We’re helping entrepreneurs do what they love – and get paid\n\nInvoice Simple is already the leading invoice app, and still growing rapidly

Invoice Simple

If you’re a small entrepreneur, you know the pain, and joy, of constantly searching for something that could improve your performance and the performance of your business. As an entrepreneur myself, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about small details and the tools for my business. What if I lower the price of my services by 10%, will it make me more competitive? What if I use that tool to automate my advertisements to all my potential clients; will it be more effective than a specialist? What if I start accepting all kinds of payments, including cryptocurrencies? Will it give me access to a new audience? A lot of questions. Luckily, a lot of questions are already solved, at least for me, and here I’m going to share with you the tools I use everyday, which can be divided into four categories: Tools that help us set and control tasks Tools that help us write and edit documents Marketing tools Financial tools Setting tasks First of all, every business has to set both short and long-term goals. Also if you don’t work alone, if you have employees, then you need to manage them. That’s what a task management tool is for. I can name three of them that I’ve used personally: Asana Trello Flow The market leader right now is Asana, but it all comes down to your preference, because all modern task management tools are nearly identical, except for the interface. I prefer Trello because it’s genuinely intuitive, you just do things while you work instead of reading user FAQs. Trello allows users to create various working tables, various columns for different tasks, you can add tasks, set a deadline for them, and assign someone to them. It’s a complex to-do list with a personnel management system combined, and using it or a similar service will definitely help you with your business, as it will make it easier for you to connect with your team and keep track of everything that needs to be done. Writing tools In your business, you’ll sometimes need to work with sheets, do presentations, and simply write advertising copy. For all these tasks you can use . It’s totally free and it supports all the necessary file formats that you would ever need. It can even open Microsoft Word-compatible files, so you won’t need to buy the Microsoft Office pack. Apache OpenOffice In addition, you can also use . It’s a popular note app for creating small memos with attachments to yourself. As an entrepreneur, you have a lot of things on your mind, but this helps to ease your stress by offloading some of that information into a note. The more you optimize such things, the more you can achieve. Evernote Marketing tools Marketing is another important area for your business. You have to always keep yourself in touch with the best practices of the market, and you have to be creative with your marketing campaigns in order to attract a large audience. There’s too much marketing tools to be described in one article, so we’ll mention only the most useful and important ones. If you want to get new customers, the essential service you have to use is Google Adwords. Nowadays, every entrepreneur should understand how it works, because it’s the largest ad service right now - in 2018, its total revenue amounted to . Google Adwords is a fairly complex tool, but there is a ton of educational info about it on the Internet, so if you want to set up and run your campaigns by yourself, you can do it without any additional specialists. Google Adwords also allows you to run ads by targeting people who are interested in certain topics or type certain phrases in Google Search. These people are your potential clients, so you can target them. $116.3 billion Another essential tool is the mail marketing platform . By using it, you can build your subscriber base and remind them about yourself by sending mailing lists on a weekly or monthly basis, or you can make additional sales to those who previously purchased from you. You can customize your address lists by dividing all clients to different groups based on their interactions with your letters. MailChimp or are the powerful mailers used by the most successful companies in the world, such as Microsoft and IKEA, and it’s available to you as well. MailChimp GetResponse And the third one to talk about is . It’s a tool for the detailed analysis of your website, showing your position in the Google rankings. Your rankings are very important, because the higher you are, the more potential customers you can get from organic searches. Also, it has several modules for checking the performance of your paid-per-click ads, content marketing, and social media promotion. SemRush costs anywhere from $99 to $199, but it’s totally worth it if you want to tune up your marketing performance. SemRush Financial tools One of the final steps when interacting with your clients is them paying for your services. Someone might think that it’s not that important to leave a good impression at this step, but remember, it’s not over until the client’s money is in your bank account and your client gets what he/she needs. So it is, in fact, incredibly important to make everything seem great at this point. Which is exactly why you need to have reliable invoicing tools. There are many of them on the market today for you to choose from. Some of the best are: Invoice generator Invoice Simple KashFlow Invoicely QuickBooks That’s not even the whole list! All of them are great tools for creating and sending invoices to your clients and managing them. For instance, QuickBooks, one of the most popular financial programs on the market, combines invoicing and accounting for a small business in one online platform. You can even connect it to your bank account. KashFlow is great if you have to deal with UK-based customers, since it was developed in the UK. And Invoicely is a fairly simple, yet reliable tool that comes with an affordable price tag - only $5.99. But my favorite one, the one that I personally use, is Invoice Simple, a tool for sending that has all the functionality I need for my business. It can instantly form invoices on demand and can be used anywhere: at home, at the office or on the road. I can add whatever I want to the payment details, and save items and clients to re-use them. It also doesn’t print its watermarks all over the place, it allows you to have your own design for invoices. small business invoices If you need free with all features like add logo, discount, taxes, you can use
 Invoicy. After creating invoice you can send it by email or link directly from generator. Also
 there are 10 different PDF templates, color customization. This free tool is simple and do his
 work. invoice generator Or Like QuickBooks, it’s also connects to the payment processing platform Stripe, and it builds statistics of your clients and monthly income. Overall, it’s another good tool for a small entrepreneur, and I use it all the time. Conclusion Every entrepreneur has a unique business requiring a unique approach. But it’s important to remember that the most basic tools can be more than useful for any small business, because they work well in any situation. Marketing, tasking, payroll, everything you might need in your daily operations is better of being optimized with small, simple tools. The sooner you find them, the better you’ll perform. Building a business is hard work, requiring dedication and tenacity, but hopefully this list will have made your job a little easier. The author is not associated with any of the projects mentioned.

