payday is a command line tool that can be used to generate high quality printable invoices using just a couple of YAML files and HTML templates. Currently, it supports Jinja2 and Webkit based PDF rendering capabilities.
With payday, your entire billing history becomes easy to maintain in a source control system.
- stores client metadata in YAML files
- stores bills in YAML files
- renders custom HTML/PDF bills using combinations of
- jinja2 (HTML)
- wkhtmltopdf (PDF)
- not used currently: phantomjs (PDF, PNG)
- not used currently: xhtml2pdf (PDF)
Store your invoices in easy to read and edit lighweight files. Manage your invoice files wherever and however you like.
- no web gui, no REST
- no cloud
- no database
- no security issues
Filesystem layout:
example/ This is the root which you keep in your SCM
├── billing Right now, this one is hardcoded...
│ ├── archive Put old PDFs here for reference
│ └── templates Want different layouts for different clients?
│ └── default
│ └── assets
└── clients All client metadata including invoice data is here
└── snakeoil
└── invoices
Not sure how to generate multi page layouts via HTML. Maybe http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/page.html helps?
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-pip python-virtualenv python-dev wkhtmltopdf xvfb
python setup.py installpayday-client list
payday-invoice list
payday-invoice info 201408-01
payday-invoice render 201408-01 out.pdf example/An example PDF as rendered using the data stored in the example/ subdirectory is provided for demonstration.
I personally got the best results with wkhtmltopdf, since if doesn't rasterize the output and thus creates a PDF with selectable text while at the same time producing good quality rendering because it is based on Webkit.
- Python 2.7
- wkhtmltopdf
- xvfb (virtual framebuffer) on Linux
- OS X or Linux (Debian based distros have been used)
Support for Python3 is not available at this point due to Jinja2 being incompatible.
This thing is unfinished and was hacked together during a couple of sessions at the end of each month while I worked as a a freelance. Since I stopped being a freelance, I am not developing this actively anymore, however, I will be happy to support it with merge requests and potentially handing over to an interested adopter.