Invoice Ninja v2 - Live demo

Although we have still have a fair amount of work remaining we’re able to share a live demo of the new v2 admin interface. If you’ve been using our new mobile app it should look very familiar as they share the same codebase. It’s fully responsive and will load differently on a phone or desktop.

http://demo.invoicing.co

A few years back we were managing three separate codebases (web, iOS and Android), having a single codebase will have a massive impact on our productivity.

It’s important to note we have a number of changes we’re working on to make better use of a the wider desktop display such us adding an option to show the records as a table in place of the list view.

One key new feature to point out is the new groups option under Advanced Settings. You can use groups to control the settings of a selection of clients, we think this will be very powerful.

If you have the time to try it out we’d greatly appreciate any feedback! The app is built with Flutter, I believe this is currently the single best option for cross-platform development. If you’d like to try building the app it’d be great to get more contributions to the code ?

https://github.com/invoiceninja/flutter-client

Where can I report a bug ?

Having Device Settings of Tablet/Mobile are nice, but the menus in the Tablet style are painful… I also greatly hope there will be a Desktop setting as well (as they simply do not play out well in a standard browser).

  • J

Okay, I’ll report here. Thank you for letting us test this !
I tested it on desktop, and I agree with TheShniz that it looks very clean on mobile device, but that ergonomy fels a bit off on a desktop (which is my only use for InvoiceNinja). Maybe I just need to get used to it, time will tell. After a few minutes I saw some problems (ubuntu linux 18.04.3, firefox 70.0, not behind a firewall or vpn):

  • saving returns an “XMLHttpRequest error” ; I can’t test the workflow considering this.
  • arrows up and down keys are not active to select a line in the filter, for example a client name for a new invoice
  • there was a glitch on the word “invoice” in the line “invoice date”, but I’m not able to make it happen again.
  • tab key is not active when filling in contact coordinates for example.
    I’ll try to make some more tests in the next weeks. Very clean look so far, good job on that matter. But I’m worried the app’s ergonomics becomes too mobile-device-oriented and prevents a quick workflow on desktop, which is one of V1 hot feature to me.

Thanks for all of the feedback!! At this point nothing works so there’s no point in reporting bugs, however we do appreciate feedback on the overall design. As written in the initial post this is still early days… we have many additional changes planned to optimize the app for the desktop.

@TheShniz, can you clarify what you mean. What aspect of the menus exactly are hard to use?

@paroiron, saving is disabled in the demo (it isn’t connected to a backend). I’m the main programmer of the app and don’t use a mouse, before we release the app you can be certain keyboard interactions will be improved.

One other point worth adding… in most places using a long click will act as a shortcut.

Hello Hillel,

Thanks for all the hard work.
I’m glad to see a full Dark mode in the UI. I’m not sure what stage of the UI design you are at, chances are you are well aware of the below but I’ll give my two cents anyway.

The interface is almost perfect for Mobile/Tablet use. However it is not great for the Desktop, where it is mostly used (at least in our case).

TLDR: I think simplifying the Desktop UI is a mistake. I believe the V1’s UI is great and V2 should try to closely follow it with some minor functionality enhancement. i.e. ability to add or remove rows in client, invoice, quotation etc lists.

Maybe ability to have a customizable dash for each section. i.e. if I go into invoices I’d like to see what is the total Inoviced for the period, how much of it was paid, how much is overdue, what’s the total tax to be paid for the period etc. A more flexible report framework would also be appreciated like the ability to create a completely custom report with fields from other tables etc. For example I’d love to create a report of paid invoices for the selected period and see when they were paid, is it full or partial payment, what was the net and what was the tax paid (taking into account partial payments) what is the payment reference etc.

The V2’s current major design issues on desktop are:
Horizontal design is way too cluttered. If Main Menu, Sub-menu, Selected Item Content and History are all open at the same time, that’s 4 sections on the main screen, that’s not counting tabs in the Selected Item Content section like details, items, etc.

The lists (clients, invoices, quotations etc.) should be more akin to v1, like a table (preferably with an option to add/remove rows). Most users would want to be able to sort Client list by balance, or alphabetically or see the clients primary email of phone number immediately without having to click through several more times.

There is no need for the “Selected Item Content” section, as per above I’d much rather a list of clients with a bunch of details take up the entire screen, If I want to drill down I’ll double click on the client.

Line items should not be in a separate tab on invoices or quotations or anywhere else similar to those. They should not have to be added 1 by 1. Anyone who composes long quotes/invoices daily will be pulling their hair out if they have to click for each line item. Once again V1 style is perfect - Editable table with a lookup field which fills the rest automatically if match is found, otherwise the rest of the info is entered by hand,seamlessly, without having to click (create new product etc) and product is created once invoice is saved.

While tabs are appropriate in certain places like Client details etc. I believe they are a hindrance for Invoices and Quotations, most people want to see all the information in front of them and scroll down. If you are trying to minimise the amount of initial info displayed better off using vertical expandable sections. Invoice preview however can go into a new tab… or a floating pop-up.

Hope the above is not too critical, it only relates to the desktop UI, the current V2 UI seems good for tablet and mobile. Although please fix the “go back” issue :slight_smile: if possible. For example clicking on a client then clients invoices then clicking back takes you to main dash instead of the selected client.

Thanks for your detailed feedback! Here are my thoughts however keep in mind everything is still very much open for discussion.

The current state of the UI is a reflection of the order of our development (mobile => tablet => desktop). The app currently works well on mobile and tablet but we have a lot of work remaining to optimize it for the desktop.

  • My personal preference is to keep the left navigation menu collapsed, we’ve tried to make the UI customizable so it works well for all screen sizes. The layout can be adjusted on Settings > Device Settings.

  • Agreed, we’re working on adding the ability to change from a list to a table view.

  • We’re considering making this configurable so the list (or table) take up the full width of the screen.

  • Agreed, we plan to implement a table (as is used in v1) to quickly add/edit line items.

  • I hear you but there’s a lot of value in using tabs, they provide a way to create a UI which is consistent across all devices (mobile/tablet/desktop). It’s possible we’ll reconsider this in the future. (EDIT: we’ve reconsidered :slight_smile: This should also be a configurable option).

Strider27, I agree with your thoughts on being efficient on desktops. Thank you Hillel for your listening and work.

Thanks again for all the feedback, please keep it coming…

I’ve updated the v2 demo with the latest build.

http://demo.invoicing.co

There are two main changes:

  • We’ve implemented a full screen invoice editor
  • We’ve added a list/table selector (it’s currently only enabled for the products module)

The main area which still needs improvement is keyboard control, you should be able to create an invoice from start to finish without using a mouse. We’ll have this working before the app is released, we also hope to improve browser back/forward support.

Good news, I’ll take some time to try it for sure. Thanks!

Great work

Will v2 support proposals?

It won’t be available when the app is initially released but will be added over time

The group function is a must need for me! I’m not so worried about the desktop layout, that can be fixed later. Is there an estimated time for release!???

We hope to have a self host release ready in the first half of 2020 and then a hosted release in the second half of the year.

I’m amazed by how many use cases are solved by groups for custom email templates in different languages and sub-companies under a single company.

Will v2 add inventory management??

Similar to proposals it won’t be available initially but we plan to add it over time

Yes GerooTech an inventory system per client would absolutely be a great feature!! And maybe a payroll system, just maybe?! ? I’m very pleased with Invoice Ninja and I will continue to use it for as long as I’m in business.

Thanks for the feedback, that’s great to hear!