No migration · Keep your Excel
General Invoices reads your invoices and receipts and enters them into your existing Excel workbook. No new software to learn, no data to move, and nothing changed without your approval.
Not released yet. Join the waitlist and we'll email you when it launches.
Works with your existing .xlsx and .xlsm files. Your workbook never leaves your computer.
Invoice read
Built for people who don't trust software with their books
In one paragraph
General Invoices is a desktop app for small businesses and bookkeepers who keep their books in Excel. It reads invoices and receipts, learns the layout of the workbook you already have, and enters each document into the right cells, previewed, backed up, and approved by you before anything is written. Your spreadsheet stays your spreadsheet.
The manual-entry tax
The numbers already exist on the invoice. You shouldn't have to copy them into a spreadsheet by hand, one cell at a time.
If you keep your books in Excel, you know the routine. Open the invoice. Find the right tab. Type the date, the vendor, the amount, the tax. Tab over, do it again. Then double-check it because one fat-fingered number throws off the whole month.
It works. But it's slow, it's easy to get wrong, and it's hours you'll never bill for. In Intuit's 2024 Business Solutions Survey, businesses reported spending about 25 hours a week on manual data entry and reconciling data between apps. That is time that isn't going toward clients, customers, or going home on time.
The usual fix is to "just switch to accounting software." But you like your spreadsheet. You built it the way you think. It does exactly what you need. Switching means months of migration, a new tool to learn, and giving up the one system you actually trust.
So don't switch. Automate the typing instead.
How it works
You stay in control the whole way. Claude reads the document; verified code does the writing; you approve before anything is saved.
Drag in PDFs or photos of your invoices and receipts. Batches and multi-page documents are fine.
Drag and drop, one or fifty at a time.
General Invoices extracts the date, vendor, amounts, and tax, then figures out exactly where each value belongs in your workbook: the right tab, the right row, the right cells.
It learns your workbook's structure once, then follows it.
Before anything is saved, you see a clear cell-by-cell preview of what's going where. Looks right? Approve it. The entry is written, your file is backed up, and you're done.
Nothing touches your file until you say so.
No migration · It adapts to your book
You don't adopt a template. You don't set anything up. It reads the spreadsheet you already built and fits in around it, and you stay the last word on every line.
Open your existing Excel file, .xlsx or .xlsm. There's no template to adopt and nothing to set up. Your workbook stays on your computer the whole time.
Open your Excel workbook. No new format to learn.
It reads your sheet's structure and tells you what it found in plain English, like "your ledger is grouped by vendor, amounts in column B, new rows go in date order." You confirm it once, or fix anything it got wrong.
It learns your spreadsheet structure. No migration: it adapts to your book.
For each invoice, you see exactly where it will go before anything is written. A backup is made first, and nothing is saved to your file until you click Approve.
You approve before it writes, every single time.
No migration. It adapts to your book, and never writes a thing you didn't approve.
The safety guarantee
Every entry is previewed, verified on a copy, backed up, and approved by you before it touches the real file.
The result: the convenience of automation with the safety of doing it by hand.
Exactly what stays on your computer, what leaves, and how a write happens →
You see a cell-level plan of every change before it happens. No surprises, no hidden edits.
Each entry is tested on a duplicate of your workbook first, so the real file is only written when the result is known-good.
A fresh backup is saved before every write. If you ever want to undo, the previous version is right there.
Nothing is saved until you click approve. You are always the last step.
If your workbook is open in Excel, or it changed since you approved the plan, General Invoices stops and asks instead of overwriting your work.
QuickBooks alternative for Excel bookkeeping
QuickBooks asks you to leave your spreadsheet and adopt their system. We don't. We automate the typing into the book you already keep.
