Frequently asked questions about General Invoices

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.

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.

It refuses. General Invoices checks before every write; if the file is open in Excel, or it has changed since you approved the plan, it stops and asks you instead of writing into a file another program is using.

Yes. A timestamped backup of your workbook is saved before every write, and the last five backups are kept, so you can always go back to a previous version.

It does not rewrite your formulas. Entries are added in your sheet's existing style. If a new row lands inside a range a total covers, the total is widened to include it; calculated columns are filled down; native Excel Tables grow to cover the new row. Your own formulas stay as you wrote them.

It is refused. If an invoice with the same vendor, amount and date is already in the book, General Invoices will not post it again.

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. The full breakdown is on the security page.

Claude, by Anthropic, reads invoices and the masked layout summary of your workbook. Ordinary, tested code on your computer does all writing to your file, never the AI, and only after you approve a cell-level preview.

Partly. Previewing, backing up and writing happen on your computer. Reading a new invoice, and learning or re-learning a layout, need an internet connection because they run through our service. If you are offline, nothing is written and nothing is guessed.

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, one at a time or in batches, up to 30 pages and 10 MB per document.

Not today. General Invoices works with Excel .xlsx and .xlsm files stored on your computer.

General Invoices is a desktop app. It launches on macOS, and a Windows version is planned.

The common ones: vendor-grouped ledgers with per-vendor detail sheets, one sheet per month, check registers with a running balance, signed-amount ledgers, accounts-payable and accounts-receivable registers, sheets with calculated columns and cross-sheet summary tabs, native Excel Tables, and months-by-accounts utility grids. It refuses layouts it cannot express safely, such as one column per expense category or a quarterly budget grid, with an explanation rather than a guess.

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.

Three steps. You drag in invoices. 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 backs up your file and writes the entry. Claude reads the document; deterministic, verified code does the writing.

Drag in PDFs or photos, one at a time or in batches, up to 30 pages and 10 MB per document. Forwarding invoices to a dedicated email address, and connecting Gmail or Outlook directly, are planned for after launch.

When you open your workbook, the app reads its structure (sheet names, headers, where the totals are) and describes what it found in plain English, such as "your ledger is grouped by vendor, amounts in column B, new rows go in date order". You confirm or correct it once. It then runs a dry-run write against every place it plans to write and shows each one passing before any real invoice is touched. The guide walks through all five setup steps.

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. See the full plan table.

At launch, yes. The Free plan will include 10 invoices every month, with no credit card and no end date, and every feature the paid plans have; only the allowance is smaller.

No. It is not an accounting system: no bank feeds, reconciliation, payroll or tax filing. It automates data entry into the Excel workbook you already use. If you need full accounting software, QuickBooks or Xero may fit better; if you want to keep your books in Excel, General Invoices removes the typing. Here is the full comparison.

General Invoices isn't released yet. It will launch on macOS first. Join the waitlist and we'll email you when it launches.

Yes, one workbook at a time. Open a client's workbook from the File menu, confirm its layout, and enter that client's invoices; each client's book stays exactly as it is. Firms managing many client workbooks can ask for a custom plan.