Invoicing, ledger & time — for one

Invoicing for people who hate invoicing.

Send an invoice in 12 seconds. Track time without timers. Keep an honest ledger without learning double-entry. Relay is the financial back-office for solo founders, freelancers, and tiny studios who just want to get paid and move on.

$0 to start
No card required
Self-serve setup
v3.4.2 — released today

Three jobs, one quiet window.

Most invoicing tools are bloated spreadsheets disguised as software. Relay only does the three things a one-person business actually needs — invoicing, time, and ledger — and it does them well. Nothing else.

A list of features
01.01

Invoice in 12 seconds.

Pick the client, type the amount, hit send. Relay generates the PDF, attaches your logo, and emails a Stripe payment link from your own domain. No templates. No wizard.

StripePlaidPDF
01.02

Time, without a timer.

Open Relay at the start of the day. It quietly watches your active window and groups minutes by client. At 5pm you have a timesheet already 70% filled.

ActivityWatchAuto-classify
01.03

A real ledger, kept for you.

Bank feed in, categories out. Relay maintains a clean double-entry view in the background — balances, P&L, tax exports — but the surface stays deliberately quiet.

Double-entryTax-ready

A normal Tuesday, in numbers.

This is a real dashboard view from last Tuesday. We picked the day with the most varied activity — three clients, a mix of paid and outstanding, time tracked across five projects. Everything below is what a Relay user actually saw.

Top-line

$8,420

invoices sent

$1,200 vs. last Tue
Cash in

$5,940

paid & cleared

3 of 5 invoices settled
Northwind Co.2,400.00
Aperture Sci.1,800.00
Hooli1,740.00
Time tracked

6h 12m

across 5 projects

billed at 2h 04m
Northwind Co.02:48
Internal R&D01:36
Aperture Sci.00:54
Hooli00:32
Email & admin00:22

A 12-minute setup, then it recedes.

The five-step onboarding only runs once. After that Relay stays in your menu bar and a daily digest email — most days you'll forget it's there, until you remember how much time it saved.

03.01

Connect your bank.

Plaid handshake, takes 90 seconds. Relay pulls the last 90 days of history so your ledger starts with context, not an empty white box.

03.02

Import your client list.

Paste from a spreadsheet, link to a CRM, or just type them in. Relay remembers payment terms per client and pre-fills every invoice from there on.

03.03

Pick your domain.

Set one CNAME and outgoing invoices look like they came from you, not relay.app. Your logo goes in automatically — we read it off the email signature you confirm.

03.04

Set your default hourly rate.

One number, used everywhere unless overridden per client. Time entries without a rate get flagged in red — so you never accidentally bill $0 for $200 of work.

03.05

Forget it's there.

Relay sits in your menu bar and watches quietly. A daily digest at 6pm summarises the day. End of month, it pre-fills your tax export — you review, you click submit.

03.06

Export any time.

Your data is yours. Full ledger, time entries, and invoices export to CSV, JSON, or Xero-compatible QIF at any time, including on cancellation. No lock-in.

What people say, in their own words.

Three days in and I'd already reclaimed the time I used to spend on a Sunday every month catching up my books. It's so quiet I forget to talk about it, which is the highest compliment I have for software.

Priya R. — independent product designer · Toronto · customer since Feb 2024

14,318

solo founders and freelancers on Relay

$312M

invoiced through Relay since launch

94%

of invoices get paid on time, vs 62% industry avg

4 min

median daily time spent in-app

One plan, no surprises.

Relay is one flat monthly fee. No per-invoice charges, no transaction fees, no tiers that disappear the moment your business grows. Stripe and Plaid fees pass through at cost — that's all.

Solo

$0

free forever, two clients

  • Two active clients
  • Twenty invoices / month
  • Local-only ledger
  • PDF + email invoices
  • Community support
Pro

$18/mo

billed yearly, or $22 monthly

  • Unlimited clients
  • Unlimited invoices
  • Bank feed + Plaid
  • Time tracking
  • Tax export (.QIF)
  • Email support, 24h

The things people email us about.

These are the eight questions that cover ~90% of pre-signup email. If yours isn't here, the team replies personally — usually same day.

Do I have to connect my bank?
No. The Solo plan keeps a local ledger only — you can export to QIF when you file. Bank feeds are an opt-in for the Pro and Studio plans.
Where is my data stored?
Postgres on AWS us-east-1. Encrypted at rest with KMS-managed keys. Backups run every six hours, retained for 30 days. SOC 2 Type II annual audit.
Can I import from QuickBooks?
Yes — drag a .qbw or .qbb export onto the import panel. Chart of accounts maps automatically; unmatched accounts get a one-time review screen.
What happens when I cancel?
You keep read-only access for 90 days, long enough to export everything. After that the account is purged within seven days. Exporting first is encouraged.
Do you have an API?
REST + webhooks on the Pro plan; full GraphQL API on Studio. Rate limits are documented per endpoint and generous by default (10k req/min).
How does tax export work?
QIF, OFX, and CSV at end of each quarter, pre-filled with the categorised ledger. If you use an accountant, you can share a read-only link with optional edit windows.

Start invoicing in 12 seconds — and stop thinking about it forever.