How to use TradePay

Your first invoice in 10 minutes

This is the whole app in one pass. Every step has a detailed section further down.

1. Put your business on the paperwork

   Tap the gear icon, then under Companies open the company and fill in Business Information — business name, address, phone. Add your Logo while you're there, and set the Default Tax Rate you charge. Tap Save.

   The first launch also creates a Demo Company with a sample client and estimate so you have something to poke at. It doesn't count against the free limit, and you can delete it any time.

2. Start an estimate

   Go to the Estimates tab and tap +. TradePay opens a new estimate, numbers it for you, and dates it today.

3. Say who it's for

   Tap the customer area at the top. Pick Select Client if you've saved them before, Import Contact to pull them out of your address book, or just type the name, email, and address. Turn on Save as Client to keep them for next time. Tap Done.

4. Write down the work

   Tap + (the round button at the bottom-right on iPhone, or use the item list on the left on a Mac or landscape iPad) and choose Add New Item — or pick something from your saved items. Set the quantity, the description, and the price.

   Tap a line to expand it if you need the Taxable switch or a private note. New lines are not taxable until you say so.

5. Check the total

   The totals block shows subtotal, tax, and total. If the tax reads $0, none of your lines are flagged taxable yet — see Totals and tax.

6. Send it

   Tap EMAIL. Choose any supporting PDFs to attach, then Continue. TradePay builds the PDF, opens a mail draft addressed to your customer with the estimate attached, and marks the document Sent once it actually goes.

7. Turn it into an invoice when they say yes

   Open the estimate and tap → INV in the bottom toolbar. It becomes an invoice, dated today. Send it the same way.

8. Get paid, and record it

   On an invoice, tap PAY, enter what you received and how, and tap Save. When payments cover the total, the invoice goes green, the list shows PAID, and reprints get a diagonal PAID stamp.

Finding your way around

The four tabs

Everything hangs off the picker across the top:

• Estimates — quotes you haven't turned into invoices yet.
• Invoices — the money list. Unpaid invoices float to the top no matter how old they are.
• Archived — finished work you've filed away, kept indefinitely.
• Reports — billed, collected, outstanding, and receivables aging.

The + button appears on the Estimates and Invoices tabs. The gear opens Settings, which is also where Clients and Items live — they used to be top-level tabs and moved to keep the main screen about documents.

Reading a row

Each row carries a colored status dot, the customer, the document type and number, the date, and a money pill on the right:

• Draft — created, not sent
• Sent
• Paid in full
• An orange pill showing the balance still owed
• Expired — an estimate past its expiry date
• Archived — filed away

Search

The search field above the list filters whichever tab you're on, and it matches more than you'd expect: client name, the customer name typed on the document, the document number (with or without the prefix), and the document's notes. Clients and saved items have their own search inside their own screens.

iPhone, iPad, and Mac

It's one app, but the editor lays itself out differently depending on how much room it has:

• Wide (Mac, iPad in landscape) — your saved items sit in a sidebar on the left, line items become a table, and notes sit beside the totals.
• Compact (iPhone, iPad in portrait) — a pill picker switches between Customer / Billing / Shipping / Note / Email, and a round + button opens the item picker as a sheet.

Row gestures also differ by device, because each platform has its own habits: on iPhone, swipe left for Delete and Archive, swipe right for Make a Copy. On iPad and Mac, swipe left for Delete and use long-press (or right-click) for Copy, Archive, and Delete.

Editing is save-or-cancel

The client, company, customer, and item sheets keep your typing to themselves until you tap Save or Done; Cancel throws it away. That's deliberate. If a sheet were writing every keystroke straight to the database, a screen you left open on the iPad yesterday could sync over the edits you made on your phone this morning.

Setting up your business

Open Settings → Companies and tap a company to edit it. Everything here feeds your documents, so it's worth ten minutes once.

Business information

Business name, address, city, state, ZIP, and phone print in the header of every PDF. Phone numbers format themselves as you type. Slogan, email, and website are saved with the company for your own reference.

Logo

Tap to pick an image from your photo library. TradePay shrinks it (longest edge 512 px) and re-encodes it before saving, so a 12-megapixel photo doesn't bloat your database or your iCloud sync. It prints top-left on the PDF, up to about 220 × 56 points, so a wide horizontal logo reproduces best.