Must-Have Tech tools for SMBs and Why You Need Them

I recently published an . In it, I explored options like the native functionality, open-source libraries and , and the paid service . Here's a quick recap of my findings: article comparing HTML-to-PDF export libraries browser print jsPDF pdfmake DocRaptor If you want the simplest solution and don’t need a professional-looking document, the native browser print functionality should be just fine. If you need more control over the PDF output, then you’ll want to use a library. jsPDF shines when it comes to single-page content generated based on HTML shown in the UI. pdfmake works best when generating PDF content from data rather than from HTML. DocRaptor is the most powerful of them all with its simple API and its beautiful PDF output. But again, unlike the others, it is a paid service. However, if your business depends on elegant, professional document generation, DocRaptor is well worth the cost. In the comment section for my article on Dev.to, I take a look at and as additional alternatives to consider. (This person is Andreas Zettl by the way, and he has an awesome demo site full of .) one person suggested Paged.js WeasyPrint Print CSS examples So today we'll explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of DocRaptor and WeasyPrint. WeasyPrint Overview Let's start with WeasyPrint, an open-source library developed by and supported by . For starters, , which is a plus. It's licensed under the , a relatively permissive and straightforward license. WeasyPrint allows you to generate content as either a PDF or a PNG, which should adequately cover most use cases. It's built for Python 3.6+, which is great if you're a Python developer. If Python is not your forte or not part of your company's tech stack, then this may be a non-starter for you. Kozea Court Bouillon it's free BSD 3-Clause License One of the biggest caveats to be aware of is that ! So when using this library, you'll need to be exporting content that is generated server-side. If you are relying on dynamically generated content or charts and tables powered by JavaScript, this library is not for you. WeasyPrint does not support JavaScript-generated content Installing WeasyPrint Getting up and running with WeasyPrint is fairly easy. They provide on their website, but I use to rather than Homebrew, so my installation steps looked more like this: installation instructions pyenv install and manage Python Installing and Python: pyenv brew install pyenv pyenv install 3.7.3 pyenv global 3.7.3 pyenv version -e >> ~/.zshrc # install pyenv using Homebrew # install Python 3.7.3 using pyenv # specify that I'd like to use version 3.7.3 when I use Python # quick sanity check # add `pyenv init` to my shell to enable shims and autocompletion echo 'if command -v pyenv 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then\n  eval "$(pyenv init -)"\nfi' Installing WeasyPrint and running it against the WeasyPrint website: pip install WeasyPrint

weasyprint https://weasyprint.org/ weasyprint.pdf As you can see, the simplest way to use WeasyPrint from your terminal is to run the command with two arguments: the URL input and the filename output. This creates a file called in the directory from which you run the command. Here's a screenshot of the PDF output when viewed in the Preview app on a Mac: weasyprint weasyprint.pdf Sample PDF output from WeasyPrint Looks great! WeasyPrint also has a full you can check out which showcases , , and even complete with a barcode. page of examples reports invoices event tickets DocRaptor Overview Now let's consider DocRaptor. is closed-source and is available through a paid license subscription (although you can generate test documents for free). It uses the PrinceXML HTML-to-PDF engine and is the only API powered by this technology. DocRaptor Unlike WeasyPrint's Python-only usage, DocRaptor has SDKs for PHP, Python, Node, Ruby, Java, .NET, and JavaScript/jQuery. It can also be used directly via an HTTP request, so you can generate a PDF right from your terminal using cURL. This is great news if you're someone like me who doesn't have Python in their arsenal. DocRaptor can export content as a PDF, XLS, or XLSX document. This can come in handy if your content is meant to be a table compatible with Excel. For the time being though, we'll just look at PDFs since that's something both WeasyPrint and DocRaptor support. One relative strength of DocRaptor compared to WeasyPrint is that it wait for JavaScript on the page to be executed, so it's perfect for use with dynamically generated content and charting libraries. can Getting Started with DocRaptor DocRaptor has that are well worth reading when first trying out their service. Since we ran the WeasyPrint example from the command line, let's also by using cURL to make an HTTP request. DocRaptor is API-based, so there's no need to download or install anything. guides for each of their SDKs run DocRaptor in our terminal Here's their example you can try: curl http://YOUR_API_KEY_HERE@docraptor.com/docs \
  --fail --silent --show-error \
  --header \
  --data > docraptor.pdf "Content-Type:application/json" '{"test": true,
           "document_url": "http://docraptor.com/examples/invoice.html",
           "type": "pdf" }' And here's the output after running that code snippet in your terminal: Sample PDF output from DocRaptor Voila: a nice and simple invoice. DocRaptor's example here isn't as complex as WeasyPrint's was, so let's try generating a PDF from one of DocRaptor's more advanced examples. curl http://YOUR_API_KEY_HERE@docraptor.com/docs \
  --fail --silent --show-error \
  --header \
  --data > docraptor_cookbook.pdf "Content-Type:application/json" '{"test": true,
           "document_url": "https://docraptor.com/samples/cookbook.html",
           "type": "pdf" }' Here's the output for this cookbook recipe PDF: Sample PDF output from DocRaptor using their Cookbook Recipe example Pretty neat! Just like WeasyPrint, DocRaptor can handle complex designs and full-bleed layouts that extend to the very edge of the page. One important callout here is that DocRaptor supports footnotes, as seen in this example. WeasyPrint, on the other hand, has not yet fully implemented the , so it can't handle footnote generation. CSS paged media specifications You can view more DocRaptor including a , a , an , and an . examples on their site financial statement brochure invoice e-book JavaScript Execution So far we've seen the powers and similarities of both DocRaptor and WeasyPrint. But one core difference we touched on above is that WeasyPrint does not wait for JavaScript to execute before generating the PDF. This is crucial for applications built with a framework like React. By default, React apps contain only a root container in the HTML, and then JavaScript runs to inject the React components onto the page. div So if you try to generate a PDF from the command line for an app built with React, you won't get the actual app content! Instead, you'll likely see the content of the tag, which typically contains a message stating something like "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." noscript This is also the case for applications that rely on charting libraries like , , or . Without the JavaScript running, no chart is created. Google Charts HighCharts Chart.js As an example, I've put together. It contains a page header, a paragraph included in the HTML source code, and a paragraph inserted into the DOM by JavaScript. You can find the . Here's what the page looks like: consider this simple web page code on GitHub DocRaptor JS demo web page Now, let's use WeasyPrint to generate a PDF from the web page by running the following command in the terminal: weasyprint http://tylerhawkins.info/docraptor-js-demo/ weasyprint_js_demo.pdf Here's the output: JS demo PDF output from WeasyPrint Oh no! Where's the second paragraph? It's not there, because the JavaScript was never executed. Now let's try again, but this time with DocRaptor. In order to have JavaScript run on the page, we must provide DocRaptor with the argument in our options object. Here's the code: "javascript": true curl http://YOUR_API_KEY_HERE@docraptor.com/docs \
  --fail --silent --show-error \
  --header \
  --data > docraptor_js_demo.pdf "Content-Type:application/json" '{"test": true,
           "javascript": true,
           "document_url": "http://tylerhawkins.info/docraptor-js-demo/",
           "type": "pdf" }' And the output: JS demo PDF output from DocRaptor Tada! The JavaScript has been successfully executed, leading to the insertion of the second paragraph. Conclusion So, which should you use, WeasyPrint or DocRaptor? It depends on your use case. If your app contains static content that doesn't rely on JavaScript, if Python is part of your tech stack, or if you need PNG image output, then WeasyPrint is an excellent choice. It's open source, free, and flexible enough to handle visually complex output. If you need to use a programming language other than Python, or you rely on the execution of JavaScript to render the content you need exported, DocRaptor is the right choice. Table of Comparisons As an added bonus, here's a comparison table for a quick summary of these two libraries: DocRaptor vs. WeasyPrint comparison table Happy coding! Also published at https://dzone.com/articles/docraptor-vs-weasyprint-a-pdf-export-showdown

