This audit takes one evening. At the end you'll know what your invoicing setup costs you in fees and hours, where you're exposed on VAT, and whether it's time to change tools.

It's for solo consultants whose Friday evenings keep disappearing into chasing invoices, copying hours into spreadsheets and checking the bank to see who has paid. Usually the client work is fine and the business side eats the time.

1. Map what happens from work done to money received

Write down what you do in a normal week, not what you planned to do. For many solo consultants it looks like this:

Time noted in a calendar, a notebook or a phone
Hours copied into a spreadsheet at the end of the week
An invoice built by hand from a template
An email asking for a bank transfer
A separate sheet where you mark who has paid

Any step that lives only in your head will break the first week you're tired or busy.

Add up the fees

List everything you pay to get an invoice out and the money in:

Monthly subscriptions for invoicing, time tracking or payment tools
Per-invoice or per-transaction fees
Card processing fees and chargebacks
Currency conversion costs if you bill abroad
Extra user charges or add-ons you rarely use

Mid-year is a good point to total what has gone out in fees so far, before you drift into another year on the same setup.

Time to change something if:

You can't say what percentage of each invoice goes on fees
You can't see every unpaid invoice in one place
You spend more than half an hour a week formatting invoices
Turning one project's hours into one invoice takes a dozen steps

If two or more of these apply, the setup is costing you more than its subscription.

2. Check that time tracking matches how you work

Every invoice depends on the hours being right. When time is logged late, or scattered across notes, invoices go out late, you underbill, and clients query totals because their memory doesn't match yours.

Ask:

Can you start and stop a timer in a couple of clicks, on your laptop and your phone?
Can you log time to a client and project as you go, not later?
Can you separate billable from non-billable work?
Can you turn a set of time entries into an invoice in one step?

Time to change something if:

You rebuild timesheets from memory at month end
Clients ask for breakdowns of hours you can't easily produce
You enter the same time twice, once for the project and once for the invoice

3. Check how clients pay you, and what happens when they don't

Clients want to pay you the way they pay their other suppliers. In the UK that's usually bank transfer over Faster Payments. In the EU, SEPA transfers are common. Once you work across borders, cards and local payment methods matter more.

Ask:

Does your setup accept card and bank payments in the countries your clients are in?
Can you put a payment link on the invoice?
Can you bill in more than one currency without looking up rates?
Does an invoice show as paid when the money arrives, or do you check the bank by hand?

Then look at your late payers.

Time to change something if:

You still write every "just following up on this" email yourself
Clients ask to pay in a currency you can't offer
Your fees for overseas payments are different every time

4. Check VAT and tax handling

This is an operator's checklist, not tax advice. Check current rules with your tax authority or an accountant. Software keeps your records consistent; it doesn't decide your tax treatment.

Ask:

Can you set the right VAT rate for each client?
Can you use different rates for domestic and foreign clients?
Do invoices show the VAT rate, the VAT amount and both VAT numbers?
Can you export clean records for your accountant without retyping anything?

If you're in the UK, June is a sensible time to tidy the first half of the year before the next VAT quarter.

Time to change something if:

You work out the VAT on each invoice by hand
Your accountant spends paid hours cleaning up your records
You'd struggle to show what VAT you charged and collected if asked
Your tool can't handle at least two currencies with the right tax treatment

5. Check multi-currency billing

A simple invoice template usually breaks at the second currency. Clients ask for an invoice in their own currency, you guess an exchange rate, and your reports stop adding up.

Ask:

Can you set a default currency and still bill some clients in others?
Can you see what each client owes in their own currency, without totals mixing currencies?
Can you see fees and payouts per currency?
Can your accountant reconcile everything without a separate spreadsheet?

Time to change something if:

You lose money on rough exchange rate guesses
You turn down overseas work because invoicing it feels messy
Clients tell you your invoices don't meet their local requirements
You run separate tools for projects, time and multi-currency invoicing

6. Run the audit and test a shortlist

Set aside one evening:

Map your real flow from work done to money received.
Go through the fee, time tracking, payment, VAT and currency checks above.
Mark every "time to change something" line that applies to you.

If you mark several, shortlist two or three tools. Set each one up with one real client and one real project, then count the steps from finishing the work to having the money in your account.

How Kiaro does on this checklist

I built Kiaro, so here is how it scores against the checklist above, including where it falls short.

Fees. Kiaro has a Free plan with unlimited invoices, capped at 3 active clients, with Kiaro branding on your invoices and client portal. Solo is $29 a month and removes both limits. Kiaro takes no cut of payments; you pay Stripe's standard processing fees only.

Time tracking. The timer sits at the top of every page (the bottom on mobile), and a timer started on your laptop shows the same running clock on your phone. Each entry is marked billable or non-billable. Creating an invoice from tracked time turns each entry into a line item with its hours and rate.

Payments. Connect your own Stripe account and every invoice carries a payment link for cards, plus SEPA Direct Debit or iDEAL if you enable them in Stripe. Stripe payments mark the invoice paid automatically; bank transfers you mark paid yourself. Bank details for each currency print on the invoice.

Late payers. Automatic reminders are on by default: one 3 days before the due date, one a day after, then every 7 days up to 3 times. You can change the schedule and the wording, or switch them off and send reminders by hand. Note that they send without asking you each time.

VAT. Each client can have a default VAT rate, so their invoices pick up the right one, and both VAT numbers print on the invoice. Kiaro applies one tax rate per invoice and doesn't pick a rate from the client's country for you. You can export your invoices to CSV or Excel, and on the Solo and Team plans sync them to Xero.

Currencies. Each client has a billing currency, and money is always shown per currency, never added up across currencies. Kiaro doesn't convert between currencies, and it currently supports USD, EUR, GBP and ZAR.

If that covers most of your "time to change something" lines, try it with one client on the Free plan and count the steps.