Document numbers

Set the next invoice and estimate number and a prefix for each — INV- and EST- by default. Numbering is per company and advances every time you add or duplicate a document. Numbers are never reused: if you delete #1042, the next one is still #1043.

Defaults that save typing

• Default tax rate — the percentage new documents start with.
• Default invoice terms and default estimate terms — copied into the note that prints at the bottom of a new document. Payment terms, warranty language, "50% due on start", whatever you always say.
• Default email notes — the body text of the email you send with a document.

Item categories

Add the buckets you want to sort your price list into — Labor, Materials, Service Calls. They're just labels for finding things quickly; they don't affect any math.

More than one business

You can add as many companies as you like, each with its own logo, numbering, terms, tax rate, clients, saved items, payment details, and W-9. One company is active at a time and the lists show its work only; the title bar shows which one you're in once you have more than one.

Clients & customers

There are two related things here, and knowing the difference explains a lot.

• A client is a saved customer record — Settings → Clients.
• The customer on a document is that document's own copy of a name and address. It can come from a client, or you can type it once for a one-off job and never save it.

Saving a client

In Settings → Clients, tap +, or tap Save as Client while filling in a document's customer. A client holds contact name, company, email, phone, billing address, and private notes, and shows how many documents are attached to it.

A client's display name is the company name when there is one, otherwise the contact name — so "Ridgeline Builders" sorts and prints instead of "Dave".

Importing from Contacts

Tap Import from Contacts in either the client editor or a document's customer sheet. TradePay takes the name, organization, and the first email, phone, and postal address on the card, so check them if the person has three of each. Nothing is ever written back to Contacts.

Private notes

Clients, line items, and saved items each have a private notes field. Gate codes, dog warnings, "always pays late" — none of it appears on any document, email, or PDF you send.

Deleting a client

Deleting a client does not delete their invoices. The documents stay in your lists and reporting; they simply stop being linked to a client record.

Estimates & invoices

An estimate and an invoice are the same kind of document wearing a different hat, which is why converting between them is instant and lossless.

Creating one

Tap + on the Estimates or Invoices tab. TradePay assigns the next number for the active company, dates it today, copies in your default tax rate and your default terms, and — for estimates — sets an expiry date 30 days out.

Dates

Change the issue date in the header. An estimate also has an expiration date; once it's past, the row shows a red Expired badge and the PDF prints Valid Until so the customer knows the price isn't open-ended.

Converting

Tap → INV on an estimate (or → EST on an invoice) in the bottom toolbar. Everything comes along — customer, lines, notes, tax. Estimate-to-invoice also re-dates the document to today, since that's when the job actually became billable.

Statuses

A document starts as a draft, becomes sent the moment an email or share actually goes out, and becomes paid when the payments you record cover the total. That's the whole lifecycle.

If you send an already-sent document, TradePay asks Send Again? first, so a stray tap doesn't fire a duplicate invoice at a customer.

Notes vs. email notes

Two different fields, easy to mix up:

• Note — prints at the bottom of the PDF. Terms, warranty, thank-you. Leave it empty and the PDF prints "Thank You!".
• Email note — the body of the email only. Never appears on the document.

Line items & your price list

Adding lines

On iPhone or a portrait iPad, tap the round + at the bottom-right. On a Mac or landscape iPad, use the item list down the left side. Either way you get your saved items, organized three ways:

• Favorites — the handful you use every day, pinned to the top.
• Categories — grouped by the categories you set up.
• All Items — everything, searchable by name, code, or description.

Tap an item to drop it in as a line. Or tap Add New Item to write a one-off line, or to build a new saved item as you go.

Editing a line

Quantity, description, and price are editable right in the row. Tap the row to expand it for:

• Unit price — with the extended total worked out for you.
• Taxable — off by default. See Totals and tax.
• Private notes — for you, never printed.

Quantities print cleanly: whole numbers show no decimals, and fractional quantities show up to four places, so 0.3333 hours doesn't silently round into a total that doesn't add up.

Separators

Tap SEP in the bottom toolbar — it reads SEPARATOR where there's room for it — to drop in a labeled divider — "Kitchen", "Phase 2", "Materials". It prints as a heading rule across the line-item table and contributes $0, which is a tidy way to break a big job into sections the customer can follow.

Reordering

Tap REORDER to turn on drag handles, move lines into the order you want, and tap it again to finish.

