Most solo tradies are paying $20 a month for invoicing software they could replace for free.
That's $240 a year to send PDFs with your logo on them.
Here's the actual math — and two tools that cost you nothing unless you're doing serious volume.
Wave: Actually Free, Not "Free Trial" Free
Wave invoicing is free. Not freemium-gated, not "free for 30 days." Free.
You get unlimited invoices, unlimited customers, automatic payment reminders, and a dashboard that shows you what's outstanding. The mobile app works. The UI isn't embarrassing to look at.
Where Wave makes its money is payment processing — 2.9% + 30¢ per card transaction, same rate as everyone else. If your customers pay by bank transfer (ACH), it's 1% with a $1 cap. You only pay that if you use Wave Payments. You can invoice through Wave and collect cash or check and pay exactly $0 forever.
For a plumber doing 15 jobs a month at $400 average, sending invoices through Wave costs you nothing. If every single one of those customers pays by card through Wave, you're paying about $180 in processing fees — same fees you'd pay through any other processor, plus the $20/mo software cost on top with a paid tool.
Stop paying for the wrapper around a payment processor.
Stripe Invoicing: 0.4% + 5¢ Per Paid Invoice
If you already use Stripe — or you're doing higher-ticket work — Stripe Invoicing is worth knowing about.
The real number is this: you pay nothing to create and send invoices. You only pay 0.4% plus 5 cents when an invoice is actually paid. On a $1,200 HVAC job, that's $4.85. On a $300 handyman job, that's $1.25.
Compare that to $20 flat per month. If you're closing fewer than five invoices a month, Stripe costs you less. If you're doing 30 invoices a month at $500 average, you're paying around $61 in Stripe invoice fees versus $20 flat — so at volume, the flat fee wins.
But here's what most people miss: those Stripe invoice fees are on top of standard payment processing (2.9% + 30¢ per transaction). So model it out before assuming Stripe is cheaper end-to-end. For low-volume, higher-ticket trades, it's excellent. For high-frequency, lower-ticket work, Wave is likely the better call.
What You're Actually Paying For With Paid Tools
The paid invoicing tools — your QuickBooks Simples, your Jobbers, your ServiceTitans — bundle invoicing with scheduling, CRM, job tracking, and reporting.
If you're using all of that, the price can be justified.
But in practice, most solo operators are using 20% of the features and paying 100% of the price. They signed up for the "professional" look of it. They got a login they check twice a week.
If your business is you plus maybe one helper, you do not need a $49-$149/month platform to send invoices. You need something that looks clean, sends reminders automatically, and lets customers pay without calling you back.
Wave and Stripe both do that. For free, or near-free.
The One Time You Should Pay for Invoicing Software
When you're growing past solo. The moment you have multiple crews, multiple job types, and you're trying to see profitability by job category — that's when the $49/month for a proper field service platform starts making sense. The reporting and scheduling integration earns its keep.
Until then, you're renting a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store.
One more thing: VettedCalls integrates with your workflow so that by the time a new customer is ready to book, you're already saving time on the front end. The back end should cost you just as little.
Don't let your invoicing software eat a job's worth of margin every single month.
This week's move
Log into whatever you're paying for invoicing right now, check the monthly charge, then spend 20 minutes setting up a free Wave account — if you can do everything you need there, cancel the paid subscription before your next billing date.
Forward this
If another tradie you know is still losing leads to voicemail, send them VettedCalls.