Invoiceplane

Invoiceplane is a web application for managing invoices, clients and payments.

Installation

To setup Invoiceplane locally, this is the most minimal configuration to get started

/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

services.invoiceplane.sites."localhost".enable = true;

After that Invoiceplane will be available at http://localhost . Complete the setup by choosing your default language and setting up your user profile.

Configuration

Invoice templates

Invoiceplane will render and export invoices as PDF. You can create your own invoice templates or reuse existing ones. The following example fetches an invoice template and makes it available to your running Invoiceplane instance

/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:
let

  template-vtdirektmarketing = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
    name = "vtdirektmarketing";
    src = pkgs.fetchgit {
      url = "https://git.project-insanity.org/onny/invoiceplane-vtdirektmarketing.git";
      rev = "9ac724b207b1f842fe29bb270078f341259785ad";
      hash = "sha256-WYnB5QSNN74eewxNY98iWRwz5kBxbew/5iAL/N8EIlM=";
    };
    makeFlags = [ "DESTDIR=$(out)" ];
  };

in {

  services.invoiceplane.sites."localhost" = {
    enable = true;
    invoiceTemplates = [ template-vtdirektmarketing ];
  };

}

Invoice mail delivery

There are several methods to automatically deliver invoices via mail. First we have to configure which mail backend to use. One method which is confirmed to work on NixOS is to use sendmail. Using a configured program like Msmtp to relay mails from your server using your existing mail provider. Unfortunately it is not yet possible to configure the mail backend with extraSettings. In this case navigate in the web interface to: Settings → System settings → E-Mail and set mail delivery method to Sendmail.

Invoices can be send directly while editing them. It is also possible to create a common mail template which can be reused. Go to Settings → Mail templates. To configure a default mail template, go to Settings → System settings → Invoices.

Recurring invoices

See upstream documentation on how to configure recurring. invoices. This feature requires a cron task setup which queries the Invoiceplane backend every few minutes. This can be configured with the Invoiceplane module as follows

/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

services.invoiceplane.sites."localhost" = {
  cron.enable = true;
  cron.key = "1234";
};

Replace the cron key value with the one given in the Invoiceplane administration web interface.

Electronic invoice

To enable electronic invoicing using the standard ZUGFeRD, we can hardcode the activation into the InvoicePlane source code. Otherwise it has to be manually enabled in the settings menu of the web app.

/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

nixpkgs = {
  overlays = [
    (self: super: {
      invoiceplane = super.invoiceplane.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: rec {
        postFixup = ''
          sed -i 's/\$include_zugferd = .*/$include_zugferd = true;/g' $out/application/helpers/pdf_helper.php
        '';
      });
    })
  ];
};

Enabling this via settings option is not yet possible.

Maintenance

Upgrading to new versions

After upgrading to a new version of Invoiceplane, change following two lines of your Invoiceplane config. The path to the file ipconfig.php depends on the hostname you configured.

/var/lib/invoiceplane/localhost/ipconfig.php

DISABLE_SETUP=false
SETUP_COMPLETED=false

Access your Invoiceplane instance again in your browser and rerun the setup wizard which now reappears. After upgrading the tables you can login as usual. It is now recommended to change both variables in the config file above back to true.

See also

• Crater, alternative self-hosted invoicing application