Building the price list

Settings → Items (or Add New Item from the picker) is where saved items live. Each one holds a name, a code or SKU, a default price, a default description, a category, a taxable flag, and private notes. Set the taxable flag here and every line you create from it starts out right.

Long-press or right-click an item in the picker to Edit, Favorite, or Delete it. Deleting a saved item doesn't touch documents you've already written from it.

Totals, tax, discounts & deposits

How the total is built

In order: every line's quantity × price gives the subtotal; the lines you flagged taxable are added up separately and multiplied by your tax rate; the discount comes off; tax goes on. What's left is the total. Payments you've recorded come off that to give the balance.

Discounts

The discount is a dollar amount, not a percentage. For 10% off a $2,400 job, enter 240.

Deposits

Enter a deposit as either a dollar figure or a percentage of the total, using the $ / % switch. It prints as Deposit Due on the document.

Currency

TradePay works in US dollars.

What the PDF shows — and doesn't

To keep the page uncluttered, the printed document shows the Total (plus Deposit Due, Paid, and Balance where they apply) rather than an itemized subtotal, tax, and discount breakdown.

Need the breakdown in writing? Use COPY → Copy as Text. The plain-text version spells out subtotal, discount, tax, payments, and notes — handy for pasting into a text message, an email, or a bookkeeping entry.

Recording payments

TradePay keeps your books; it doesn't move your money. It records what you've been paid and shows the customer how to pay you — the cash, check, or transfer itself happens the way it always has.

Adding a payment

Open an invoice and tap PAY. Enter the amount, the date, a method — Cash, Check, Credit Card, Digital, or Other — and a note ("check #4471"). Tap Pay Full Balance to fill in whatever's left. Save.

Partial payments

Add as many payments as the job takes: deposit, progress payment, final. Each is listed separately with its own date and method, and TradePay keeps the running Paid and Balance figures. Tap any payment to edit or delete it.

Paid status looks after itself

When payments cover the total, the invoice flips to paid: green in the list, a PAID pill on the row, and a diagonal PAID watermark on anything you print or resend from then on. Delete a payment and it drops back to sent with a balance again.

Payment links & QR codes

Set these up once in Settings → Companies → [your company] → Payment Sites and every unpaid invoice tells the customer how to pay you.

The four services

Enter your handle for any of Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App. Each one has two switches: show it as a link in the email, and show it as a QR code on the printed document. Turn on whichever combination suits you.

How they behave

• QR codes appear on invoices with a balance still owed — not on estimates, and not once it's paid.
• PayPal and Cash App links carry the outstanding balance, so the customer doesn't have to type an amount.
• Zelle has no web link, so it can't be a QR code. Your Zelle details print and email as plain text instead.

Sending, printing & copying

Email

Tap EMAIL in the bottom toolbar. You'll get an attachment screen first, where you can include any of your stored PDFs, add your W-9, or send the W-9 only. Continue, and TradePay renders the document, attaches everything, and hands a draft to your mail app with the customer's address, a subject like Invoice #1042, and your email note as the body — with your payment links appended when there's a balance due. You review and hit send.

• Multiple addresses in a customer's email field work fine; TradePay picks them all out and drops duplicates.
• No valid address on the document means no draft — you'll be offered Add Email instead.
• Total attachments are capped at 25 MB, which is what most mail servers accept.
• On a successful send you get a small whoosh, a green confirmation, and the document marked Sent.

If you don't use Mail

On iPhone and iPad, if there's no mail account set up, TradePay offers the share sheet instead — which is also the route to Messages, AirDrop, Notes, Files, or a different mail app.

Print

Tap PRINT for the standard print dialog — ⌘P works on the Mac too. Choose Save as PDF in that dialog to get a file instead of paper.

Copy

Tap COPY and pick a format:

• Text — the full document as plain text, including the subtotal, discount, tax, payments, notes, and payment links. Good for a text message or a quick paste.
• Image — a picture of the document, for chat apps that prefer one.
• PDF — the real thing, ready to paste into an email or drop into a folder.

Insurance certificates & other PDFs

General contractors and property managers tend to ask for the same paperwork every time. Keep it in the app and attach it in one tap.

Go to Settings → Companies → [your company] → Supporting Documents → Manage PDFs and add your liability certificate, workers' comp certificate, business license — anything that's a PDF. You can add several at once, rename them, replace an expired one with a current one, and delete them.