QuickBooks and the receipt-capture tools around it can scan a document, but only after you've moved your whole business into QuickBooks. The capture itself is shallow: a few fields, one file at a time, no real batch or multi-page support, and a "for review" pile that quietly grows. We took the opposite approach.
| Capability | QuickBooks + receipt capture | General Invoices |
|---|---|---|
| Where your books live | In QuickBooks (you migrate everything) | In your existing Excel workbook (no migration) |
| What you have to learn | A new accounting system | Nothing. You keep your spreadsheet |
| Extraction depth | A few fields, one file at a time | Full extraction of dates, vendors, amounts and tax, in batches and multi-page documents |
| Where data ends up | Their database | The right cells in your own workbook |
| Your control | A "for review" backlog inside their app | A cell-level preview you approve before any save |
| Your data | On their servers | On your computer |
We're not a cheaper QuickBooks. We get rid of the manual entry into the book you refuse to give up.
Read the full, balanced comparison, including when QuickBooks is the better choice →
Looking at Lido, DocuClipper or Power Automate instead? Here is how they differ →
Who it's for
Two kinds of people get the most out of General Invoices.
Small-business owners
You track everything in one spreadsheet you trust. You don't want accounting software, a bookkeeper's monthly bill, or a migration project. You want the invoice typing to stop. Drag in a month of invoices and review a few clicks instead of a few hours.
Solo and small teams welcomeBookkeepers & accountants
Your clients live in spreadsheets, and switching them to accounting software is a fight you don't want and they don't need. Keep each client's workbook exactly as it is. Open one client's book at a time, automate the data entry, preview every change, and bill the hours you save back to higher-value work.
One workbook at a time; switch from the File menuLaunch pricing
Pick a plan by how many invoices and receipts you handle each month. Every plan has the same features, and the Free plan covers 10 invoices a month.
Solo business
$29/mo
Up to 50 invoices / month
Typical small business or one bookkeeper
$79/mo
Up to 200 invoices / month
Busy bookkeeper
$199/mo
Up to 600 invoices / month
Every plan, including Free, includes:
If you're an accounting firm running many client workbooks, we'll put together a plan that fits. Tell us how many clients you handle and we'll take it from there.
At launch, the Free plan covers 10 invoices every month, with no credit card. One hour of data entry a week, automated, pays for any paid plan many times over. Full plan details →
Answers
No. Not corrupting your workbook is the design goal, not an afterthought. Every entry is previewed as a cell-by-cell plan, tested on a copy of your file, and backed up before anything is written. Nothing is saved until you approve it. If your workbook is open in Excel or has changed since you approved, General Invoices stops and asks instead of overwriting your work.
QuickBooks asks you to move your whole business into their system before its receipt capture does anything, and that capture is shallow: a few fields, one file at a time. General Invoices does the opposite: it leaves your books in your existing Excel workbook and automates the data entry into it. We're not a cheaper QuickBooks; we remove the manual typing into the spreadsheet you'd rather keep.
Your workbook and its dollar values stay on your machine and are never uploaded. Our service receives the invoice documents you ask it to read, a summary of your workbook's layout with every number, amount and date masked, up to eight example notes with every digit masked, and any setup-chat messages you send.
No. You keep your workbook exactly as it is: same tabs, same layout, same formulas. General Invoices learns the structure you already built and writes into the right cells. There's nothing to reformat and nothing to migrate.
It works with standard Excel workbooks (.xlsx and .xlsm files) from current versions of Excel. For incoming invoices and receipts, you drag in PDFs and photos. Batches and multi-page documents are supported. Forwarding invoices by email is planned for after launch.
At launch, the Free plan will include 10 invoices every month, with no credit card. Paid plans will be $29/month for up to 50 invoices, $79/month for up to 200, and $199/month for up to 600. Every plan has the same features. Accounting firms managing many client workbooks can ask for a custom plan.
Three steps. You add invoices by dragging in PDFs or photos. The app extracts the fields and figures out where each one belongs in your workbook. You review a cell-level preview and approve. Then it writes the entry and backs up your file. Claude reads the document; deterministic, verified code does the writing.
You catch it in the preview before anything is saved, so a wrong value never reaches your file. And because every entry is backed up automatically, you can always fall back to the previous version of your workbook.
All 22 questions: safety, data handling, compatibility, layouts, pricing →
Waitlist
General Invoices isn't released yet. Join the waitlist and we'll email you when it launches. No migration, no new system, no risk to your books.
Thanks. We'll email you when General Invoices launches. Keep using your spreadsheet in the meantime.