DocRaptor Vs. WeasyPrint: Python PDF Generation Tools Showdown

Do you have your own company? There were more than million operating enterprises in Australia as of 2021, ranging from solo traders to giant corporations. Businesses in Australia exited at in the previous year. 2.4 12.4% One of the most crucial roles of business owners and managers is financial management. They must consider how their management decisions will affect profits, cash flow, and its financial position. Every aspect of a company's operations impacts its financial success, and the owner must examine and oversee them. Stay updated with the that come as time changes. financial management changes In this blog, we’ll explain to you the importance and tips of financial management in small businesses. Why is Financial Management Important? Cash flow is the lifeblood of any successful business, whether in its early stages or has reached maturity. It's also crucial to any company's expansion plans. Unfortunately, cash flow management is one of the biggest challenges for 29% of Australian firms, according to a survey. A profitable firm earns a profit, doesn't waste money on unneeded things or employees, and pays all bills and obligations on time. Understanding your cash flow state and forecasting any changes in your business plan or market conditions on a timely basis is essential. When you lose sight of your finances, you put your company at risk of failing. Financial management is critical since it aids the following aspects of the business: Examine and comprehend its profit. Make inventory planning and price decisions. Determine whether the business has enough cash flow to continue operations and make purchasing selections. Provide financial reporting to banks and investors to lend money or invest in the company. For improved business forecasts and projections, conduct a thorough financial analysis. Here are other pointers to explain the importance of financial management. Track Your Progress During the first 6-12 months of operation, new business owners need to close check on the money moving in and out of the company. Cash flow reporting systems should be established daily, weekly, and monthly basis so that patterns may be analyzed before problems arise. The establishment of such reporting tools will provide a birds-eye view of the company's performance and resource allocation. However, because deciphering these figures might be complex, it's a good idea to hire the best bookkeeper or accountant the company can afford. Consult An Accountant Not every business owner is a mathematician, and not all business owners understand the advice of their bookkeeper or accountant. The impact of such advice on the firm can only be effectively assessed if the individual receiving the advice understands the numbers. If he is a certified public accountant or has a degree in accounting, he will help you . benefit from payroll services Include Financial Statements In Your Strategy You must be able to understand financial statements. An accountant can teach you if you don't know what you're doing. The three forms of financial statements are the income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet. Each of them consists of different aspects. The cash flow statement keeps track of all operating activities, financial inflows and outflows, and investments of any form. The balance sheet contains information on the company's assets and liabilities. The income statement displays how much money was made in a given period. Tips on Financial Management in Small Business: In the congested Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) market, managing your money effectively is critical. Paying the small business tax return can be a massive and major headache. But how do you ensure that your small business funds are well-managed? Here are some tips that will help you with your finances for a small business. Don't Be A Slacker When It Comes To Invoicing Invoices should be sent out as quickly as possible after the goods or services have been provided. Set a seven-day payment deadline to avoid money being forgotten or lost in the process. Always follow up on bills that have been sent. Create predetermined templates for email or SMS follow-ups to make this simple. Refer to invoice numbers and make sure they match up with payments. This will be beneficial when you pay and make your job or the accountant's job easier. business return tax Pay Yourself This does not imply that the company's profits should be used for personal use; instead, start with 10% of the profits. Paying yourself is a good approach to regularly put money aside and see how profitable your business is. It also acts as a safety net in case of unforeseen expenses. Create Your Financial Objectives and Goals Make sure you and your team are always working toward the same goal. Make sure your short- and long-term business visions are crystal clear and updated regularly. Rethinking your goals might assist you in identifying essential priorities and obstacles to achieve. Review Your Expenses You must understand where your money went as a business owner. By reviewing your spending habits regularly, you can identify areas and departments where money is required more efficiently, as well as places that require additional funding. Keep A Business Emergency Fund On Hand In the same way that you need an account for your home, you need a budget for your business to and comprehend profitability. Clients paying late is an example of an unexpected event that occurs from time to time. You must make sure that your business has a backup plan in place. You can also use this money to pay off your taxes. handle payroll service effectively Apply For Credit In Prior It is evident that banks act slowly; do not wait until you need money to apply for a loan or a line of credit. When you get a huge deal, go to the bank and apply for a credit line. Remember that you can borrow 10-15% of the gross avenue. SME owners in Australia may want to think about their financing options. Taking out a business loan to fund a new site expansion or company expansion could help you achieve your long-term goals of growing your small business. Lastly… Every small business owner or manager must be able to manage their finances. Every business owner's decision has a financial impact on the company, and he must make these decisions in the context of the entire organization. Hopefully, this article will help you in some way to make your business successful and reach the heights that you always wanted.