Mark a document as a default attachment and it's pre-selected on every email you send, so the certificate goes out whether or not you remembered it.

• Each PDF can be up to 20 MB, and it has to be a real PDF — TradePay checks.
• Supporting PDFs are stored per company, so each business keeps its own paperwork.

Filling out a W-9

TradePay can produce a completed, signed IRS Form W-9 on demand, which saves hunting for last year's scan every time a new builder asks.

In Settings → Companies → [your company] → Supporting Documents, fill in the W-9 name, choose SSN or EIN and enter the number, pick your tax classification (and the LLC sub-classification if that's you), then draw your signature.

Once name, tax ID, and signature are all present, the W-9 becomes available on the email attachment screen — either alongside a document or as a Send W-9 Only email. TradePay fills the official form, drops an X in the right classification box, adds your signature and today's date, and flattens it into a clean one-page PDF.

Reports & who owes you

The Reports tab covers invoices for the active company — estimates are excluded, since nobody owes you money for a quote. Pick a period across the top: This Month, 6 Months, This Year, Last Year, or Custom.

The three numbers

• Billed — invoices issued in the period, at their full value.
• Collected — payments actually received in the period, whenever the invoice was written.
• Outstanding — what's still owed on unpaid invoices from the period.

Billed and Collected rarely match, and shouldn't. Billed is dated by the invoice; Collected is dated by the check. December work paid in January lands in one month for Billed and the next for Collected.

Receivables aging

The aging panel splits what you're owed into Current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90+ days, with counts and escalating colors. It's your call list, worst first.

Charts

Below that: Monthly Billed as bars, Billed Comparison plotting this year against last year month by month, and Billed by Customer ranked biggest first.

Archived invoices still count toward Billed and Collected history, but drop out of Outstanding and aging — archiving is how you write something off without erasing that it happened.

Archiving, copying & deleting

Archive

Archiving files a document out of the main lists into the Archived tab, where it stays indefinitely and stays searchable. Reach it by swiping a row on iPhone, or long-press / right-click on iPad and Mac. Unarchive puts it back.

Use it for finished, paid work, and for the estimate that never went anywhere — it clears the list without losing the record.

Make a Copy

Duplicating is the fast way to write a document you've written before: same customer, addresses, tax rate, discount, deposit, notes, and every line item, as a fresh draft with a new number. Payments and paid status are deliberately not copied — a copy is new work, not a settled job. Swipe right on iPhone, or use the long-press / right-click menu on iPad and Mac.

This is effectively your template feature. Keep one well-built "standard service call" and copy it whenever you need it.

Delete

Deleting always asks first, and it's permanent — the record is gone from every device once sync catches up, and it doesn't come back through the Archived tab. If you might want the number, the history, or the reporting later, archive instead.

Bringing a job from Floored

If you also use Floored for takeoffs, you can hand a finished measurement over instead of retyping it.

1. Export from Floored

   In Floored, use Export to TradePay. TradePay opens on the review screen.

2. Match the customer

   TradePay looks for an existing client with a matching name, address, email, or phone. Link the job to the one it found, pick a different client, or create a new one.

3. Check the prices

   Review the imported lines and tap through to build the estimate.

Worth setting up once: six saved items named exactly Carpet, Carpet Tiles, LVP, Ceramic, Vinyl and Hardwood, plus a matching … Installation item for each trade you actually do. After that, a Floored takeoff lands fully priced.

The handoff is a link between two apps on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is fetched.

Text size & typeface

Settings → Text Size & Font sets how the app itself reads: seven text sizes from Extra Small to Huge, and a choice of four typefaces — System, Rounded, Serif, or Monospaced — with a live preview and a Reset to Default.

• It's per device. Big text on the phone you use in the sun, normal on the Mac. This setting doesn't sync.
• It never changes your printed or emailed documents. Invoices look the same to the customer no matter how you've set up your screen.

iCloud, backup & restore

Sync

Companies, clients, documents, line items, payments, and saved items sync through your own iCloud account, so the same work shows up on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. There's no TradePay account and no server of ours in the middle. Settings → Sync shows whether sync is on.

If it reads This Device Only, iCloud wasn't available when the app started — usually not signed in, or iCloud Drive turned off. TradePay keeps working and saves everything locally; nothing is lost, it just doesn't leave the device. Sign into iCloud and reopen the app.

