Worked example: a quote, deposit and balance
For an illustrative job, enter labour of 600 and materials of 240 in the same currency. With no tax or discount applied in this example, the total is 840. A 30% deposit is 252, leaving a balance of 588.
Keep the accepted quote as the agreed scope, convert it into an invoice when appropriate, and record the deposit as a payment so the balance reflects what remains due. Do not count that same deposit twice as both a discount and a payment. Your actual tax treatment depends on your business and jurisdiction; this example is arithmetic, not tax guidance.
What contractors actually need from invoicing
The job list is short and non-negotiable: produce a quote fast, get it accepted without chasing, turn it into an invoice without retyping, and know who still owes you. Everything past that is optional.
Check whether you need scheduling, a customer portal, team dispatch or accounting integrations. QuoteLocal focuses on documents and local records; it is not a replacement for every business-management system.
Where your customer list lives
A cloud invoicing platform holds your customer names, addresses, job history and pricing on its own servers. That is convenient right up until you want to leave, the pricing changes, or the company is acquired.
QuoteLocal keeps records on the device by default. Optional Pro sync uses your own private Apple iCloud container rather than a vendor database, and each synced device keeps its own local copy. There is no QuoteLocal account to be locked out of.
Subscription, or one payment
Recurring pricing makes sense for software that costs the vendor money every month to run: hosted data, payment rails, email delivery at volume. Much invoicing software has those costs and prices accordingly.
An app that generates documents on your own device works differently, and QuoteLocal offers Lifetime as a one-time purchase for that reason. Monthly and annual options exist too and renew automatically unless cancelled.
Working where the signal does not
Plant rooms, new-build sites, rural jobs and underground car parks are all places you finish work and all places a cloud-only app stalls. Documents are created and managed offline in QuoteLocal because the records are already on the device.
Backups are password-protected AES-256 files you hold yourself, so moving to a new Mac does not require a vendor migration tool.