Tinta — Beautiful Invoicing for Freelancers

Why We Built Tinta

Freelancers and small businesses shouldn’t need a monthly subscription just to send an invoice. Most invoicing tools either lock your data in the cloud, charge per feature, or look like they were designed in 2008. Tinta is our answer — a fast, private, beautifully designed invoicing app that runs entirely on your machine.

• No subscription: One-time purchase, your data stays local.
• No cloud dependency: SQLite database on your machine — nothing leaves your device.
• Professional output: Multiple designer templates with full brand customisation.

Key Features

Documents

• Invoices, quotes, and letters with full lifecycle tracking (draft, sent, paid, overdue, etc.).
• Recurring invoices on weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly schedules.
• Auto-numbering with configurable prefixes and padding.
• PDF export for every document type.

Design & Branding

• 8+ professional templates — Atelier, Classic, Deco, Editorial, Horizon, Minimal, Monograph, and Noir — each with letter variants.
• Custom branding — set your colours, fonts, and logo with size controls.

AI Assistant

Tinta ships with an integrated AI assistant powered by Mistral. Ask it natural questions like “How many invoices are overdue?” or “Create an invoice for Acme Corp” and it handles the rest — querying your data, creating documents, and managing clients through conversation.

The assistant uses 18 specialised tools to interact with your local database, keeping everything private.

Analytics & Reporting

• Dashboard with outstanding balance, overdue amounts, and status breakdowns.
• Revenue reports filterable by date range — this month, last quarter, all-time.
• Per-client revenue tracking for a clear picture of where your income comes from.

Tech Stack

Tinta combines a React 19 frontend with a FastAPI backend, all bundled inside Electron as a native desktop app:

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4, Radix UI, Zustand, React Query
• Backend: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2 (async), SQLite, Pydantic 2
• AI: Mistral AI SDK with configurable model selection (Small, Medium, Large)
• Desktop: Electron 33 with electron-vite, sidecar backend architecture

The backend runs as an Electron sidecar process — FastAPI serves on localhost and the React frontend communicates via REST. This gives us the performance of a native app with the flexibility of a web stack.

Who It’s For

• Freelancers who want beautiful invoices without recurring fees.
• Small businesses managing a handful of clients and needing professional documents.
• Creative professionals who care about how their invoices look.
• Privacy-conscious users who want full control over their financial data.

What’s Next

Tinta is in active development. We’re working on multi-currency improvements and additional template designs. Your data syncs seamlessly across devices via iCloud, so you can pick up where you left off on any Mac.