Two things stay local by design: your supporting PDFs and your text size and typeface.

Export a backup

Settings → Export Backup writes one file — TradePay_Backup_2026-07-30.json — containing everything: every company with its logo and signature, clients, saved items, documents with their line items and payments, and every supporting PDF embedded inside. On the Mac you get a Save dialog; on iPhone and iPad, the share sheet.

It's the right tool for moving to a new device, keeping an off-app safety copy, or copying supporting PDFs from one device to another.

Restore a backup

Settings → Import Backup, pick the JSON file, and confirm. Understand what this does first:

• It replaces everything on the device — it isn't a merge. Whatever is in the file becomes your data.
• Because the device syncs, that replacement then propagates to your other devices.
• TradePay writes a safety backup of your current data first and tells you where it put it. If it can't write that safety copy, the import stops rather than risk your data.
• Every PDF in the file is validated before anything is changed, and if anything fails midway the whole import rolls back.

Free vs. Pro

TradePay is free for your first 3 documents, with every feature switched on — branding, PDFs, email, payments, W-9, reports, sync. Nothing is crippled to make a point.

After that, Settings → TradePay Pro offers a single $24.99 purchase that unlocks unlimited documents for good — one payment, no subscription. It's handled by Apple's App Store; there's no account to create and we never see your payment details. Settings shows your document count against the limit.

• The limit counts documents across all your companies, so adding a second company doesn't reset it.
• The Demo Company's sample documents don't count.
• Archived documents still count — they exist.
• Bought it and it's not showing on another device? Make sure that device is on the same Apple ID, then tap Restore Purchases in Settings or on the upgrade screen.

If something seems wrong

My tax is $0 even though I set a tax rate.

Line items aren't taxable until you flag them, and new ones start untaxed. Expand each line and turn on Taxable — then set the flag on your saved items so it's automatic next time.

The customer paid the deposit but the balance didn't change.

Deposit Due is a request printed on the document, not a payment. Record the money under PAY and the balance moves.

The PDF doesn't show the tax or the subtotal.

The printed document shows the Total (with Deposit Due, Paid, and Balance where relevant). For an itemized breakdown, use COPY → Copy as Text.

My estimate turned into an invoice with the estimate's number.

Expected — converting keeps the same record and number. For a fresh number, Make a Copy of the estimate and convert the copy.

EMAIL does nothing / says it can't find Mail on my Mac.

Mac sending drives Apple Mail, so Mail has to be installed, configured, and allowed to be controlled by TradePay (macOS asks once — check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation if you said no). Otherwise use PRINT → Save as PDF or COPY → Copy as PDF and attach it yourself.

It won't let me email the document.

Either the customer has no valid email address on the document (you'll be offered Add Email), or the attachments total more than 25 MB — deselect a supporting PDF and try again.

My insurance certificate is on my iPhone but not my Mac.

Supporting PDFs don't sync. Export a backup on the iPhone and import it on the Mac — but read the restore warning first, because importing replaces that device's data.

I can't draw my signature on the Mac.

Signature drawing is iPhone and iPad only. Draw it there once; it syncs to the Mac, which can then generate W-9s.

My other device is missing everything I just did.

Check Settings → Sync on both devices. If either says This Device Only, that device isn't signed into iCloud (or iCloud Drive is off) — everything is safe locally and will sync once it can. Both devices also need to be on the same Apple ID.

I have two of every company after restoring a backup.

Importing creates new companies rather than overwriting existing ones. Delete the duplicates you don't want — remembering that deleting a company deletes its documents.

I can't set a due date, or a shipping charge.

There's no field for either in this version. Receivables aging works from the issue date, and a delivery charge is best entered as its own line item.

I only see one company's invoices.

The lists show the active company. Switch it in Settings → Companies; the title bar names the active one whenever you have more than one.

My iPad doesn't show the item sidebar.

The sidebar needs a wide window — rotate to landscape, or if you're in Split View, give TradePay more of the screen.

An old invoice keeps sitting at the top of the list.

Unpaid invoices sort above paid ones on purpose. Record the payment, or archive it if it's never getting paid.

Something's genuinely broken.

Email fuzzysideupsoftware@gmail.com with your device, OS version, and what you expected versus what happened. See the contact page for what's most useful to include — and please don't send a backup file, since it contains your tax ID.