hql287 / manta

🎉 Flexible invoicing desktop app with beautiful & customizable templates.

Manta

A desktop application for creating invoices with beautiful and customizable templates.

Screenshots • Features • Downloads • Technologies • Why? • Goals • Development • FAQ • Acknowledgement

Screenshots

Here's a few screenshots of Manta. See more

Translation

Do you speak multiple languages? We need your help!

If you're interested in translating Manta, please see the detailed instruction here. The following languages are currently being translated, if you would like to Manta to support another language, please submit your request here.

• 🇨🇳 中文 (Chinese Simplified)
• 🇨🇳 中文 (Chinese Traditional)
• 🇩🇪 Deutsch (German)
• 🇩🇰 Dansk (Danish)
• 🇪🇸 Español (Spanish)
• 🇫🇷 Français (French)
• 🇬🇷 Ελληνικά (Greek)
• 🇮🇩 Indonesian
• 🇮🇹 Italiano (Italian)
• 🇯🇵 日本語 (Japanese)
• 🇰🇷 한국어 (Korean)
• 🇱🇹 Lietuviškai (Lithuanian)
• 🇳🇱 Nederlands (Dutch)
• 🇵🇹 Português (Portuguese)
• 🇧🇷 Portuguese, Brazilian (Brazil)
• 🇷🇺 Русский (Russian)
• 🇹🇭 ไทย (Thai)
• 🇹🇷 Türkçe (Turkish)
• 🇻🇳 Việt Nam (Vietnamese)

Features

• 🎚 Flexible form. You can turn on/off field and save as default setting.
• 🏗 Drag & drop for reordering items. This makes editing easier.
• 📐 Use SVGs for logo for better printing.
• 🎨 Custom designed & highly customizable templates.
• 🏷 Custom statuses for invoices.
• 📊 Export PDF for print or email.
• 🔒Complete Privacy. You financial data stays where it belongs.
• 💯 Totally Free.

Downloads

macOS	Windows	Linux
Download v1.1.4	Download v1.1.4	Download v1.1.4

More Download Options

Supported Platforms

Following platforms are supported by Electron:

macOS The minimum version supported is macOS 10.9.

Windows Windows 7 and later are supported

Linux:

• Ubuntu 12.04 and later
• Fedora 21
• Debian 8

More information.

Note that on Linux, some users might experience a GPU bug where the select options rendered as a black box, see issue #128 of Manta and issue #4322 of Electron. This can be fixed by disabling hardware acceleration like so:

manta --disable-hardware-acceleration

Remember that doing this might lead to some degradation of the app's performance. This is why "the fix" is not included by default.

Technologies

• Electron
• React
• Redux
• React-DnD
• React-Beautiful-DnD
• React-Motion
• Webpack

Why

The main reason I decided to build this is because I need a simple tool to create good looking invoices, estimates, and receipts but couldn't find one that suits my needs. I don't do invoicing for a living but I do need it occasionally so an ideal invoicing app just needs to be good at one thing and one thing only, which is making invoices. I really don't need a full-fledged bookkeeping or accounting software.

I believe there are many people such as freelance designers, developers, photographers or writers... also have such need. However, most (if not all) products I found have these these problems:

Complexity

• Most invoicing products nowadays is web-based, which means you’ll need to maintain a new account (possible a monthly fee, too) just to create an invoice.
• Sure, there some open-source products that can be self-hosted, but that will introduce a new layer of complexity to your workflow. Who will setup the product? Who will maintain the server? Who will cover the cost? ...
• You will always need internet connection to be able to create your invoices. It can be slow sometimes.

Privacy

• When you use a web service, most of the time, you’re giving away your data whether you want it or not. Financial data is sensitive and I believe that no one should know about your data except yourself.

Goals

With that in mind, I know that Manta would need to satisfy these criteria:

• 🚀 Fast!!!

• 👍 Friendly UI & UX

• 🎉 Has nice looking templates

• 🔒 Does not touch user’s data

• 💰 Free! :)

  If you think Manta delivers these, let me know by putting a star on this project 😉

Development

It's very easy to get started with these 3 steps:

• Clone this project to your local machine.
• Open terminal and cd into the cloned folder, usually cd Manta.
• Run yarn install to install dependencies.
• Run yarn dev in one tab to start webpack-dev-server.
• Run yarn start in another tab to open the app.

