Getting started
Go from a blank account to your first paid invoice.
What Nihilo Invoice is for
Nihilo Invoice helps freelancers, small businesses, and agencies send invoices, quote work, track time, and get paid. Once your account is set up, you can invoice a client in any currency, accept online payments, run reports, and give customers a branded portal to pay and manage their documents — all from the same place.
Key concepts
A few terms appear throughout the product. Understanding them up front makes everything else easier.
- Client — a person or company you invoice.
- Contact — an email address on a client. One client can have several contacts, each with their own portal login.
- Invoice — a bill sent to a client.
- Quote — a priced proposal that can convert into an invoice when accepted.
- Recurring invoice — a template that generates invoices on a schedule.
- Payment — money received against one or more invoices.
- Credit — a balance owed to the client, applied to future invoices.
- Expense — a cost you incurred, optionally billable to a client.
- Product — a reusable line item (description, price, tax).
- Client portal — where contacts view and pay invoices.
1. Company details and logo
Your company name, address, and contact information appear on every invoice, quote, and email. Your logo shows on PDFs, emails, and the client portal. Open Settings → Company Details. A landscape logo usually displays cleanest across emails and PDFs.
2. Company defaults
Defaults are the starting point for every new invoice, quote, and client — payment terms, reminders, and design. Set them once; individual clients can still override when needed.
3. Taxes and localization
If you charge tax, configure it before your first invoice. You can use invoice-level taxes, line-level taxes, or both, and localize currency, date format, and terminology. Open Settings → Tax Settings.
4. Create your first invoice
Add a client, list items, adjust product columns if needed, confirm your invoice number pattern, then send. See the Invoices guide for the full reference.
5. Connect payments and get paid
Connect a payment gateway so clients can pay from the invoice email or the client portal. Nihilo Invoice works with major gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, Square, and more.
Good to know
Currency amounts use the client currency’s standard precision (usually two decimals). Unit prices below 1 support up to six decimals. Quantities also support up to six decimals — useful for hours and measurements. Small total differences can appear between line-level and invoice-level tax because of rounding.