Questions

A tool for making invoices and quotes. You set your business up once — logo, VAT number, banking details, your own numbering — and after that a document takes about a minute.

It is not accounting software. There are no ledgers, no statements, no bank feeds and no VAT201, and there will not be.

Three reasons, and if none of them matter to you then a free generator is the right answer.

Free tools forget you the moment you close the tab, so your details go in again on every document. They are built for the US or the UK, not for a South African tax invoice. And they cannot help you get paid — no payment link, no record of who still owes you.

About ten minutes at a desk, and you can skip any step and come back to it. Setup is deliberately a laptop job; creating documents afterwards is the part built for a phone on site.

An Android app is coming soon, on every plan including the free one. It will have the same customers, the same saved lines and the same numbering as the web, and work when the signal does not.

Until then, open Nota in your phone’s browser (Chrome on Android, Safari on iPhone) and sign in. Everything you set up on the laptop is there. There is no iPhone app yet.

No. If you are not registered, your documents say “Invoice” rather than “Tax Invoice” and carry no VAT line at all. That is a legal requirement rather than a setting, so Nota does it for you and will not let you override it.

Nota is built to the field requirements for a South African tax invoice, and it refuses to issue a document that is missing one — it tells you which field and where to add it, rather than producing something quietly invalid.

That is not tax advice and we are not your accountant. If your situation is unusual, check with someone who is.

The rate is configuration with a date range, not a number baked into the app. Every document stores the rate that applied on the day it was issued, so a rate change never rewrites what you have already sent.

Yes. Choose whether the prices you type include VAT or have it added on top. The document shows the split either way.

Yes, and this is worth doing on day one. Set your prefix and your next number during setup — if your last paper invoice was 1042, start at 1043 and the books carry straight on.

You can only change it before you have issued anything through Nota. After that, moving it would leave a gap.

When you issue it, never before. Drafts have no number, which is why you can delete a draft without leaving a hole in the sequence.

Numbers are sequential per document type, and none is ever reused.

No, and that is deliberate. An issued invoice is a tax record: its lines, totals and number are frozen.

What you do instead is void it and issue a replacement. The two are linked, so the history shows what happened rather than hiding it. The only things that still change after issue are whether it has been sent and whether it has been paid.

Only future documents change. Every issued document keeps a frozen copy of both parties as they were on the day, so last year’s invoices do not quietly rewrite themselves.

Yes. You send a link, they read the quote and answer it — no sign-up, nothing to install. You can turn that off, and you can turn off the Decline button separately if you would rather they rang you.

When a quote is accepted Nota can prepare a draft invoice for you. A draft, not an issued one: issuing stays your decision.

Free is a proper tool, not a trial: 10 invoices or quotes a month, properly numbered, with your logo, your VAT number and quote links.

It keeps the last 30 days of settled documents in the app, up to 3 saved customers. Unpaid invoices and open quotes always stay in the app, whatever their age, and PDFs carry a small “Made with Nota” line.

No card, and nothing to cancel.

Every document you issue, invoice and quote alike. Drafts count for nothing until you issue them, so you can build and keep as many as you like.

A voided invoice still counts, because the number it took is not given back.

Every paid plan issues unlimited invoices and quotes; they differ by how many people work in the business. Solo is R 99 a month for one person. Crew is R 199 a month for 2 to 5 people, and Team R 349 a month for 6 to 10 people — the price stays the same however many you are inside that range. Business, for 11 people or more, is agreed with you.

Paid plans keep all your history and all your customers, include the year-end receipts pack, and leave the “Made with Nota” line off your PDFs.

If you bill in bursts rather than every month, a pack of ten credits is bought once, and they do not expire.

You keep working. Drafts still save, and everything you have already made is still there.

The only thing that stops is issuing another document this month. The draft you were on waits where you left it — issue it on the 1st, with credits, or on a paid plan.

They stay yours. Nothing is ever deleted because of a plan — an issued invoice is a tax record, not something we keep hostage.

Cancelling stops the next charge, and the month you have already paid for stays yours. After that Free’s limits apply: settled documents older than 30 days are locked in the app, kept with their numbers, and always in “Download all my data”.

Yes. Credits are used once a month’s documents are spent, and they do not expire, so a pack you bought is there when a busy month needs it. Changing plan does not take them away.

Put them on your documents. That is the whole purpose and it is the only purpose.

Customer names, addresses and contact details are personal information under POPIA. They do not go into analytics, error reports or third-party logging.

Anyone holding the link, which is why it is long enough not to be guessed. It shows one document and nothing else — not your other work, not your customer list.

You can revoke a link at any time without touching the document, and links stop working when the quote expires.