This is still in beta and it's far from perfect so feedbacks, issues or PRs are greatly appreciated! :)

Note that on Linux you will need additional dependencies to provide the icns2png and gm commands. Ubuntu/Debian users can run: sudo apt install -y icnsutils graphicsmagick.

FAQ

• Is this app built with Electron?

Yes, it's built on top of Electron. Please see the Technologies section for more info.

• What boilerplate did you use

None. This is my attempt to integrate Electron with React from scratch. The idea was to get a better understanding of how things work together, especially Webpack. But I do take cue from other projects.

• What CSS/UI Framework did you use?

I wrote all the CSS myself. I only use Bootstrap for prototyping at first. But I gradually encapsulate most of the style to the component with the help of styled-components. There is some places still use Bootstrap mostly for layout purpose but I'll get rid of it eventually.

• Where did you get the icons?

ionicons. They're great!

• Why did you name the project Manta? It has nothing to do with invoicing.

It's actually very common to associate an animal with your brand. There's a reason behind the Twitter bird, the famous MailChimp Freddy or the Docker whale ... It's called the Baby-Face bias. You can read more about it in the book Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter. In my case, I was inspired by the movie Racing Extinction and by naming this project Manta, I hope to raise people's awareness on some environmental issues mentioned in the movie. You can read more about it here

• I like Manta's logo, did you design it?

Yes, I actually did all the illustrations as well as the templates that you see in the app.

• Are you available for hire?

Yes, I'm exploring new opportunities at the moment. Please let me know what you have in mind.

• How do I contact you?

If you find an issue, please report it here. For everything else, please drop me a line at [email protected]

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Crowdin for providing an open-source license for Manta. Feel free to check out their website for more information about this amazing localization management platform.

manta's Issues

alignment of numeric values should be to the right

as per UX custom: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/what-is-the-best-practice-for-data-table-cell-content-alignment

numeric values like money and quantities are aligned to the right when displayed in tabular form

it is easier on the eye when summing up the values

currencies should also be displayed with fixed decimal points, for dollars 2 decimal places

it would also be great it the font family can be changed

Bulk Actions

Expected Behavior

Being able to interact with multiple docs (invoices, contacts). Possible bulk actions:

• Delete docs.
• Set Status for invoices.

Current Behavior

It's not possible at the moment

accent color inconsistently applied

when using the default non-custom accent color, the "INVOICE" font color is black and the dividers are lime-green

but using custom accent color, both the "INVOICE" font color and divider changed to the same custom accent color

unable to resize preview window

on Macbook Pro 15" the preview window is too long and the "save as pdf" button is cut off
the window is also not resizable or able to zoom out to see the entire page

Clean Up CSS

Invoices Index Layout

Alerts cannot be clicked/closed

As the alerts are draggable, we can't click nor close them. (Linux)

'%' appear as prefix instead of suffix

Please answer these question so I can help you faster.

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• [ x] It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Which version are you using?

• [x ] macOS
• Windows
• Linux

Which is the version/distribution of the OS?
I'm using macOS High Sierra

Describe your issue

the VAT & Discount appears as "%5" instead of "5%"

Steps to replicate

set VAT or Discount to percentage-based and preview

Note does not appears on Minimal template

Add screenshots to README

Upgrade to React-Dates 14

Make buttons look like desktop app buttons

Cannot drag to select in text fields

Trying to drag to select in text fields moves entire app.

Video: https://static.ozairpatel.com/u09sl.mp4

using multi-line input for description

my invoices and quotation often have very long multi-line description but the input box is single-line only

i would suggest using a textarea instead of an input text

Cannot quit on Dock

Right click on the dock icon, choose quit but it just hides all the windows.

Disable Travis Build on Publish Release (Tag)

Update Design of DMG file

Prevent windows to open dropped file

Add a way to create contacts from the Contacts tab.

hook up with stripe

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Describe your issue

A killer feature would be to create a quick and dirty webpage where you can allow your client to pay the invoice with stripe.

