Invio: Self-Hosted Invoicing Without the Bloat

Let's be honest: invoicing software is often a pain. You either pay for a pricey SaaS with features you'll never use, or you wrestle with clunky, over-engineered self-hosted options. What if you just needed something clean, simple, and entirely under your control?

Enter Invio. It’s a self-hosted invoicing tool built with one clear goal: to help you create, manage, and send professional invoices without any unnecessary complexity. It’s the kind of tool a developer builds for themselves when they're tired of the alternatives.

What It Does

Invio is a straightforward web application for handling your invoicing. You can create clients, generate itemized invoices, mark them as paid, and send them out. It keeps track of everything in one place, locally on your own server. No subscriptions, no feature creep—just the core functionality you actually need to get paid.

Why It's Cool

The beauty of Invio is in its restraint. It's not trying to be a full CRM, accounting suite, or project management platform. It's an invoicing tool, period. This focus makes it lightweight and easy to understand.

Because it's self-hosted, your client and financial data never leaves your server. You own everything. It's also a great example of a modern, minimal stack (PHP with a SQLite database) that's easy to deploy and maintain. For freelancers, consultants, or small agencies who want autonomy and privacy, this hits a sweet spot.

How to Try It

Getting started is pretty standard for a PHP app. Clone the repo, point your web server at it, run the SQLite database setup, and you're off.

Head over to the GitHub repository for the full setup instructions and code:

View Invio on GitHub

The README has all the details you need to get it running on your own machine or server.

Final Thoughts

Invio feels like a breath of fresh air in a category full of bloated software. It solves a specific problem well and stays out of your way. If you've been looking for a self-hosted invoicing solution that respects your time and your data, this is definitely worth a spin. It might be exactly what you need, and nothing that you don't.

Found an interesting project? Share it with us @githubprojects.