Tax invoiceSent
INV-2026-014
Loft Studio Development
Concept & art direction24 000.00
Production, 6 days18 000.00
Licence, 12 months6 300.00
Total due
R 48 300.00
Your financial data we can read 0 bytes
Your invoices.
Your device.
Your key alone.
A complete invoicing and finance app for freelancers and small studios: quotes, invoices, credit notes, projects, time tracking, VAT and bank reconciliation. Everything runs on your own device. Your books are encrypted with a key derived from your password, which we never receive, and the backup we keep for you is encrypted the same way. We hold it. We cannot open it.
Works on Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android · Installs like a real app · Works offline
Income this month
R 84 200
+18% on last month
VAT due · Jul–Aug
R 12 480.00
Filing period closes 25 Sep
Encrypted on this device
AES-256 · PBKDF2 600 000
Encrypted here, before anything is sent. We hold no key to it.
Timer running
02:14:08
Loft Studio · Art direction
Bank reconcile
R 48 300.00
matched to INV-2026-014
R 1 049.00
Adobe · Software, VAT claim
Learned once, remembered.
The problem
Every other invoicing app keeps your books on someone else’s computer.
Your revenue, your clients, your margins, your rates. That’s the most sensitive data in your business, and it normally lives in a database you don’t control, protected by a company that can be breached, sold, or simply decide to raise its prices.
Simpl takes the opposite approach. It’s a real, full-featured finance app that happens to run entirely on your machine. No account to create. No data to upload. No monthly hostage situation.
What users say
“I have found the app simple and effective, plus our invoicing looks better and more professional, never mind the time saving.”
“Simpl is just that – simple! It’s incredibly easy to use, and I’ve loved using it for our company’s invoicing and quotes. Everything looks so professional.”
“An invoicing and accounting app that fulfils all my very specific needs, with ease.”
Features
Everything you need to run the money side
Built from real invoicing. Not a demo, a daily driver.
Invoicing
Three document types, and the maths behind them
Quote
R 48 300
Invoice
R 48 300
Credit
R 48 300
Three document types: invoices, quotes and credit notes
Raise a quote, convert it to an invoice with one click, and issue a proper credit note when you need to correct or refund one. Each type keeps its own numbering sequence, and you can set your own prefixes and number format (INV-2026-001) so you can continue the scheme you already use.
INV-2026-014 · Split billing
Deposit 50%R 24 150.00
Paid
Balance 50%R 24 150.00
Raise balance invoice →
Part invoicing: deposits and balances that add up correctly
Bill a 25%, 50% or 75% deposit, then raise the linked balance invoice with one click. The app keeps the two connected, so your income, profit and VAT are never double-counted, and your dashboard shows how much is still to invoice on jobs you’ve already won.
Allocated to
INV-2026-014R 48 300.00
CN-2026-003− R 4 200.00
Output VAT reduced automatically
Now owingR 44 100.00
Credit notes allocated to invoices
Create a credit note against a specific invoice number. It reduces your revenue, your output VAT, and what that invoice shows as owing, exactly the way your accountant and your client’s finance system expect.
Retainer · repeats monthly
Jun 2026
INV-2026-009Sent
INV-2026-009Sent
Jul 2026
INV-2026-012Sent
INV-2026-012Sent
Aug 2026
Draft ready for reviewNew
Draft ready for reviewNew
Recurring invoices
Mark a retainer “repeat monthly” and each new month the app offers you a fresh draft, ready to review. Nothing is ever sent automatically. You stay in control of what goes out.
14 days overdue
INV-2026-008R 12 500.00
Subject: Invoice INV-2026-008, a friendly reminder
Write reminder email →
Payment reminders for overdue invoices
Invoices flip to overdue on their own. One click writes a polite, ready-to-send reminder email with the invoice number, amount and how many days late it is.