Importance and Tips of Financial Management in Small Business

Your brand is the essence of your company. It’s what your customers perceive you to be, and it’s how you portray your business to the world. It’s imperative your brand’s appeal is strong. Believe it or not, invoicing can boost that appeal. You might wonder how sending something as simple as an invoice can do anything for your brand identity. After all, isn’t it usually the final step after the successful completion of a client project? What’s the big deal? The answer rests in the term ‘brand continuity,’ which is a big part of strengthening long-term client relationships and increasing the chances of referrals. Why brand continuity matters Brand continuity – also known as brand consistency – is the exposure of your brand identity across multiple customer touchpoints. Your target audience sees your visual branding, your core brand messaging, and other branding elements repeatedly over time during each interaction with your business. Such brand continuity builds trust and loyalty, inspiring people to feel positive emotions when thinking about you and your business. The consistency ensures you stay top of mind with customers and prospects, and distinguishes your brand from your main competitors. Any discrepancies in the branding, messaging, or quality of your products and services, will quickly lead to doubts and concerns. Even one hiccup – one inconsistency – can raise alarm bells and destroy carefully cultivated branding. How invoicing plays a part in brand continuity If you’ve worked with clients for any amount of time, you’ll know invoicing is not merely a request for payment at the end of a job. There are different types of invoicing documents, including deposits or partial payment requests to start a job, or recurring invoicing for ongoing gigs. These can come before, during, or after a project. And they can be for a brand new client or one you’ve worked with for years. Then there are related documents that can be turned into invoices such as estimates, quotes, and even proposals. All of these invoices and documents are touchpoints with your brand and require strict brand continuity. From the logo in your invoice header to the color scheme, company details, and the way you word and title your itemized service details, everything needs to be seamless and consistent. And this is where advanced online invoicing technology, like Invoice Ninja, can help you. Why not allow your client to convert an approved quotation into an invoice with 1 click? Why not leverage technology in every way possible to solidify your client’s experience with your company? How invoicing technology can help Whether it’s AI, cryptocurrencies, coding, or web development, every stage in a process needs seamless continuity. Otherwise, things have a habit of breaking. The same applies to your invoicing process. What cloud-based invoicing technology does is to help ensure every touchpoint with your clients and customers is consistent. With some initial input and personalization, you can soon make your invoicing processes almost entirely automatic. Let’s have a look at some features of cloud invoicing technology that can help boost your brand appeal. Adaptable invoice templates Your visual branding is a vital component in maintaining a consistent brand across multiple touchpoints. Attractive invoice designs featuring your company’s color schemes and logo present a professional front. They assure prospects and clients that you care about your reputation. With cloud invoicing technology, you can automatically maintain design continuity across all your invoices and related documents. For example, the same graphics, color schemes, and content formatting for an invoice will also be used for quotes, estimates, recurring invoices, and proposals. Best of all, with Invoice Ninja, you simply click and convert the document into the appropriate format for the next stage of the invoicing or project process. Custom domains Even small details like the displayed URL from which you email your invoice can make a big difference to your brand identity. Instead of directing people to a domain obviously from an invoicing software company, you can alternatively send people to an URL created from your company’s name. It might be a little detail, but it all helps position your brand as highly professional and all-encompassing, which instills trust. Client-side portals Something you can’t do with traditional forms of invoicing is to offer clients a seat at the table. By this we mean, a client-side portal. A portal allows your clients and customers to access all their transaction history and other details with you in one easy-to-understand password-protected panel. They get to view previous payments, future payments, quotes, account details, even third party attachments such a presentation files, design files, any type of document needed to accompany the invoice - all of which they can download if desired. A client-side portal offers complete transparency when it comes to payments, which is a massive benefit for your clients and your brand appeal. Third-party file attachments When people are busy, multiple emails with various attachments can get lost, be forgotten, or caught in spam folders. Chasing mislaid attachments is a nuisance for everyone concerned, and it harms your brand. Another benefit of cloud invoicing technology is the ability to attached third-party files to invoices, all in one email delivery. Your client receives everything they need without having to jigsaw the pieces together. Attachments you can add to your Invoice Ninja invoice document include proposals, contracts, project files, timesheets, translations, images, and any other important notes. Automatic recurring invoicing When working long-term with a client, it’s crucial to ensure your recurring invoicing system is consistent. Sending invoices manually - weekly, monthly, or quarterly - involves writing invoices individually, which can result in errors and inconsistencies. A better alternative is to automatically bill clients at set predetermined times, allowing for a more hands-off approach to invoicing. You create a template into which data is automatically added. This procedure not only saves you a lot of time but also ensures your invoices arrive at precisely the same time each week, month, or quarter, and with perfect consistency in all other regards. Multiple payment gateways Clients and customers have different preferences when it comes to making payments. While some will be content using PayPal or credit card, others will much prefer methods such as direct bank transfers and cryptocurrency payments. With Invoice Ninja’s invoicing technology, you can cater to all tastes. You can achieve this goal through the use of multiple payment methods. These are seamlessly integrated directly into the online invoice document itself. It usually requires just a simple click of a link to make a payment, right there and then. As you might imagine, this makes things smooth and fast, which will inevitably make a great brand impression. Boost your cash flow and your brand appeal Your brand is everything. It’s essential to strengthen and positively cultivate its development at every opportunity. A big part of this effort, as we have noted, is ensuring continuity across all customer touchpoints. Invoicing might seem like an admin task that has little to do with marketing and sales. But it does. Invoices are a big part of your brand image. It’s good to get them working in your favor. With the right cloud invoicing technology, you can boost not only your cash flow but also your brand appeal. ( : ) Disclaimer The author is the Founder and CEO at Invoice Ninja

