Free Invoicing App for Tradesmen — No Subscription, Ever

Why "Free" Invoicing Apps Usually Aren't

Search for a free invoicing app as a UK tradesman and you'll find plenty of results. QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Xero, Invoice Ninja, Zoho — most of them advertise a free tier. What they don't put in the headline is that the free tier limits you to 5 invoices a month, removes your logo branding, excludes VAT handling, or quietly expires after 30 days.

The business model is simple: get you set up, get your customers into the system, then charge you once switching feels painful. It's an industry-wide playbook.

TaskDrop works differently. The product is free forever. We earn 1% only when your customer pays by card through TaskDrop Pay. If you only ever take bank transfers, you'll never pay us a penny. That's the whole model.

What You Actually Get for Free

There's no Starter tier hiding the good stuff. Every TaskDrop user gets the full product:

TaskDrop vs Other "Free" Invoicing Apps

Here's how the free tiers of the most common alternatives stack up against TaskDrop's free plan:

How Can It Be Free?

It's a fair question and worth answering directly. TaskDrop earns money when your customers pay you by card through TaskDrop Pay. We charge 1% of the transaction value — that's it. Stripe (the payment processor) charges their standard fee of 1.5% + 20p separately, which is the same rate you'd get if you set up your own Stripe account.

If a customer pays a £180 invoice by card, you receive £175.30. TaskDrop earns £1.80. Stripe earns £2.90. If the customer pays by bank transfer, everyone earns nothing and you receive £180 in full.

This means our incentive is aligned with yours — we only make money when you do, and only on transactions where we're actually adding value by processing the payment. There's no subscription revenue to protect, no reason to lock features behind a paywall, and no trial-to-paid conversion target to hit.

Is There a Catch? (Fair Use)

One thing worth being upfront about: there's a fair-use cap of 25 documents per calendar month for tradespeople who have not yet used TaskDrop Pay. This covers invoices, quotes, and job reports combined. It exists because running the infrastructure costs money, and when we're earning nothing from an account we need to keep things sustainable.

For most sole traders, 25 documents a month is plenty. But if you're busier than that, the cap is removed permanently as soon as you complete your first successful card payment through TaskDrop Pay. One transaction — even a small one — and document generation becomes unlimited, with no further conditions.

It's worth knowing that TaskDrop Pay is entirely optional and costs nothing to activate — you only pay the 1% fee on transactions where a customer actually pays by card. If your next customer happens to pay by card, the cap is gone for good from that point on.

If you run a high volume and genuinely do not want to use card payments at all, email owen@taskdrop.co.uk — cap raises are granted at no cost for the asking.

Who Is It For?

TaskDrop is built specifically for UK self-employed tradespeople — plumbers, electricians, gas engineers, builders, plasterers, tilers, roofers, landscapers, and anyone else who does job-based work. The VAT and CIS support is built for UK tax rules specifically, not bolted on as an afterthought for an international audience.

It's particularly useful if:

• You're currently sending invoices by text, WhatsApp message, or handwritten note and want something more professional
• You're paying for invoicing software and wondering whether you're getting value from it
• You've just gone self-employed and don't want to start spending £20/month before you've even got your first customer
• You do CIS work and want the deductions handled automatically without having to think about the maths
• You want your expenses and mileage in one place ahead of your Self Assessment

How to Get Started

There's no app to download and no account form to fill in. You sign up by sending a WhatsApp message to TaskDrop's number. Setup takes about 60 seconds — you give it your business name, your logo if you have one, and your payment details. After that you're live.

To create an invoice, you send the job details over WhatsApp — customer name, job description, amount. TaskDrop generates a numbered PDF and sends it back. You forward it to the customer. Done.

If you're the kind of person who uses voice notes, you can dictate the job details instead of typing. TaskDrop transcribes and processes them automatically.