Creative Seed
VAT 4130 287 991 Tax invoice
INV-2026-014
VAT 4130 287 991 Tax invoice
INV-2026-014
R 48 300.00
Branded PDFs
Your logo, your details, clean typography. Documents are labelled TAX INVOICE when you’re VAT registered and INVOICE when you’re not. Email them, share them, or download them.
Pipeline
QTE-2026-021
Accepted 06 AugAccepted
Accepted 06 AugAccepted
QTE-2026-022
Expires 30 SepSent
Expires 30 SepSent
QTE-2026-019
Expired 04 AugExpired
Expired 04 AugExpired
Quote tracking
Quotes carry an expiry date, expire themselves when it passes, and record whether a client accepted or declined, so your pipeline reflects reality.
01 / 07
Privacy & security
The part that can’t be retro-fitted
Your data is unreadable to us
Your invoices, clients, expenses and rates live in your own browser, on your own machine. The backup we keep is encrypted before it leaves, with a key derived from your password that we never receive. There is no cloud database of your figures, because we hold nothing we can read.
Encrypted with your own password
Everything is encrypted at rest with AES-256, using a key derived from your master password (600,000-round PBKDF2). Nobody can read your data without that password: not an attacker, not us. The app auto-locks when you step away.
No account, no sign-in, no lock-in
There’s no login to create and no subscription that holds your data hostage. Your data is yours: export a complete encrypted backup any time, in one click.
Money management
Currencies, companies, VAT and the bank
Base currency · ZAR• LIVE
USD 1.00US DollarR 18.42
EUR 1.00EuroR 19.90
GBP 1.00Pound SterlingR 23.15
AUD 1.00Australian DollarR 12.10
CAD 1.00Canadian DollarR 13.40
01
Multi-currency with live exchange rates
Invoice in ZAR, USD, EUR, AUD, CAD or GBP. The app fetches exchange rates so your dashboard, profit and reporting all show a single, comparable base-currency figure, even when your invoices are in six currencies. Need another currency? Just let us know.
Businesses
Creative Seed
ZAR · VAT reg.
ZAR · VAT reg.
Rael Studio
USD · No VAT
USD · No VAT
Creative Seed
Cape Town, South Africa
Base currencyZAR
VAT15% · registered
NumberingINV-2026-000
BankFNB · 62••• 4471
Switch business ⇆
02
Multiple businesses in one app
Run more than one company? Each business has its own company details, logo, banking, numbering, clients, documents, currency and VAT settings. Switch between them from the sidebar, and the data never mixes.
Jul–Aug 2026 May–Jun Mar–Apr
Output VAT on invoicesR 18 240.00
Input VAT on expenses− R 5 760.00
Net due · filing closes 25 SepR 12 480.00
Export VAT summary →
03
VAT done properly
Set your VAT rate, your filing cycle (monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual) and your tax-year start, so it works in your country, not just ours. The app calculates output VAT on invoices and input VAT on expenses, gives you a VAT summary per filing period, and lets you export it.
August 20264 expenses
MerchantCategoryVATAmount
Adobe CCSoftware✓R 1 049.00
Camera hireProject cost✓R 4 800.00
FuelTravel✓R 620.00
Input VAT captured this monthR 2 167.00
04
Expense tracking
Log expenses by category with input VAT captured, and flag which ones are direct project costs so gross and net profit are both meaningful.
august.csv42 transactions
38 of 42 matched automatically
R 48 300.00
matched to INV-2026-014
R 1 049.00
Adobe · Software, VAT claimable
R 320.00
Bank fee · flagged, not an expense
05
Bank reconciliation that learns
Drop in a bank statement as CSV or PDF. The app matches payments to your invoices, flags fees and transfers, and suggests categorised expenses. Tell it once that a merchant is “Software, VAT claimable” and it remembers for next time. Unfamiliar bank format? A one-time column-mapping wizard learns your layout.
01 / 05
That’s the money side handled. Try it on your own numbers.
Seven days, full access, no card. Anything you make during the trial stays yours, permanently readable and exportable, whether you buy or not.