Invoicing Tech Can Boost Brand Appeal

Already before the pandemic, IT companies began seeing the benefits of hiring employees as B2B contractors. However, since Covid-19 and the rise of remote work, B2B contracts are rapidly growing in popularity and transforming the world of IT recruitment and remuneration. Companies from countries with high salaries and cost of living are using B2B contracts to search for international tech talent and increase the competitiveness of their job offers abroad. On the other hand, candidates become interested in such contracts because of the flexibility and the option to earn much more money today. In this article, the CEO of an international IT recruitment agency Maris Tepers shares how B2B contracts can benefit IT specialists, aid companies in their search for tech talent, and help countries attract new businesses and investors. MateHR What’s cool about B2B contracts? In the IT industry, workers generally feel safe and stable, and – in fact, the ICT industry is the . the majority have an above-average or a high salary highest paying sector in the EU IT specialists don’t have to feel insecure about losing their jobs because they would anyway be demanded elsewhere. In addition, most developers are younger than 45, making them less concerned about social benefits such as pension funds and sick leaves. For all these reasons, many IT workers who sign up for B2B contracts feel confident that they can take care of their own social security and wellbeing and choose not to pay high taxes to the state. They are motivated by higher net earnings, which are more than enough to create a personal pension fund, pay their health insurance, and afford different sports & wellness initiatives. “More and more companies of all sizes seek the assistance of tech recruitment agencies in finding B2B contractors across Europe. The data from our vast network of clients and tech recruiters suggests that the increase in signing B2B contracts has been around 300% over the last two years,” says Maris Tepers, the CEO of MateHR. From the employer’s perspective, there are several benefits to signing B2B contracts with recruitees: The opportunity to and be more competitive in the job market (without increasing expenses per employee). pay higher net salaries B2B contracts can help in the home country by broadening the search across a wider region (with less bureaucratic hassle). solve the issue of finding skilled specialists Contractor roles are often – you can determine the duration of the contract, the number of hours worked per month, and include almost any other provision you want. more flexible Employers can also save money by hiring candidates in . countries with a lower cost of living Signing a B2B contract is much , and making payments is straightforward – all it takes is a single invoice and a bank transfer. simpler in terms of bureaucracy For example, a highly skilled IT specialist in Europe can have a yearly salary of between 50 and 100 thousand euros or even more. A regular employment contract would mean that ~40% of that salary would be paid in taxes, depending on the country. However, if such a specialist signs a B2B contract with the company, they only have to pay 10-25% in taxes. This means that the candidate would get a significantly higher salary today, while the company wouldn’t need to raise its expenses – a win-win for both sides. How do B2B contracts work? In many cases, traditional employment contracts are rather old-school. For example, there’s a common condition that allows working abroad no more than 3 months per year. A B2B contract, on the other hand, lets you , as long as you pay taxes to the country you’re registered in. live and work anywhere A B2B contract is essentially an agreement between two independent companies, where they agree on the services the contractor’s “company” delivers to the client. However, in practice, B2B contractors are no different from regular employees, and they can be working either full-time or part-time; on-site or remotely. What differs is the bureaucratic side and the percentage such employees pay in taxes. There can also be different types of contracts – e.g., with an hour-based wage or fixed salary. Nowadays, most companies that hire candidates based in another country, do it on the basis of B2B contracts, facilitated by international tech recruitment agencies. Some businesses choose to open a new local branch in a country they’re hiring in. In this scenario, each of the local employees can have a B2B contract, and they can be working on-site in this local office. In a different case, hiring is done remotely without opening a physical location in the respective country, and B2B contractors work from home or from another place they've chosen. This way, employers gain access to a broader talent pool and can offer handsome salaries in countries with a lower cost of living. Where are B2B contracts taking center stage? B2B contracts are gaining popularity in countries with a friendly tax system for small businesses, allowing individual entrepreneurs to generate a substantial turnover. They are especially worthwhile in the IT industry where salaries are high and the sum before and after taxes differs significantly. “It may seem that B2B contracts “rob” the state of taxes, but it’s not entirely true. Countries with friendly B2B contract conditions attract more businesses, investors, and international talent. In addition, people with higher salaries spend more, pay more VAT, and thus contribute to the country’s growth”, says Maris Tepers. “Romania is one such country with a vast talent pool and friendly tax conditions, which have attracted a growing number of our clients. Other countries where B2B contracts are rapidly becoming the norm include Poland, Slovenia, and Bulgaria. We see that this type of “IT employment” contract is growing in popularity elsewhere, too,” Maris adds. The drawbacks of B2B contracts Technically, a B2B contract is an agreement between two companies, and the employer has no obligation or commitment to you as an employee. Such contracts are not protected by social guarantees, and the employer won’t pay any taxes for the contractor (unless agreed otherwise). This means that B2B contractors have to take care of their retirement fund and be prepared to cover vacations, sick leaves, and sudden unemployment at their own expense. In most cases, there will be no compensation in case of bankruptcy or firing. That said, any tech recruiter will tell you that candidates rule today’s competitive IT job market, and employers are continuously seeking new ways to offer bonuses to employees. This affects B2B contractors as well. “The fight for the best tech talent is so fierce that employers are trying to stay ahead of the game by offering various perks to candidates. We already see companies beginning to pay sick leaves, vacations, and traineeships to B2B contractors similarly to full-fledged employees. But for now, such favorable conditions are rather exceptions than common practice,” says Maris Tepers. Finally, having a B2B contract means fewer bureaucratic tasks for the employer, but more for the employee. It’s strongly recommended to read B2B contracts much more carefully than standard employment contracts because such agreements don’t have the state's added layer of protection of the employee. To sum up, during the last two years, companies have understood that it’s completely legal and acceptable to hire specialists based on B2B contracts. Even more – candidates welcome and even expect such an option, which allows them to earn more money for their work. Before you decide to recruit foreign talent via B2B contracts, make sure you consult an experienced to avoid any missteps and follow the corresponding laws in the country you’re hiring in. tech recruitment agency Also published here: https://www.mate-hr.com/post/b2b-contracts-changing-the-it-recruitment-landscape-in-europe

