Beta · Ontario launch · in development
Your week is day rates, overtime after ten, gear, and HST. Your invoicing tool only knows about line items.
{product_name} is being built for freelance film and AV technicians. It learns your rate card once, then carries a shoot week through to a finished invoice — day rate derived from your hourly, OT tiers, gear at daily rates, HST calculated on the total.
Joining the waitlist is not a purchase and costs nothing. This is a beta — we will email you when there is a spot.
Three things generic invoicing tools get wrong on a shoot
“You worked 11.5 hours and the tool only knows how to bill 10.”
So you either eat the overtime or do the arithmetic at 11pm and hope the production office agrees with it.
“My kit goes out with me and it has a daily rate.”
A generic tool makes you retype the same gear line every show, and it has no idea what a day rate is.
“Net 30 passed two weeks ago and I’m the one chasing.”
Nothing tells you which production is late, or how much of your money is sitting out there.
A week becomes an invoice
Three steps: enter the week once, check the invoice the app built, send it. The frames below describe the loop we are building.
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Preview, not yet built — step 1Mon 10.0 h · ST Tue 11.5 h · 1.5 h OT Wed 9.0 h · ST Thu 10.0 h · ST Fri 8.0 h · ST
Placeholder shape only: a week view where each day carries hours and the OT tier (ST/OT1/OT2) your agreement defines.
Step 1. Enter the week once — hours per day, plus gear that went out with you.
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Preview, not yet built — step 2
Labour (day rate derived from your hourly) · gear lines at daily rate · HST on the total.
Placeholder shape only: a draft invoice with each line traceable to the shift or gear item that produced it.
Step 2. Check the draft invoice — every line points back at the shift it came from.
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Preview, not yet built — step 3
PDF invoice sent to the production office · due date tracked · client pays through your own Helcim account.
Placeholder shape only. Payments are not built (phase 5).
Step 3. Send it and let the due date be somebody else’s problem to track.
What this beta actually contains
Honest list. Today the beta is a landing page and a waitlist. Everything else below is what we are building, listed so you can tell us now if it is the wrong list.
Available now (beta)
- This page and the waitlist form.
Being built
- Day rate derived from your hourly rate, per your rate card.
- OT tiers defined by a ruleset (non-union or custom first; a union ruleset only once someone has checked it against the actual agreement).
- Gear lines with daily rates from your gear list.
- HST on invoices, with input tax credits tracked for what you reimburse.
- Timesheet to invoice in one step, with an EP-shaped export for the production office.
- Production AR with Net-30 chasing — see who is late and by how much.
- Tax estimates you can hand to your accountant, with the arithmetic shown.
None of the “being built” items work yet. We will not describe them as shipped until they are.
Why not just use a general invoicing tool
This is a list of capabilities, not a quality judgement, and no competitor price is shown. “Generic tool” means the general-purpose invoicing and accounting apps a small business would otherwise use.
| Capability | Generic tool | {product_short} (planned) |
|---|---|---|
| Day / OT billing as a first-class concept | Hourly or quantity line items; OT arithmetic is manual | Day rate derived from hourly; OT tiers from a ruleset |
| Gear lines at rental daily rates | No gear object; you retype lines | Gear list with daily rates, pulled onto the invoice |
| Production AR aging and Net-30 chasing | Client-level aging, generic reminders | Aging per production; reminders driven by each client’s payment method |
| Tax set-aside you can show your accountant | Tax on invoices; set-aside done outside the tool | Estimate with the inputs and formula shown on hover — an estimate, not a filing |
We are not claiming a competitor lacks something we have not checked on the day you read this. If you use one of these tools and something above is wrong, tell us — the page gets corrected.
Pricing
$20/month
One plan, all features. 30-day free trial.
Not available yet — this is a beta waitlist.
Processing. We charge nothing on top of Helcim’s processing. Helcim’s published rates apply.
Where the money goes. Card payments are processed by Helcim into your own merchant account. {product_short} never holds or moves your clients’ money.
What is not built yet. Connecting Helcim and taking payments arrives later (phase 5). Nothing here can charge anyone today.
After the trial. Nothing charges without an active subscription and a card on file. Cancel any time.
Prices during beta. A beta spot costs nothing. If the price changes before you subscribe, you get 30 days’ notice and no retroactive charge.
Who is behind this
A Toronto film & AV technician. I work in film and AV, and I got tired of hand-writing weekly cost sheets and then rebuilding the same numbers as an invoice. {product_name} is the tool I wanted, built by someone whose week looks like yours.
This is a beta, built by one person. It is not an enterprise product and we will not pretend otherwise.
What is true today:
- No card data is stored on our servers. Card checkout, when it ships, is Helcim’s hosted checkout.
- Our servers are in Canada (Ontario), and the offsite backup is kept in Canada.
- Tenant isolation is enforced at the database, not by the screens.
- There is a written incident process and a sub-processor list.
We are not claiming SOC 2, ISO 27001, or any certification we do not hold.
Read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Join the beta waitlist
We will email you when there is a spot. Joining is not a purchase — nothing is charged, now or later, without you subscribing.
Questions technicians ask
Does it work for non-union day rates?
Yes, that is the first ruleset we are building: day rate derived from your hourly rate (ten hours for a day), with overtime at 1.5× after ten. Non-union and custom rulesets come first. A union ruleset is added only after someone has checked it line by line against that local’s actual agreement — until then it is marked draft in the app.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
Your data is yours. If you cancel, access continues to the end of the paid period, then 30 days read-only, and we offer a full export before anything is deleted. The export is open format: CSV, your PDFs and receipts, plus a machine-readable JSON of every record. Deletion follows the retention notice you agree to, and we do not keep your ledger to train anything.
Do you handle payments, or does Helcim?
Helcim does. Your clients pay into your own Helcim merchant account and {product_short} never holds or moves the money. We charge nothing on top of Helcim’s processing and Helcim’s published rates apply. Connecting Helcim is not built yet; it arrives after the core invoicing work.
Is this tax advice?
No. The tax module computes estimates from the inputs and tables you give it — HST collected, ITCs to claim, an income set-aside figure — and shows the arithmetic behind each number so you can check it. It does not file a return, it does not remit anything, and it is not advice. Confirm anything material with your accountant.