<story><title>How I Write Invoices in Vim</title><url>http://jezenthomas.com/how-i-write-invoices-in-vim/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dpcan</author><text>In a couple years, he will probably learn that maintaining this invoice system to support the changes in his business will prove to be a frustrating waste of time.&lt;p&gt;For a reasonable fee, I now use Freshbooks.  I love paying a small fee to have a company constantly improving and perfecting the invoice system I use, and the system saves me A LOT of time each month.&lt;p&gt;13 years ago, I could just put numbers in an invoice in word, send it to a customer, they paid by check.  Then over the years, it got much more complicated.  In-house tools, mixed with other accounting software, was just sucking time.&lt;p&gt;I know it&amp;#x27;s fun to write tools like this for business tasks, but I think you also have to pick your battles, and when you can pay for an affordable tool that will greatly simplify a business task, I choose this path.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I recently started using Freshbooks&amp;#x27; API to do little reporting tasks they don&amp;#x27;t provide, and this fills the &amp;quot;make my own tools&amp;quot; void when it comes to accounting.</text></comment>
<story><title>How I Write Invoices in Vim</title><url>http://jezenthomas.com/how-i-write-invoices-in-vim/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JorgeGT</author><text>You can also have a nice LaTeX template ready and then programmatically complete it with the required information, for instance the template is set to read a \input{clientinfo.tex} somewhere that you create with a command like echo Mike &amp;gt; clientinfo.tex etc. Then you issue the compile order and you have a nice PDF that can then be emailed or archived or whatever. At least that&amp;#x27;s how we make repetitive reports in our lab!</text></comment>