The Benefits of B2B Contracts for Workers in the IT Industry

Los beneficios de los contratos B2B para los trabajadores de la industria de TI

“Six hundred dollars!” That’s the response a fraudster wants from you when they create a PayPal invoice scam. Imagine getting a request to pay six hundred dollars for something you never purchased, and the request is a professional-looking invoice from a reputable company. Should you call the provided number in the email and dispute the request? Should you ignore the email completely? Should you pay the invoice? Don’t let this annoying scam get the best of you. Here’s everything you need to know about this insidious money request scheme. What is the PayPal Invoice Scam? In short, the PayPal invoice scam is a designed to trick a victim into sending the fraudster money. What makes this scam different than basic phishing schemes is that this one usually looks professional and often appears like PayPal itself sent it. phishing email scheme The way this scam works is simple: The victim receives an “invoice” from PayPal or a service-based company such as GoDaddy.com telling them that they have to pay a certain amount of money to keep their account active. If the victim doesn’t use GoDaddy.com, or PayPal, they’ll simply ignore or trash the email. If they do use the service presented in the “invoice,” they may send the money in hopes of maintaining their account status. The fraudster receives the invoice payment and pockets the cash. The PayPal invoice scam uses a very common phishing tactic: urgency. The note section of the fake invoice will usually urge the victim to act as fast as possible to stop any critical thinking that may get in the way. You may wonder, “Who is dumb enough to pay for something without verifying they purchased it?” However, even some of the biggest tech companies in the world filled with some of the smartest people in the world got scammed out of . $100 million via fake invoices PayPal Invoice Scam Examples Online fraudsters are crafty, but they’re not very original. Instead of creating a new fake invoice to trick victims, they tend to copy other fake invoices they find online. Here are five fake PayPal invoice examples to look out for: PayPal’s First Official Example This money request scam is so prevalent that PayPal itself had to on its site to warn its users. post a warning Here’s an example that PayPal uses to showcase this growing problem: Could you identify this invoice as a fake right away? Because of the professional formatting of a PayPal invoice, it’s easy for a victim to get instantly fooled. The balance due is only $168.36, a small amount many people could quickly send and move on with their day. The only red flag on the invoice itself is in the note at the bottom: Instead of informing the victim of what this invoice is for, the scammer just leaves their number. Never call the number in the note section if you think the invoice is fake. The fraudster is just looking to get your sensitive information over the phone. PayPal’s Second Official Example Usually, a victim of this scam will receive a notification through PayPal to their inbox about how much “money they owe.” The victim can click the button to view the actual invoice. This notification is sent using PayPal, so clicking the button is safe. View and Pay Invoice Here’s what a typical notification will look like for a fake PayPal invoice. The scammer hopes that the victim will simply pay the amount of the invoice, but the note section reveals that they also have a backup plan: With the requested amount being almost $400, the scammer is banking on most people freaking out and calling the provided number before their account gets debited “in the next 24 hours.” Again, never call the number. A Fake Invoice From “PayPal” Here’s an example of a fake invoice that looks like PayPal itself sent it: There are several red flags that give this fake invoice away if you know what to look for, starting at the top: An impersonal greeting is a common occurrence in phishing emails. A real message from PayPal would address you by your full name. The number provided is not the official customer service number. Not only that, but the scammer actually tells the victim only to use the fake number. This is an attempt to get the victim not to look up the actual customer service info. Remember when I implied earlier that the typical fraudster is lazy? Here’s the perfect example. It appears that the scammer simply copied and pasted the warning information from an actual PayPal invoice to make it look more legitimate. The scammer didn’t realize that the warning tells the victim that an actual invoice from the company would never ask them to call a provided number, which is exactly what this fake invoice does. The copied warning also tells the victim that a real invoice would use their full name. Of course, the scammer doesn’t know the victim’s name; they’re just sending out random emails hoping for a sucker to make the payment. A Fake Invoice From “Bitcoin Exchange” Here’s another classic example: This one has all the classic markings of a phishing scam: A big scary payment. Stating that the transaction had already been made, immediately sparking panic in the customer. A twelve-hour time limit to resolve the matter. A “customer service” number to call. Remember, don’t call that number. Multiple Scams In One This last example is a strange one that attempts to confuse the victim by bringing up Walmart gift cards: This fake invoice makes no sense. It first states that the victim’s account has been accessed unlawfully, and then a few sentences later, a number is given in case the victim “suspects that they didn’t make this transaction.” Why would the victim wonder if they made the transaction if the first line states that they didn’t? Believe it or not, a good amount of people who receive this phishing attack won’t notice the contradiction. They’ll be too busy freaking out about the $600 dollars they believe was taken out of their account. This example has a fake number and a “24-hour” warning in the notification and in the note section for the invoice itself. How to Report a PayPal Invoice Scam If you receive one of these fake money request scams, you can do more than just ignoring it. You can report it to PayPal to help make the website safer for everyone. Here’s how: First, don’t attempt to pay the invoice or interact with the fraudster at all. Log in to your PayPal account on the official website or through the PayPal app. Go to the within your PayPal account. Resolution Center Click on or . Report a Problem Dispute a Transaction Select the transaction related to the suspicious money request from the available options. Provide detailed information about the suspicious request and why you believe it’s unauthorized. Follow the on-screen instructions and provide any additional information requested by PayPal. Finally, submit your report and wait for PayPal to review your case. Final Thoughts It’s easy to panic when you’re staring at an “invoice” that says you owe a company hundreds of dollars. That’s what the scammer is banking on. Similar to , PayPal invoice scams use psychological tricks to fool you into giving up your money. Cash App scammers If you receive a fake PayPal invoice, take a moment to breathe and use your critical thinking skills. Ask yourself if you’ve recently done business with the company in question or at all. And remember, just because an email or invoice looks like it’s from PayPal, doesn’t mean it is.

