Airtable as an Accounting System: The Perfect Alternative to QuickBooks & FreshBooks

Why Airtable as an Accounting System for Freelancers?

Traditional accounting software like QuickBooks, FreshBooks, or Wave are designed for large companies and often oversized for freelancers and small agencies.

Airtable offers:

• Flexibility: Design your accounting system exactly to your needs
• Cost-efficiency: The Free Plan is sufficient for many freelancers
• Clarity: All clients, invoices, and line items in one place
• Automation: Automatic invoice creation and email sending possible
• Collaboration: Perfect for small teams and agencies
• Cloud-based: Access from anywhere, no installation needed

Free Airtable Invoice Template: The 3-Table Structure

Our free Airtable invoice template is based on a professional 3-table structure that makes invoice management simple and efficient. This template provides everything you need to get started with automated invoicing:

Table 1: Clients – Your Client Management

The Clients table is the heart of your Airtable accounting system. This is where you store all information about your customers that you'll need for invoicing.

Think of this table as your central client database. Every time you create a new invoice, you'll link it to a client record here. This ensures consistency across all your invoices and makes it easy to track which clients owe you money or have outstanding invoices.

Key Fields:

• Client Name: Company name or client name
• Contact Person: Contact person at the client
• Email: Email address for invoice delivery
• Address: Complete billing address
• Default Hourly Rate: Standard hourly rate (e.g., $85)
• Tax ID / VAT Number: Tax identification number
• Payment Terms: Payment terms (e.g., "Net 14 days")
• Invoices (Linked): Link to all invoices

Table 2: Invoices – Your Invoice Overview

In the Invoices table, you manage all your invoices. This is your main workspace where you'll spend most of your time when handling your accounting.

Each row represents one invoice. You can easily filter by status to see which invoices are still drafts, which have been sent, which are paid, or which are overdue. The linked fields automatically pull in client information and calculate totals from your invoice items, so you never have to manually update numbers.

Key Fields:

• Invoice Number: Unique invoice number (e.g., "2024-001")
• Client (Linked): Link to the client
• Invoice Date: Invoice date
• Due Date: Payment due date
• Status: Single Select ("Draft", "Sent", "Paid", "Overdue")
• Invoice Items (Linked): Link to all line items
• Subtotal: Rollup field (sum of all line items)
• Tax Rate: Tax rate (e.g., 19%)
• Total Amount: Formula: Subtotal + (Subtotal × Tax Rate)
• PDF Link: URL to the generated PDF

Table 3: Invoice Items – Your Line Items

The Invoice Items table contains all individual line items of your invoices. This is where you break down each invoice into specific services or products.

For example, if you're a freelance developer, you might have line items like "Frontend Development - 20 hours", "Backend API Integration - 15 hours", and "Code Review - 5 hours". Each line item is linked to a specific invoice, and Airtable automatically calculates the line total by multiplying quantity by unit price.

Key Fields:

• Invoice (Linked): Link to the corresponding invoice
• Description: Description of the service
• Quantity: Quantity or number of hours
• Unit Price: Unit price or hourly rate
• Line Total: Formula: Quantity × Unit Price
• Unit: Unit (e.g., "Hours", "Items")

How to Automate Invoices in Airtable

The real value is created when you can automatically generate professional invoices as PDFs from your Airtable data. This Airtable to PDF automation tutorial will show you exactly how to set up this workflow using CustomJS.

Instead of manually creating invoices in Word or Excel, you can automate the entire process. When you create a new invoice in Airtable, the system automatically:

• Pulls all client data from the Clients table
• Aggregates all invoice items with quantities and prices
• Calculates subtotals, taxes, and total amounts
• Generates a beautifully formatted HTML invoice
• Converts it to a professional PDF document
• Optionally sends it directly to your client via email

This automation saves you hours of manual work every month and eliminates human errors in calculations or data entry.

How It Works

The PDF generation process is surprisingly simple:

1. Trigger: When you mark an invoice as "Ready to Send" in Airtable, the automation workflow is triggered
2. Data Collection: The workflow fetches all relevant data from your three Airtable tables
3. HTML Generation: Your invoice data is inserted into a professional HTML template
4. PDF Conversion: CustomJS converts the HTML to a pixel-perfect PDF
5. Storage & Delivery: The PDF is uploaded back to Airtable and optionally emailed to your client

The entire process takes just a few seconds, and you can customize the invoice template to match your brand identity perfectly.

3 Ways to Integrate PDF Generation

Depending on your technical skills, there are different options:

Best Practices & Tips

To get the most out of your Airtable accounting system, here are some proven best practices:

Advantages Over QuickBooks, FreshBooks & Co.