Manta

If you ever needed to create good-looking invoices, receipts, or estimates, then we're sure you know the most obvious two approaches available: you can either opt for a desktop app for invoicing or rely on the arguably more accessible web-apps to get the job done.

Generally, this situation is not ideal since most accounting desktop apps of this sort are quite complex (at least from the day-to-day user's perspective) while web-apps in this genre usually require monthly fees and, obviously, an active Internet connection.

That's exactly why you will definitely love Manta. Designed with the needs of non-professional users in mind (like freelancers, small business entrepreneurs, and so on), Manta is an open-source, Electron-based utility that allows you to create eye-pleasing invoices with the least amount of effort on your part.

In short, it looks good, it's very easy to use, and it's free. It's also worth highlighting that the application delivers enough customization power to keep most users happy. For example, you can customize the default invoicing templates (from the Form Settings section) by enabling, disabling, or tweaking self-explanatory elements such as currency, due date, discount, tax, and note.

You're also provided with the option to select one of four statuses for your invoices namely Pending, Paid, Canceled, and Refunded. Of course, you're able to preview the invoices before exporting them as PDF (useful for quick emailing and printing)

The app's Previewer section allows an even greater degree of customization. You can very well change the accent color, align items, choose between a Minimal and a Business template, as well as add or remove logos, symbols, and recipients.

Taking everything into account, Manta is without a doubt a very useful and well-designed app that's as good at helping everyone create invoices as it is stylish. Sure, we could argue that one drawback is the app's size (roughly 250 MB), however, most apps built with web technologies "suffer" from this problem.

Objectively speaking, it more than makes up for this relative drawback thanks to useful features, good looks and, let's not forget, thanks to the fact that it's free.