5 Notorious Paypal Invoice Scams & How to Avoid Them

When running a business these days, it’s important to have access to your order, inventory, and financial data, regardless of location. That’s why it’s essential to have on-screen reports that are both flexible and interactive, as well as adaptable to a variety of screen resolutions. Doing so lets you stay on top of your business’s performance and make informed decisions whenever and wherever you need to. ActiveReportsJS allows you to build responsive web applications with highly interactive reporting capabilities that work in any browser and support desktop and mobile devices. In this article, we’ll show you how to build a responsive Node.js inventory management system, allowing users to track order reports using ActiveReportsJS. We’ll be covering the following topics: Designing the Report Title Defining Data Access in Node.js Using Calculated Fields Adding a Chart Control Adding a Table Control Defining Sub-Tables Adding Drill-Down Functionality Adding Sorting Columns to Tables Creating the Node.js Invoice Application If you’d like to follow along with the completed report and application, you can find the repository . here Building a Web-Based Sales Report For our scenario, we have a client named ACME Inc. who has contracted us to build them a sales report. The request comes with a mockup of the report, which looks like this: To create enterprise-level reports like the one above, GrapeCity offers the ActiveReportsJS Designer. This intuitive tool helps you configure your report to fetch data and render it using visual elements like tables, bar charts, pie charts, and more. The ActiveReportsJS Designer stores report definitions in a special JSON format and saves them in files with the extension. .rdlx-json Designing the Report Title To create a new report, in the Designer, open the menu n the Designer toolbar and select the report option: File Continuous Page Layout Now that we have a new report, clicking the hamburger button on the left will expand the control panel. From here, you can drag and drop controls onto your report canvas to include them in the report: For our report, we will have a container at the top that holds the logo image and a label. Drag and drop a container control from the control panel onto the report canvas; then drag and drop an image and textbox control into the container control on the report canvas. To link an image to the image control, you can either pull the image from an external source, such as a URL or database or embed the image from a local file. Our image will be the ACME Inc. logo. For the textbox, you can customize the font, size, and color as you see fit. For the title text, we’ll set this to . Monthly Orders When complete, your title should look something like this: Defining Data Access in Node.js The ActiveReportsJS Designer manages data connections through two types of entities: data sources and data sets. A data source works as a connection to external data storage, such as a URI or JSON file or a JSON document that can be embedded in the report. A data set is an intermediate element that fetches data from the data source and binds it to fields in the report data model. You can also define calculated fields, which transform the source data using expressions. The data set fields can then be used by the report controls. Our inventory invoice software will access data through an external API located at an HTTP service, returning results in JSON format. The report will show a variety of order information based on “live” data from that service. To define access to customer data in your report, start by selecting the tab, and click the button in the “Data Sources” section: Data Sources Add This will bring up the window: New Data Source This window names the data source, sets the data provider, and adds any additional HTTP header or parameters required. When adding your data provider, you can choose between remote JSON or embedding your JSON into the report via a local file. We’ll load our data for this inventory invoice application from a remote source. When everything is added, click the button to save your data source. Save A data source is a simple connection configuration; no request has been made yet. Note: Now that we have created a data source, we need to create a data set that uses that source to retrieve the data. To create a data set, click on the button that appears next to our data source: Plus This will bring up the window: New Data Set We usually need to set two properties here: the and the . The Uri/path tells ActiveReportsJS where to look for the JSON file once reaching the API endpoint, and the Json Path is used to tell our Node.js invoice application what part of the JSON we want to grab. Uri/path JSON Path For the Uri/path, we’ll use to return data on our customers. In our case, we’ll want to grab all entries, so we’ll pass as the JSON path. /Customers $.* Finally, we need to validate the data source so that ActiveReportsJS can confirm that it can retrieve the data. You’ll know that your data source was validated if you see that the array is populated with values: Database Fields We will need another data source for our application, which we’ll use to retrieve data on orders placed through the node.js invoice app. Your second data source should look like so: We’ll need two more data sets: one based on the NWAPI data source, using as the Uri/path, and the other based on the NWOData source, using as the Uri/path. For the data set, also set the Json path to . /Products /Orders Orders $.value[*] When set up, the data panel should look like so: Using Calculated Fields Occasionally, you’ll need to transform one or more source fields into a new calculated field to be used in the report. ActiveReportsJS offers an expression language with rich built-in functions to meet this need. In this example, let’s transform the OrderDate field into a “month/year” format. You must add a custom field to the list of automatically bound database fields to achieve this. Edit the data set, and expand the section; this is where we can add our new calculated field. Name the field and set the value as : Orders Calculated Fields MonthYear, {DateTime.Parse(OrderDate).ToString("MM/yyyy")} Create a new data set named based on the NWOData source; set the Uri/path to and the Json path to . OrderDetails /OrderDetails $.value[*] Note that the OrderDetails data set does not include a field for a total value per item. This value is likely to be required more than once in your report. Therefore, you’ll have to calculate this value every time it’s needed or create a new calculated field. The latter option is way more efficient. Expand the section of the OrderDetails data set, name the field and set the value as . CalculatedFields Subtotal, {Round(100 * (UnitPrice - UnitPrice * Discount) * Quantity) / 100} Adding a Chart Control Now that we’ve set up several data sources, it's time to incorporate them into the report; to do so, we will add a chart. Dragging and dropping a chart control from the control panel onto the report will bring up the chart wizard: Ensure the data set is set to use our set, and click the button. OrderDetails Next Now we can set our data and category fields. For “Data Values”, add a new field. Set the name to and the aggregate to . Then, for “Data Categories”, set the field to . It should look like so: {Subtotal} Sum {Lookup(OrderId, OrderId, MonthYear, “Orders”)} Click and then click . The last thing to do, before we view the chart, is to make some final changes to properties across various elements of the chart. Next, Finish To modify elements of the chart, you only need to make sure you’re viewing the properties window instead of the data window, and then click on an element of the chart. The properties window will update to show all of the properties of the currently-selected element. Define the chart properties as follows: When complete, your report should look like so: Clicking will show us the report with data being loaded: Preview Adding a Table Control In addition to the chart, we want to allow users to view more data in our Node.js invoice app. Let’s create a tabular view of the month-by-month order volume. Drag and drop a table control from the control panel to the report beneath the chart: By default, an ActiveReportsJS table is created with three columns and three rows. The top row serves as the header row, the middle row is our details row and holds our data, and the bottom row is the footer row. Report authors can resize the table, add or remove rows and columns, define multiple headers and footers, and so on. Now, select the table, navigate to the properties panel, and define the properties as follows: Then remove the header and footer rows of the table, as these aren’t needed. This is done by right-clicking a cell in the row that you want to delete, selecting the option, and clicking : Row Delete Row Now, merge the cells for the detail row. This is done by selecting the cells that you want to merge, right-clicking one of the selected cells, selecting the option from the menu, and clicking : Cells Merge Cells Now select the newly merged cell, set its text box name to , and set its value to : txtMonth {MonthName(Month(OrderDate))}/{Year(OrderDate)} Finally, you have to define the table grouping. This can be done by selecting the cell and selecting from the popup menu. <Details Group> Set the first level of the group with the formula and the second level as : {Year(OrderDate)} {Month(OrderDate)} The new table displays the first level of data in the tabular section: Now, we’ll start adding more levels of data. Create a new row beneath our current row, remove the header and footer rows, merge the detail row, and then drag and drop another table control into the new large cell. Define the new table’s properties as follows: Now select the newly merged cell, set its text box name to , and set its value to the . Once this is set up, preview the report to see the results: txtOrderId Order ID: {OrderId} Notice that the table is at the second level in your report; it details the orders placed within a particular month. tableOrders Defining Sub-Tables Now that we’re displaying orders by month, it’s time to add an order details section for each of the orders that come through our inventory invoice application. Add a new detail row beneath the detail row, merge the cells, and put another table within that detail row. This time, instead of removing the header and footer rows, remove the detail and footer row, leaving the header row. OrderId Next, instead of merging all three cells into one, merge the center and right cells into one and leave the left cell as its own cell. Define the left cell formula as For the merged cell, use the properties panel to set the to and its property to , and set the merged cell formula as : Total: Cell Alignment Left format Currency {SUM(Subtotal)} Select the table in the Explorer, and expand the property. Click and add a new filter criterion with the following fields: tableOrderTotal Filters Add Item, As you can see, the new tableOrderTotals table is based on the OrderDetails data set. The total value is obtained by filtering the order details by the OrderId of the tableOrder row, and by summing up the Subtotal field values. Clicking will display the updated table: Preview Finally, we’ll create a table representing order items for our invoices. Create a new detail row in the tableOrders table, then create a new table inside the new detail row called . Configure the table as follows: tableOrderDetails When complete, the table should look like so: Clicking will show the new table: Preview Before we move on, we will do a little styling to improve the table's look. Here’s what the finished version looks like: Adding Drill-Down Functionality Now, let’s add drill-down functionality to the report, allowing us to keep the and tables collapsed until the user expands them. tableOrders tableOrderDetails Select the tableOrders table, and change the and properties as follows: Hidden Toggle Item Select the tableOrderDetails table, and make it collapsible too: Now, we can expand and collapse the detail levels by clicking the +/- symbols: Next, let’s add some more details to the reports of our Node.js invoice application. Add four new rows above the existing header row in the table. The top and bottom of these four rows will serve as a buffer, and the middle two rows will hold the data we want to display. tableOrderDetails In the second and third rows that were added, leave the far-left cell of each row by themselves, and merge the rest of the cells for each row. Then, fill out the rows as follows: Click and you can see the customer’s name and order date added to the invoice: Preview, Adding Sorting Columns to Table The last thing we’ll add to the report is the ability to sort the order details' columns. Select each header cell, and fill out the Sort Expression field under the User Sort section with the following formulas: Click and you can now see the sort icons next to the column headers; sort the order items by Quantity: Preview, Sort the order by Total Price: Creating the Node.JS Invoice Application Now with the report defined, we can create our inventory invoice application. This application will need a responsive web display that looks good on both desktop and mobile devices. ActiveReportsJS offers this capability by default. The sample application will use Node.js, a JavaScript runtime environment, to execute the web app on the server side. To get started, create a new folder called and open it in your preferred IDE. Then, in the command line, run: InventoryInvoice, npm init This will run you through setting up your file, which will be used to build your application. Once your file has been generated, run the following two commands: package.json npm install express
npm install @grapecity/activereports This will install Express, a framework for Node.js, and ActiveReports, which we’ll use to display the invoices. Now that we have Express installed, we need to put it to use. Create a new file in the folder named . This file will use Express to serve our Node.js inventory invoice application. InventoryInvoice index.js Inside the index.js file, add the following code: const express = require('express'); //import Express.js module
const app = express();
const path = require('path'); 
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname)));

