Invoice Ninja is open-source invoicing, free forever up to five clients, and it holds a deposit properly: a partial amount on the invoice with its own date, a balance that updates itself, a portal where the client pays. That is half of what a made-to-order business needs, at nothing a month, and it is a real reason to stay. The other half is not there — an invoice records what was billed, not what is being built, so what the piece cost, what the run cost and when it will be ready live somewhere else.
Invoice Ninja · checked 10 September 2026
We make Ordamo, so we are an interested party. What we can be is checkable: written by the people who built it for their own furniture studio in Buenos Aires, every price taken from the other side’s own page with the date we read it, and their wins listed above ours.
| Invoice Ninja | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Invoices and the money against them | Orders, deposits and production batches |
| The record before any money moves | An invoice or a quote | An order, with what is agreed, promised and still owed |
| Deposit and balance | A partial amount on the invoice with its own date; the balance updates itself | Both, with dates, on the order — nothing is issued |
| Issuing a tax invoice | Yes — it is the product | No |
| What the piece cost to make | Expenses, but not against the piece | On the order line, and a received batch writes what the run really cost onto its products |
| Margin per order | No | Per order, after the real cost lands |
| Where the piece has got to | Not part of it | A status and a readiness date on the order |
| A page the customer can open | A portal with invoices and a pay button | One link per order: what is paid, what is owed, when it will be ready |
| Entry price | Free to 5 clients, then $14/mo or $140 a year | $29/mo, one plan, however many of you |
| Running it yourself | Self-hosting offered | Hosted by us only |
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
The document exists because you want to be paid; it says nothing about a piece being made. So the order that lives for ten weeks — agreed in March, in the workshop in April, delivered in June — has no representation at all, and its state gets carried in your head and in a chat thread instead.
Invoice Ninja will hold $1,900 taken against $3,800 with the balance updating itself, which is more than most tools this cheap manage. What it will not answer is the one a workshop asks weekly: across every open commission, how much is outstanding, and which pieces are due to be ready when. That is a query over orders, and there are no orders here.
Expenses and projects are in the product, and neither attaches to the piece you sold: nothing divides what the workshop charged for a run of six across the six, and nothing tells you which order that batch of oak belongs to. Revenue you can already see in your bank; margin is the number you cannot.
Five clients, unlimited invoices, a portal and online payments for nothing is genuinely good, and if your problem is issuing documents you should take it. Ordamo costs $29 a month and does not invoice at all — the comparison only makes sense if the order, not the invoice, is what you cannot keep track of.
$0, then $14/mo
The free plan is free forever with up to 5 clients, 1 user, unlimited invoicing, four templates, online payments, recurring invoices and expenses. Ninja Pro is $14 a month billed monthly or $140 a year for unlimited clients and one user; Enterprise starts at $18 a month or $216 a year for one or two users and scales to $300 a month at 51 to 100 users, adding bank sync and e-invoicing. Self-hosting is offered separately.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included — however many of you there are. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month. Nothing is metered.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
Proposals, contracts and invoices with deposits, for a service business. $29 a month billed yearly, plus card fees from 2.7% + 10¢.
DubsadoContracts, forms and payment plans that chase the client for you. $335 a year, billed annually.
WaveFree accounting and invoicing, with a deposit you can request on an estimate. Then $19 a month.
The whole categorySix families of tool, what each one answers, and the three questions that pick between them.
Yes, and better than its price suggests: an invoice takes a partial or deposit amount with its own date, the remaining balance keeps itself current, and the client can pay from the portal. It is available on the free plan. What it does not do is hold the order the deposit belongs to, so production, cost and readiness live elsewhere.
Free forever for up to 5 clients with one user and unlimited invoicing. Ninja Pro is $14 a month or $140 a year for unlimited clients, and Enterprise starts at $18 a month or $216 a year, rising with users to $300 a month at 51 to 100. Self-hosting is offered separately. Ordamo is $29 a month for the business. Confirm the current position on invoiceninja.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
No. Ordamo issues no invoices at all, so if you need a document with tax on it, you keep the invoicing tool whatever else you do. Ordamo replaces the place where you currently track what is owed across open orders, what each piece cost and when it will be ready.
Run both — it is the usual answer. The customer's name and the agreed total exist in each; everything else does not overlap, because one holds documents and payments and the other holds the order, the batch cost and the margin.
Only if the order is what you cannot keep track of. If your open commissions, their deposits and their delivery dates fit comfortably in the invoices you have issued, do not pay us anything. The moment you are reconciling a spreadsheet of deposits against a folder of invoices, that is the job this does.
One page per order rather than one per client, with no login: what was ordered, what has been paid, what is still owed and when the piece is due, updating itself as the order changes. It is not a document store and there is no pay button on it — your own payment link goes there instead.
Invoice Ninja offers it and Ordamo does not: this is hosted by us, with export available at any time. If owning the server is a requirement, that is a genuine reason this is the wrong tool.
Export clients and open invoices as CSV and import the file as it comes — there is no template, the columns are read for you. Turn each partial payment into a deposit on its order with the date the balance is due, add the batches currently in production, and keep issuing invoices where you always did.
Plan names, prices in both billing states, client and user limits, what the free plan includes and the self-hosting option read from invoiceninja.com/pricing-plans on 10 September 2026; the deposit and partial-payment behaviour from Invoice Ninja's own feature page for deposits and partial payments, read on 9 September. Software pricing moves; confirm before deciding on the strength of a figure here.
$0 today · first charge after 7 days · cancel in one click
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver