From a blank page to paid.

Getting started

The first time you open Ochre it asks for your business — name, address, tax ID, and base currency. That same first screen offers an optional logo, from Photos or Files, with a thumbnail once you've chosen one and a way to remove it before you continue — skip it and add one anytime afterwards, from Settings. Four short steps — your business, your trade, money, then a last look — and you're in. Ochre reads your device's region to pre-fill sensible defaults (country, currency, a fiscal-year start where we know your market's, and — for India — GST wording), all of which you can change.

Ochre keeps your books on your device and has no account to create. To use them on another device you own, turn on iCloud sync or move a backup file — see Backup & restore.

Already used Ochre on another device, signed into the same iCloud account? This first screen instead says, while it checks, “Checking iCloud for an existing book…” — then a plain sentence on whether your book was found, why it wasn't yet, or that iCloud couldn't be reached. The check never holds the screen for more than a few seconds.

One step asks your trade — pick yours from the list, or choose Other and tell us what you do in a short text box. Picking a trade from the list starts you with a matching catalog and wording; Other is just a label — nothing is seeded from it. Either way the name is kept on the business and you can edit it later from Settings → Business details.

One of those steps is a single toggle: charge tax on your invoices? — the same question, one tap, in every country. Turn it on and Ochre suggests a starting tax class and rate for your market from a global catalog; turn it off and the tax layer disappears from your documents entirely. Nothing here is fixed — revisit it any time from Settings → Tax rates, an accessible editor for creating and adjusting the tax classes your business charges.

The same step offers an optional first account — just its kind (bank, cash, wallet…), not how customers pay you, which is set later from Settings → Business details → Payment details; skip it and add one anytime from Money.

The last step shows what you'd actually pay — your plan prices, straight from the App Store, with See plans for the detail. It's an offer, not a requirement: drafting is always free, Ochre asks you to start a plan when you issue your first invoice, and nothing is charged unless you choose to. You can see the same thing later from Settings → Subscription, which always shows what applies to you — See plans if you haven't chosen one yet, Switch to yearly if you're on the monthly plan, or Own Ochre for life at its App Store price while you're subscribed. Lifetime is a separate purchase, not a top-up — nothing already paid carries over automatically.

Got an offer code? Tap Redeem code — on the plans screen, just below Restore Purchases, or in Settings → Subscription. It opens Apple's own redeem sheet, and when Apple accepts the code, Ochre Pro switches on straight away with no relaunch. A free-year Yearly code shows as “free with your offer code until” a date, then renews yearly unless you cancel; a Lifetime code reads “You own Ochre Pro for life”. If you already own Ochre Pro for life, the button is not shown. On a Mac older than macOS 15 the button opens the App Store's redeem page instead and says so; if Pro hasn't switched on when you come back, tap Restore Purchases.

You can run more than one business from the same app. On iPad and Mac, the name at the top of the sidebar is a switcher: tap it to add another business or move between them. On iPhone, tap Menu (☰, top left), then the business name at the top. Every screen, number, and document is scoped to the business you're in.

Your first invoice, and the tips

There is no tour. On a brand-new book the Documents screen shows a Send your first invoice card with three steps — Add a customer, Add a line and Send it — each marked Done or To do as you go. The card disappears after your first sent invoice, or when you tap Hide.

Small one-time tips then show up exactly where they help. Each appears once and has a close button: Add a line on an empty draft, Quantity and price after the first line, Ready to issue when the invoice is complete, Got paid? on a sent invoice, Scan a receipt on Money, Billing the same again? on a paid invoice, and Your book, your copy in Settings, about backups and a second business. Tips sit inside the page, never over a button, and follow your text size, dark mode and Increase Contrast. To see the card and the tips again, open Settings → Help → Show tips again.

Settings → Help also holds User guide, Help, Contact us and Rate Ochre on the App Store. Ochre may ask for a rating once, using Apple's own sheet, after you issue your third invoice or after the third invoice you have is paid — never on your first day, never twice within 120 days, and never over a sheet or the invoice preview. Nothing in Ochre depends on your answer; the Settings link is there if you would rather rate it yourself.

The workspace

Your map — the sidebar on iPad and Mac, or Menu (☰, top left) on iPhone — lists Documents, Customers, Vendors, Products & services, Time, Money, Insights, Settings. Documents expands into Invoices, Quotations, Credit notes, Purchase orders, Bills and Debit notes — tap the chevron to fold or unfold that group; it stays how you leave it.

Documents opens with a money band up top — your total outstanding and, in warm ink, the overdue slice:

Below it, documents are grouped by what needs you — your Drafts, any Quotes still waiting on an answer, then Needs attention, In flight and Settled — so the work that matters is first. Search by number or client at any time. You can jump to any section from anywhere, even while deep inside a customer or a document.