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log(`Example app listening on port 3000`)
}) Now, its time for a quick explanation of what we’re doing here: The first two lines of code include Express in our server and give us a variable to use to reference Express methods and properties. The third line creates a variable that leads to the relative path of the folder, and the fourth line tells Express that we want to use this path as the static path of our application. Lines six through eight use Express to start the application; here, we’re telling it to run on port 3000, and when it starts running, we log a message to the terminal. And that’s Express at a very basic level! Now that we have a server that we can start to launch the inventory invoice software, it's time to create a page to serve the user. Create a new file in the folder, and name it . Once created, insert the following code: InventoryInvoice index.html <html>
   <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>ActiveReportsJS Viewer</title>
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@grapecity/activereports/styles/ar-js-ui.css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@grapecity/activereports/styles/ar-js-viewer.css" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="node_modules/@grapecity/activereports/dist/ar-js-core.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="node_modules/@grapecity/activereports/dist/ar-js-viewer.js"></script>
    <style>
        #arjs-viewer {
            width: 100%;
            height: 100vh;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body onload="load()">
    <div id="arjs-viewer"></div>
    <script>
        function load() {
            const viewer = new ActiveReports.Viewer('#arjs-viewer');
            viewer.open('MonthlyOrders.rdlx-json');
        }
    </script>
</body>
</html> There are a few things to go over here. First, we’re including four files in our HTML file; , , , and . The CSS files are the core CSS file for ActiveReportsJS and the CSS file used to style the viewer. ar-js-ui.css ar-js-viewer.css ar-js-core.js ar-js-viewer.js The JS files are the same; a core JS file and a JS file for the viewer. Second, for the HTML, we’re only using a single line to create the ActiveReportsJS Viewer. All we need is a single div with an ID that we can use to associate the viewer with the div. Third, in JavaScript, once the page loads, we’re creating a new ActiveReports.Viewer control, associating it with our div, and then telling it to open our report. Finally, we’re including a small amount of CSS so that the viewer takes up the entirety of the screen. Once this is done, all you need to do is move your report into the folder, and run the following command to start your Node.js inventory invoice app: InventoryInvoice node index.js Navigate to localhost:3000, and you should see and be able to interact with the report that you’ve created: The ActiveReportsJS Viewer component is also responsive; it is rendered appropriately on various devices in a wide range of screen sizes. You can use the developer tools available in your web browser to quickly emulate the various mobile devices, screen sizes, and page orientations: Final Notes And with that, we’re done! This article provided a hands-on approach to creating a monthly inventory invoice report using GrapeCity’s ActiveReportsJS Designer. We went over how to aggregate information to create a sales chart grouped by months, as well as an interactive, tabular report with drill-down functionality that consolidates sales by month and order ID. If you would like to see the completed application and report, you can find it . Happy coding! here

Building a Node.js Inventory and an Invoice Billing Application: A Guide

Crear un inventario de Node.js y una aplicación de facturación de facturas: una guía

Création d'un inventaire Node.js et d'une application de facturation : un guide

Node.js इन्वेंटरी और इनवॉइस बिलिंग एप्लिकेशन बनाना: एक गाइड

Node.js インベントリと請求書請求アプリケーションの構築: ガイド

Construindo um inventário Node.js e um aplicativo de cobrança de fatura: um guia

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If you work as a freelancer in the digital economy, it is likely that you have a global perspective when it comes to new prospects and collaborators. A huge, worldwide pool of potential clients and opportunities is available to you. For this reason, it's not uncommon for Designers, Marketing Specialists, Web Developers, or Sales Reps to work with business partners which are based in different countries. Sometimes, a client may be willing to pay you in its local currency only. Of course, this is a slight inconvenience but, after all, setting up a multicurrency account is usually easy and inexpensive, so it might be best to accept the arrangement and plan to convert the money later. The problem This was precisely the situation I was in just a few months ago: I was doing the work, I invoiced monthly, and I was being paid. Nothing to write home about. However, after a few iterations, I started noticing some issues with this approach. Obviously, from time to time I needed to convert small amounts of money to my local currency to buy stuff, and doing so at an advantageous rate wasn't trivial: it wasn't wise to just do the conversion whenever I needed the cash and without looking at the current rates: currency pairs like or fluctuate a lot, and a difference of just a few (aka ) can lead to very different outcomes for your bank account. Why leave money on the table? USD/EUR USD/GBP price-interest points Pips converting currencies always comes at a cost: variable fees, spreads, and platform subscriptions. It doesn't matter how, a broker always finds a way to take its cut. for fiscal purposes, the only rate that mattered was the one being used when I created the invoice. However, after I got paid and wanted to transfer the money a few days later, the market was already operating at a totally different rate. Unfortunately, the Tax Man didn't care if in the past 2 years the economy has been a crazy rollercoaster and historically strong currencies were plummeting - he just wanted his money. As you can see, many different variables were at work here, mostly against me. I didn't like it. «Damn!» I thought «I am an engineer, I will find a solution if there is any chance to make some beer money!» The solution Well, how to turn the tables in my favor? Let's start with a couple of assumptions. The harsh reality is that Forex Trading is complex and risky. I could have poured hundreds of hours into it to educate myself, attempting to come up with bright strategies to gain an edge against the market. However, this approach requires lots of time and money, it's incredibly difficult to pull off as a retail investor, and it simply wouldn't play to my strengths. I concluded that I would just adhere to a naive price-based strategy: buy low, sell high. In the second place, I needed a way to constantly monitor the current rate and act on it whenever it became convenient to convert my money. Initially, I used to visit websites like TradingView to browse the currency pairs rates. As a lowly human, however, I quickly grew tired of such a repetitive and boring task: in fact, I realized, a bot would be much happier to do this kind of work! The bot The strategy was simple: sending a notification every 2 hours with the current rate and the potential gain or loss I could make at that point in time. The most critical part was getting correct, timely data about exchanges: there are myriads of APIs that can help with this, I just chose the path of least resistance and implemented APILayer's because it's free and simple but honestly, any API would work just fine. My function would be something like . Exchange Rates Data API fetchRate this Where, obviously, the and arguments represent any currency pair I am interested in. As soon as I have the current rate, from my average price is trivial. from to computing the pips difference Finally, I just needed a way to send a message to myself with this juicy info. Again, there is no need to complicate things: Telegram API can serve this purpose very well and is very simple to set up. After interceding with the to request a personal bot-friend, I was ready to get loose with the @BotFather messages. Deploying on Lambda Having a personal Forex bot is very useful only if it is always up and running. AWS Lambda is a virtually free solution to host a simple program like mine (or even small microservice architectures), so I refactored my code to run as a serverless function. There are a few ugly parts though, like the fact that some features are not supported for Golang and it's necessary to create a zip archive to upload the files (eww). However, Lambda functions allow for a lot of flexibility and can be triggered by cronjob tasks, SQS messages, or even API calls. For my use case, I decided to set up a bihourly cronjob and added a to specify some input variables. simple JSON payload Let the money flow in! 💸💸💸 References forex-bot repo on github.com What Are Pips in Forex Trading and What Is Their Value? AWS Lambda documentation for Go How to set up a Telegram Bot Exchange Rates Data API Also published . here

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