Invora

Self-hosted recurring invoicing for freelancers and small firms: every cycle lands as a draft you approve before it goes out, and each unpaid invoice carries your own payment link.

The problem it solves

If you are looking for self-hosted invoicing software — one time payment, no subscription — you are most likely weighing this against Invoice Ninja and InvoicePlane. Both are free and open source, and if you are comfortable running Docker or administering a VPS, either is a fair answer — we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Invora is for the case they do not cover well: plain PHP on ordinary shared hosting, a two-minute installer, $99 paid once with the full source included, and invoice arithmetic you can check yourself.

Freelancers, consultants, and small businesses that invoice clients are otherwise stuck paying a hosted invoicing tool a monthly fee forever, and that tool keeps their client and revenue data. Cheap invoice scripts often get the numbers subtly wrong too — floating-point drift, discounts and tax applied in the wrong order, and manual status juggling to work out what's paid, partial, or overdue.

• Monthly SaaS fees that never stop
• Client and revenue data living on someone else's server
• Invoice math you can't verify yourself

Every feature

• Automatic payment reminders, off until you approve them. Switch them on once, approve the steps (by default three days before the due date, on the day, a week after and two weeks after) and the wording, and see exactly what would go out today before anything does. They go through your own SMTP, stop the moment an invoice is paid (including when the client pays through your Stripe Payment Link), keep to a daily cap, and pause per invoice or per client.
• Email an invoice to your client. One button sends the invoice — number, amount, due date, their own public link and your payment link — through your own SMTP. Off until you switch it on, every attempt logged in a send log, and a failed send never touches the invoice.
• Recurring invoices that draft, never send. Weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly or yearly. Each cycle lands as a draft you review; a unique period stamp means the same month can never draft twice, even from two open tabs.
• Your payment link on every unpaid invoice. Set an account-wide payment link or override it per invoice; it renders as a Pay button on the client's invoice only while a balance is owing. Scheme-checked, and the page names the host that takes the payment.
• Provable money math. Integer-cents arithmetic with per-line tax rates and proportional discounts, plus automatic paid/partial/overdue status derived from recorded payments and the due date.
• Live line-item editor. Totals update as you type, pulling from your saved item catalog.
• Estimates to invoice in one click. Convert a quote or estimate straight into an invoice.
• Branded PDF & public link. Print-perfect branded PDF invoices plus a read-only public client link that needs no login.
• Dashboard & collection chart. See invoiced, collected, outstanding and overdue totals, a 12-month chart of invoiced against collected, and receivables aging.
• Reusable clients & item catalog. Saved clients and items with default tax rates, auto-numbering, and one-click demo data.
• Installable mobile app (PWA). Add it to a phone or tablet home screen straight from the browser — a full-screen app served from your own server, with no app store involved. Business data is not stored offline on the device; what you see is read live.
• Stripe payments mark the invoice paid. Point your Stripe webhook at your install: a client who pays through your Stripe Payment Link is recorded against the right invoice, which shows paid and gets no further reminder. Each notice is signature-checked and recorded once. Invora never sees a card.
• Late fees, on your rule. Off until you switch it on: a flat amount or a percentage of what is unpaid, a number of days after the due date, once or every 30 days up to a limit. It shows on the invoice as its own line, the next reminder names it, you can waive any fee, and it never touches an invoice that fell due before the rule started.
• A page for each client. One private link shows a client their open invoices with your payment button, estimates waiting for an answer, 24 months of history and a statement PDF.
• Estimates answered online. The client accepts or declines on the estimate's link; an accepted estimate becomes a draft invoice for you to send.
• Your own fields on every invoice. Name up to five fields once (a PO number, a project, a job site); every invoice and estimate gets a box for each, and a filled-in field prints under "Billed to" and in the PDF. They carry over when an estimate becomes an invoice and into each recurring draft, and the API reads and writes them by name.
• Updates from inside the app. The Updates page installs a new release with your license key: Ownware's signature is checked, a backup is taken first, and the app puts the previous version back by itself if the update is interrupted or the database step or start-up check of the new version fails. It never checks by itself.
• Backups by themselves. Automatic backups, an optional copy to S3-compatible storage you own, and a weekly check that the latest backup reads back. The Health page names anything that needs attention.
• Payment reminders by text. The automatic reminders can also go by text through your own SMS gateway, only to clients you marked as having agreed, inside your texting hours. Each step texts once, every text names your business and ends with a stop link, and a refused text is shown with your gateway's answer.
• Own It 4.0.1 — fixes and an up-to-date manual. For Invora, 4.0.1 fixes an installer and its invite and two-factor pages that had lost their styling, a rollback that a page opened during an update could stop and a command-line update that ended in an error after putting the previous version back. Its manual, FAQ and QUICKSTART now cover everything 4.0 added, including two Nginx rules that keep the data folder private. Your license covers it: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.
• Own It 4.0.2 — the installer opens on every host. For Invora, 4.0.2 fixes a fresh install on an Apache host: the one-page setup at /install/ looped back to itself and never opened, and now it opens. Your license covers it: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.

Release notes in full

• Own It 4.1: payment reminders by text. For Invora, 4.1 adds payment reminders by text through your own SMS gateway, only to clients who agreed. An Extended license bought from October 4, 2026 covers up to ten client installations, one per client project: hand each one over to the client or host it for them, with the client's logo and colors from the app's branding settings. The API reference now shows how to connect Invora to Zapier, Make or n8n, using its own webhooks and API key. Your license covers the update: press Check for updates on the Updates page, or download it from your order page.
• Own It 4.0: it updates and backs itself up. For Invora, 4.0 means updates from inside the app: the Updates page checks for a new release with your license key, verifies Ownware's signature, takes a backup and puts the previous version back by itself if the update is interrupted or the database step or start-up check of the new version fails. A new install can start with a sample business and remove it in one click; backups run by themselves, with an optional offsite copy and a weekly check that the latest one reads back; and the Health page says whether the install is looking after itself.
• Own It 3.3: your own fields on every invoice. This release put your own details on the paper. Name up to five fields once, such as a PO number, a project or a job site, and every invoice and estimate gets a box for each. A filled-in field prints under "Billed to" and in the PDF, and carries over when an estimate becomes an invoice.
• Own It 3.2: invoices that close themselves. This release closed the loop on getting paid: automatic payment reminders you approve once, and a client who pays through your Stripe Payment Link recorded against the right invoice, which then gets no further reminder. Each client has one private page with their open invoices, estimates to accept or decline, and a statement, and late fees follow your own rule. Reminders and late fees are each off until you switch them on.
• Own It 3.1: it writes to the people you serve. The 3.1 wave gave the catalog a way to reach the other side of the transaction: counterparty email through your own SMTP server, calendar feeds your own calendar subscribes to, attachments filed where the paperwork belongs, and export presets other people's software imports. Each outbound feature ships switched off and runs on your own credentials; a failed send is recorded, and the action that triggered it stands. What this app gained is listed at the top of this section.
• Own It 3.0: works for your AI, not just for you. Point Claude, an n8n agent or your own script at POST /mcp and it can list and create invoices and estimates, record payments and pull the overdue report — under the same key, roles and integer-cent money engine you use. There is deliberately no send tool and no delete tool: mail and destruction stay human clicks. Recurring invoices arrive as drafts for review, never as sent mail.
• Own It 2.0: API, 2FA, backups, dark mode. Invora 2.0 adds the 2.0 owner layer. Upgrade by replacing the files — the database migrates itself, and it is still the same one-time purchase.