Multiple businesses

One Ochre Pro plan covers every business you run — not one per business, not one per device. The business name — at the top of the sidebar on iPad and Mac, or behind Menu on iPhone — is a switcher, not just a label: tap it to move between the businesses on this device, or choose Add business… for a new one, which opens the same short setup as the first — see Getting started.

Everything is scoped to the business you're in: documents, customers, products, accounts, tax rates, invoice numbering, and the paper design — template, accent, logo — all belong to one business and switch with it. Which business is active is set per device, so you can be in one on your iPhone and another on your Mac; with iCloud sync on, the books for both stay in step, and only which one you're looking at is not shared.

Settings → Records → Businesses is where you manage them — the same on iPhone, iPad, and Mac (on iPhone, Settings sits behind Menu). Rename one in place, archive a business you're no longer using — it disappears from the switcher, and every invoice, client, and ledger row stays exactly where it is, on disk and in your backups — and unarchive it later if you need it again. The business you're currently in can't be archived.

Deleting a business

Deleting is deliberately two steps, so it can't happen by accident. Archive the business first — that alone is reversible, as above. Only an archived business shows a Delete… button; tapping it names exactly what you're about to lose (how many documents, customers/vendors, products, time entries, and payment records) before you confirm.

This is permanent. It removes the business, and everything in it, from this device and from every other device this book syncs to — there is no undo, and an invoice number already issued is never reused. Deleting offers to save a backup of everything first, checked by default, and the delete button stays unavailable until that backup has actually saved — you can turn it off, but only by confirming you mean it. See Backup & restore. The active business can't be archived, so it can't be deleted either — switch to another business first.

Creating a document

Hit New invoice — its chevron opens the other kinds: quotation, purchase order, bill, debit note and credit note (and New from text… where on-device AI is available). Inside a section such as Quotations, the main button makes that kind instead. A new draft opens straight into the customer picker.

• Pick the customer — the list is ordered by who you billed most recently, and it's searchable. Not there yet? Create them inline.
• Add lines — start typing a description and Ochre suggests matches from your catalog; press Tab on a keyboard, or tap a suggestion, to use it (it fills the rate and tax), then type the quantity and hit return. Line done.
• Set the details — dates, currency, and (for foreign currencies) the exchange rate, pre-filled with the last rate you used for that currency.

The document you're editing is the invoice — what you see is what prints. When it's ready, press Issue: Ochre allocates the next number in your series and locks it Locked — an issued invoice is a legal record, so it can't be quietly changed. The PDF preview opens by itself so you can send it right away. Drafting is free; issuing a numbered document needs a plan, and the first time you press Issue without one Ochre shows you the plans, with a free trial where you are eligible for one.

Duplicate a document

Open any invoice, estimate, bill or purchase order and tap the ••• at the top right (Document actions). Duplicate makes a fresh draft with the same lines, prices, notes and terms; Duplicate as… does the same but turns it into another type — Invoice, Estimate, Proforma Invoice, Purchase Order, Credit Note, Bill or Debit Note. The new draft opens straight away, has no number until you issue it, is dated today, and stays in the same business. A Purchase Order, Bill or Debit Note leaves the customer blank so you can pick a vendor. The original is never changed. A blank draft you haven't touched has nothing to copy, so Duplicate is greyed out there.

On a Mac the same thing is File → Duplicate (⌘D). On iPhone, a sent invoice's bottom bar has a ••• (More actions) menu with Duplicate and Duplicate as… in it too, so you don't need to reach for the top corner; Back returns to the invoice you copied. The Documents list's long-press (or right-click) menu still offers both.

A document that belongs to another business — the “Not in this business” screen a Mac can keep open after you switch — has no Document actions and no File → Duplicate, so it can't copy into the wrong book.

Attach, open and remove a file

Under Attachments on a draft or a sent document, Photos attaches a picture from your library and Attach attaches any file up to 10 MB. Tap an attachment's row to see the photo or PDF full screen (a Quick Look window on the Mac), then close it to land back on the document as you left it. A password-protected PDF opens to the viewer's own “This document is password protected” box — Ochre never asks for, or keeps, that password.

Each file has Share and Remove. Remove asks first. Once the document has been saved, removing a file adds a line to its Activity, such as “File removed: contract.pdf”; choosing Cancel records nothing.

The name you see on the row is the name the file has when you share it. A file on an invoice goes out as, for example, “INV-0042 - Beacon Co - attachment.pdf” (“Draft” instead of the number before it has one). A file you named yourself keeps its name.

