How much does an invoice and statement generator cost in Australia?

If your invoices still get typed up from a job sheet, an order or a spreadsheet, you've probably wondered what it would cost to have them generate themselves instead. The short answer for an Australian small or mid-sized business is a few thousand dollars to build and a small monthly fee to run. The longer answer depends on four things, covered below.

The typical range

A custom invoice and statement generator built from your jobs, quotes or orders typically costs $1,000 to $3,000 to build, in AUD excluding GST. Hosting and support, if you'd like us to run it for you, is optional and starts from $35 a month. Most builds are live in one to two weeks.

Those are the ranges on our invoice and statement generator service page, and they reflect what similar builds have cost. Your figure may differ depending on scope, which is why every build starts with a written scope and a fixed price rather than an hourly rate.

For context, this sits toward the lower end of the custom software range. A single calculator or a missed-call assistant can cost less; a customer portal or a full job tracker usually costs more. Our article on what custom software costs in Australia has the full table.

What moves the price

1. Where the invoice data comes from. If you already use a quote generator or a job tracker we've built, pulling accepted quotes or completed jobs straight into an invoice is quick, because the data already exists in a connected system. Building the generator on top of a spreadsheet or a system we haven't touched before takes longer, because we have to work out how to get the order or job detail out of it reliably first.

2. Statements, not just invoices. A generator that only produces one-off invoices is simpler than one that also builds running customer statements on a schedule, monthly, weekly or on demand, with opening balances, part-payments and ageing.

3. Payment terms and reminders. Standard 30-day terms with a simple reminder before and after the due date is straightforward. Per-customer terms, early-payment discounts, deposits and staged invoicing for larger jobs each add a rule to build and test.

4. What it connects to. Syncing finished invoices to Xero or MYOB so your bookkeeper sees everything in one place is well-trodden. Adding an online pay-now button, or a customer-facing view where accounts can see and download their own invoices and statements, adds a public-facing side to the build.

What is usually included

• Invoices generated from accepted quotes, completed jobs or orders, with no re-keying
• Branded PDF templates with GST, ABN and payment instructions done correctly
• Customer statements on demand or on a schedule
• Reminders before and after the due date, written in your tone
• Sync to Xero or MYOB so your bookkeeper stays happy
• Training and 30 days of post-launch support

Do you still need Xero or MYOB?

Yes. Xero and MYOB are excellent at accounting; they aren't built around your operational data, your jobs, orders or price book. A custom generator creates the invoice from that operational data so nobody types it twice, then hands it to your accounting system as normal. You keep your accountant and your existing reports; you lose the double handling.

When it isn't worth building

If you send fewer than about 30 invoices a month and every one is different, typing them in Xero directly is usually still the simplest option. The maths on building tends to favour businesses sending enough invoices, or enough statements, that the generating and chasing is costing real hours each month. Our piece on whether you should automate invoicing has a five-minute calculation to check your own numbers before spending anything.

How to get an exact figure

Send us a sample invoice, a sample statement if you send them, and a sentence on where the details currently live (a job tracker, a spreadsheet, an order system). From that we can usually give a firm price after one 30-minute call, then build a working version against your own data before you pay anything.

Takeaway: in Australia a custom invoice and statement generator typically costs $1,000 to $3,000 to build plus a small optional monthly fee, and the price is mostly decided by where the invoice data comes from today, not by how many invoices you send.