Start your 7-day free trial
No card required · Nothing to install first
Projects & time
For the jobs where the margin is the business
Projects with real budgets
Plan a job before you quote it. Build a budget from a few simple lines, or a full production-style budget with sections, subtotals, day rates times units, and a production fee. Every line carries what you bill and what it costs you, so you watch your margin move as you shape the price. Then create the client quote straight from the budget in one click.
Profitability per project
Linked invoices, expenses and tracked time roll up automatically, so you can see planned versus actual: what you budgeted, what you’ve spent, what you’ve invoiced, and what’s left.
Crew and collaborator rates
Add the people on a project with their bill rate and their cost rate, set per project because rates change job to job. Pick a person on a budget line and their rates fill themselves in.
Time tracking with a floating timer
Start and stop a timer from any screen. It survives reloads, tracks against a client, project and task, and when you’re ready you can bill unbilled time straight onto an invoice, or export it as a CSV report.
Reporting
The numbers your accountant actually asks for
A dashboard that answers the real questions
Income this month, profit year-to-date, what’s outstanding, what you’ve quoted, and how much is still to invoice on won work. All at a glance, in your base currency.
Proper financial views
A Profit & Loss statement showing gross and net profit ex-VAT (the view your accountant wants), a revenue chart against your goals, pipeline, invoice ageing, top clients and quote conversion. Switch the whole thing between cash and accrual basis.
Accountant-ready export
Export a complete CSV for your accountant or bookkeeper: income, expenses, VAT and a P&L summary for the tax year, plus per-period VAT exports at filing time.
Everywhere you work
Installed, offline and in sync without a cloud
Install it like a real app
Add it to your Dock, Start menu or home screen. It opens in its own window, with its own icon, and works fully offline after the first load.
Works across your devices
Sync your laptop and phone over a direct, encrypted device-to-device connection. Pair them with a code, and your data goes straight between your two devices. Sync itself never passes through a server: it is a direct connection between your two machines. Records merge intelligently: the newer edit of each one wins, and duplicate invoice numbers are renumbered automatically.
Updates itself, keeps your data
When there’s a new version you’ll see a small “update available” note. Reload and you’re current, with everything intact. You never reinstall.
Small mercies that add up
Auto-save while you type, undo on deletes, saved line items you reuse, duplicate any document, a setup checklist for your first ten minutes, and a mobile layout that actually fits a phone.
Privacy, specifically
“Private” here means something specific
A lot of software says “we take your privacy seriously.” Here’s the concrete version:
Your books are encrypted before anything leaves your device. Your backup is sealed on your machine with a key derived from your master password. We receive ciphertext, store ciphertext, and have no key to open it.
We can’t read your data even if we wanted to. It’s encrypted with a key derived from your master password, which we never see. There’s no admin panel, no support back door, no database to subpoena.
Device-to-device sync is peer-to-peer. When your laptop and phone sync, they talk directly to each other over an encrypted connection, with nothing in between them.
What leaves your device: your name and email at sign-up, your encrypted backup, anonymous exchange-rate lookups, and a check for new versions. The backup is ciphertext we cannot read; nothing legible ever leaves. The complete itemised list is in the privacy policy.
You can leave whenever you want, with everything. One click downloads a local backup of your whole vault, and the accountant export is a plain readable file. Nothing is held hostage and nothing is locked to us.
A cleared browser is no longer a disaster. Browsers delete stored data: Safari wipes it after seven days of not opening a site, and “clear cookies and site data” wipes it everywhere. Your encrypted backup means that is an inconvenience rather than the loss of your records.
You can’t be locked out of your own books. A 12-word recovery phrase, generated on your device and never transmitted, is a second key to your vault and to your backups. We hold neither key.
The trade-off that makes it real
Because only you hold the key, only you can open your data. Your backup is encrypted with it, so we cannot recover anything on your behalf, and there is no reset link we could send. That is why Simpl generates a 12-word recovery phrase at setup: it is a second key to your own vault, and it opens your backups too. Keep it somewhere safe. Lose both it and your password and nobody can help you, including us. That is the trade-off that makes the privacy real rather than a slogan.
The full technical detail is on the security page.
Who it’s for
Built for people who send their own invoices
- Freelancers and consultants who want quoting, invoicing and VAT handled without a monthly subscription.
- Coaches and practitioners billing sessions and packages, often in more than one currency.
- Small studios and production companies running multi-person projects where the margin between what you bill and what you pay out is the whole business.
- Anyone privacy-conscious about their own numbers.
Why this exists
I built this for myself first.
I run a small studio in Cape Town. For years I paid a monthly subscription for invoicing software that kept my client list, my rates and my margins in a database I had no control over, and every year the price went up.
So I built the version I wanted. It runs on my own machine, it’s encrypted with my own password, and the only copy anyone else holds is one nobody can open, including me. I’ve invoiced my own clients through it every month since.
It isn’t a startup and there’s no team behind it. It’s one person’s daily tool that turned out to be worth sharing.
Lee RaelCreative Seed · Cape Town
Pricing
One price. No tiers. No per-seat maths.
Your licence unlocks the app on your device, and there’s no account to manage. If a licence lapses you can still open, read, print and export everything you’ve created; you just can’t create new documents until you renew. Your records are never held hostage.
Have a discount code? Enter it at checkout.
$100/ year
Plus VAT or sales tax where your country charges it
Everything above. Every feature. All your businesses, all your devices.
- 7-day free trial, full access, no commitment
- All features included, nothing held back for a “pro” tier
- Use it on all your own devices
- Cancel any time; your data stays yours, and stays readable
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is my data really not on your servers?
Your working data lives on your device, in your browser, encrypted. We do keep one thing: an encrypted backup, sealed on your machine with a key derived from your password before it is sent. We store that file and have no way to open it. So the honest version is not “nothing is on our servers”, it is “what is on our servers is unreadable to us”.
What if I forget my master password?
Use your recovery phrase. When you set up, Simpl generates 12 words that act as a second key to your own vault. Enter them on the lock screen and set a new password. The phrase also opens your encrypted backups. We still can’t read your data: the phrase is generated on your device and never sent anywhere, which is why there’s no “reset password” email. A reset link would mean we could decrypt your books, and so could anyone who breached us.
What if I lose the recovery phrase too?
Then the data genuinely can’t be recovered by anyone. Store the phrase like you’d store a spare key: password manager, or printed and filed with your business documents.
What if my laptop dies?
Open Simpl on the new machine, enter your email and the code we send you, then restore. Your encrypted backup comes down and your password opens it. You can also restore from a local backup file if you would rather keep everything yourself.
Can I use it on my phone and laptop?
Yes. Install it on both and sync them directly, device to device. Data merges intelligently, so you can work on either.
Does it work outside South Africa?
Yes. Base currency, VAT rate, VAT filing cycle and tax-year start are all configurable per business.
Do you support my bank’s statements?
Most CSV and digital-PDF statements work, and an unknown layout can be mapped once and remembered. (Scanned or photographed statements aren’t supported; use CSV.)
Can my accountant get what they need?
Yes, a full CSV export of income, expenses, VAT and a P&L summary, plus VAT exports per filing period.
Is the price including tax?
The $100 is before tax. If your country charges VAT or sales tax on software, Paddle adds it at checkout and you’ll see the exact total before you pay. If you’re VAT registered, add your number at checkout and claim it back as usual.
What happens when my licence expires?
You keep full read and export access to everything, forever. You just can’t create new documents until you renew.
Is there a native Mac/iPhone app?
Not yet. It installs from the browser as a proper app with its own icon and offline support, which covers most of what a native app gives you.
Try it for a week.
Keep your data forever.
Seven days, full access, no card gymnastics. If it fits how you work, it’s $100 a year, plus VAT or sales tax where your country charges it.
No card required · Nothing to install first · Your data stays on your device