely local matters more to them.
We have started global launch of BillDesk since today, so once we get enough traffic and feedback then we can understand the actual traction point for the users. Since it's free to download and contains 7 day free trial, hope to see many visitors download BillDesk and give their honest feedback.