Invoices go out late for a dull reason: sending one means opening a template, finding the last number, remembering what was delivered, working out the due date, attaching a PDF, and writing an email around it. That is twenty minutes of admin at the end of a day of real work, and it slides. Every day it slides is a day added to the client's thirty.
North drafts the invoice from the project, so the twenty minutes is two.
What the draft has in it
The invoice is pre-filled from the signed deal: who it is billed to, the invoice number in sequence, the line items from the delivered work at the prices the client agreed to, the due date from your terms, and a notes block that carries your payment details so the client's "how do I pay this?" is answered on the document itself. If you set up delivery stages, the finished stages are already there as lines, and each remembers whether it has been billed, so the same work cannot be charged twice.
You review it and change what you like. Then you send it, from a screen that shows what is going and to whom.
What happens after you send
The client gets an email with a link to the invoice in their deal room, alongside the proposal and the signed contract, with your branding on all three. You see the moment they open it, on the project's timeline and in the next day's digest. When they pay, you are told.
On the free plan the client pays by bank transfer against the details on the invoice, and you mark it paid by hand. On the paid plan the invoice also carries a card button that runs a checkout on your own Stripe account, with the money going straight to you and nothing taken by North. Bank transfer stays on the document either way, for the client who prefers it.
When it goes late
An invoice past its due date is noticed for you. North writes the reminder: short, factual, assuming the best, naming the invoice and the days overdue. It appears as a draft for you to read. You send it or you do not, and if you send it, the project records that you did, so a week later you are not trying to remember whether you already chased.
Nothing goes to the client without you. This is the same rule as everywhere else in North, and here it is worth stating twice, because the competing products treat automatic chasing as a feature and we treat it as a thing we deliberately do not do. A late-paying client is a relationship moment, and a robot with your name on it is the wrong voice for it.
Retainers and deposits
Two things live on the paid plan because they are the machinery of money moving rather than the invoice itself.
A retainer can be set to repeat: North drafts the next month's invoice on the cadence you choose and tells you it is waiting. It drafts; it does not send. Pausing or removing the cadence is never gated, because the off switch always works.
A deposit or a milestone can be billed on its own from the stage schedule, exactly and only for the stages you pick, with the balance carried by the rest. The full invoice at the end of a project works on every plan without any of this.
Where it stops
North is not bookkeeping. It knows what you invoiced and what was paid; it does not do your accounts, your expenses or your tax, and it will not pretend to. Export everything for your accountant whenever you like, on any plan. It does not accept payment by any route other than card and bank transfer. And it will not chase, escalate, or send anything on its own, which is the whole point.
Common questions
- How many invoices can I send on the free plan?
- As many as you have work to bill. There is no monthly cap and there never will be one; that commitment is written on the pricing page specifically because the free invoicing apps tend to allow three a month and then stop. Sending, tracking, the opened notice and the drafted reminder are all on the free plan.
- Do reminders go out automatically?
- No. When an invoice goes past due, North writes the reminder and tells you it is ready. You read it, change it if you like, and send it, or do not. The apps that advertise automatic reminders are describing a robot that emails your client in your name on a schedule; we think your voice with a late-paying client is worth more than the minute it saves.
- Can I invoice in a currency other than dollars?
- On the paid plan, yes: an invoice can be issued in euros or pounds as well as dollars, and it is paid in its own currency. On the free plan invoices are in dollars. Money in different currencies is kept in separate books and is never added together or converted, because a converted total is a guess wearing a decimal point.