You would enter your stripe API keys in Manta. Then when you create an invoice, it generates a link to a static webpage (possible on manta.life/invoice) which expect the public stripe api key, the invoice id and the amount. Then when Manta can poll Stripe to check when the invoice is paid and possibly send a notification!

Missing font?

Looks like Manta doesn't display the font correctly. Can anyone confirm this?

Here's what it looks like on my machine.

`yarn release:linux` needs system dependencies

I tried running yarn release:linux and found I had to install a few additional dependencies. I was running in the node:8 Docker container based on Debian, so:

apt update
apt install -y icnsutils graphicsmagick

icnsutils is for the icns2png command, and graphicsmagick provides gm.

Not sure if you want to document this anywhere, but hopefully other Linux users will find this :).

Update Warning Message (Better UX)

Allow preview before saving

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Which version are you using?

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux

Which is the version/distribution of the OS?

I'm using macOS High Sierra

Describe your issue

Previewing cannot be done without first saving

Add support for decimal prices

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
  Which version are you using?
• macOS
  Which is the version/distribution of the OS?
  macOS High Sierra

Please add support for decimal prices such as 7,99€; 20,23€. Currently the ',' just gets deleted.
That'd be really nice.

Add signature field

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Describe your issue

2 Signature fields, 1 for client to sign and the other for self
default value could be "this is a generated document, no signature required"

Sort Invoices by Value, Date Created, DueDate

more flexibility for VAT and contacts

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Describe your issue

I'm often billing with a VAT: charged reversed. That's impossible in Manta, you can only enter a number. It would be nice to be able to enter anything and default to 0 if you can't parse it properly.

More generally, it would be nice to be able to have more flexibility in everything. For example, one of my clients wants the contact section to be

{{name of the company}}
VAT: {{VAT number}}
{{address}}

Maybe there could be a text area with a mustache type of template where we can specify what are the fields we care about the contact?

AutoUpdater

mark invoices as "paid"

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Describe your issue

I pretty much only care about "pending" invoices, for which I haven't been paid. It would be nice to split the invoices into 2 sections: "pending" and "paid"

Optimize SVG using SVGO

Update App Logo

Update Error

• Quit & Install Does Not Work as Expected (since preview Window Is still active)
• Move Application To Read Only Volume

Support Multiple Languages

UPDATE:

Thank you very much for your patience, now you can help translate Manta on Crowdin.

Please follow this instruction to start translating the app.

Thanks!

Original Post:

I think this would be a very nice feature to have.
But first, let me know which languages you would like Manta to support.

Did I miss something? Pls let me know in the comment.

Allow user to set default form setting

So users won't need to toggle the fields everytime they create a new invoice.

Fix autoUpdate UI

Can't click any button, it grabs the window instead.

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Which version are you using?

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux

Which is the version/distribution of the OS?

Ubuntu Xenial

Describe your issue

I can't click any button, when I try to click it grabs the window instead.

Steps to replicate

1. Build for linux with yarn release:linux or yarn release (for v1.0.0 branch), both have same behavior.
2. Try to click on a button ("Skip" or "NEXT") or anywhere else in the window.

Add Crash Reporting

Update READEME.md

Write a new introduction

Pagination for Invoices & Contacts Tab

Generate Quotation

Please answer these question so I can help you faster.

Is it a bug or a feature request?

• It's a bug.
• I'm requesting a new feature.

Describe your issue
Generate quotation instead of invoice
Preferably a way to then generate an invoice based on the saved quotation with a reference to the quotation id

Fix Warning Synthetic Event when Double Click on Form Settings

Step to reproduce:

• Change to Settings Tab and Back to Form Tab
• Double Click on Form Settings

Live Preview

Remove ugly double scrollbars

An image is worth thousands words. Scrollbars should only appears if user is able to scroll content.

Emailing Receipt from the App

Hide Modern Template Option in Preview Window & Settings

Allow user to set custom Invoice ID/Number

Allow to edit invoices

Currently if I spot a typo fix on an invoice, I'm forced to create a new one.
We could have 2 options in addtion to see/delete like : Edit, Duplicate.

:)

Write Tests for Preview Window

[Typo] "Quit" as "Quite" in menu