Snippets & calculators

• Snippets — a library of reusable notes and terms text, so you're not retyping the same clause on every document. Manage it from Settings → Business → Snippets, beside the default notes and terms it inserts into.
• Discount calculator — while drafting, the small calculator button next to DISC % on the totals panel works out a document-wide discount percentage from a target amount, so you don't have to do the arithmetic yourself.
• Break-even calculator — inside Insights, works out how many units you need to sell, at a given price, before your fixed costs are covered. It's a standalone question about your business, not tied to any one document.

Recurring invoices

Right-click an issued invoice on the Mac, or long-press one on iPhone or iPad, and choose Repeat — Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly — to turn it into a standing schedule for that customer, amount, and currency.

Ochre runs no server, so nothing fires while the app is closed. Instead, a due schedule turns into a plain Draft invoice the moment you next open Ochre — yours to review and send, never sent on its own. Leave a device closed through several periods and opening it catches up with exactly one waiting draft, not a flood of one per missed period.

Manage what's armed from Settings → Records → Recurring invoices: who, how much, how often, and when the next draft is due, with a pause, resume, or delete for each one. Tap a row, or choose Edit…, to change the amount, the schedule, or the customer — a read-only Next draft date updates as you pick, so you can see the effect before you save. Changing the schedule keeps the day it's anchored to and recomputes the next draft from there; the amount only affects drafts still ahead of you.

The same Edit screen has a second setting, Repeats by: count the schedule in Gregorian months or Hijri months (Umm al-Qura). Gregorian is the default, and stays the default even on a phone whose own calendar is set to Islamic — Ochre only follows what you pick here, never the device's own setting. Either way, the invoice's issue date, due date, and tax stay Gregorian; only the gap between one draft and the next counts differently.

A monthly schedule keeps its own day of the month. Set on the 31st, it lands on the last day of a shorter month — 31 Jan → 28 Feb → 31 Mar → 30 Apr — and returns to the 31st the moment a month has one again, rather than staying pinned to the 28th.

Because your devices sync through your own iCloud rather than one central server, two devices that both open the app on the day a run comes due — before either has synced — can each draft it. That's a genuine offline race, not a mistake either device made on its own, and Ochre doesn't try to guess which draft to keep. Once both devices have synced, reopen the app and Settings → iCloud Sync names the pair, by customer and date, and tells you what to do about it: keep one and move the other to Trash.

Customizing the paper

Ochre ships nine templates — Editorial (the default), Classic, Statement, Standard, Branded, Minimal, Standard Form, Flat Utility and Ledger — under Settings → Invoice design, its own row alongside Business details. There you also choose:

• A ready-made Preset, or your own combination of the settings below.
• Accent ink — used only on labels; money and body text are never colored.
• Money face, Type size, Total size and Rules, plus a Header band colour on the Branded template.
• Paper size — Automatic (by your business's country), A4, US Letter, Legal, a landscape sheet on Flat Utility, or a 58 mm or 80 mm thermal roll.
• Fields on paper — show or hide tax ID, ship-to, e-Way Bill, HSN/SAC, payment details, the scan-to-pay QR, signatory, the reference line, each payment method, and — for India — the delivery challan button. Amounts and tax always print.

A change applies to your drafts and to every document you issue from then on. A document you have already issued keeps the look it had when it was issued — template, accent, paper size, which fields print and which payment methods print — so a copy you reprint later matches the one your client holds. The facts on it are frozen too.

Sending, saving & printing

The same invoice in three of the twelve document languages. Invoices start in English. Set a default language for each business under Settings → Business → Invoice language, and change it on any draft with the Language menu. Arabic prints right to left.

Every document has a Preview PDF button. The preview is where delivery happens, with the finished page in front of you:

• Share — the system share sheet: Save to Files, AirDrop, Messages, any mail or chat app you have, anywhere.
• Save PDF… (Mac) — a copy to any folder.
• Email — one tap opens a draft in your own mail app, addressed to the client with the PDF attached; nothing sends until you press Send. On iPhone and iPad the button appears when Mail is set up on the device; if it isn't, use Share to reach any mail app. Ochre stores no email account or password of its own.
• Print — straight to any printer (AirPrint on iPhone and iPad).

The same flow makes receipts for payments and delivery challans (India) from an issued invoice.

Correcting a document

Something is wrong on an invoice you have already issued. What you do depends on one thing: has it actually reached your client yet?

It has not been sent — just edit it

An issued invoice keeps an Edit pencil until the moment the PDF first leaves your device. Tap it, change whatever is wrong, tap Done. The invoice number does not change and nothing new is created. Nobody ever saw the wrong version, so there is nothing to reconcile.

The pencil disappears the first time the PDF leaves the app — when you share, save, print or email it. It also will not appear on an invoice that has taken a payment, has had a credit note applied to it, or is a quotation — those have their own routes below.

If you might need to correct it, correct it before you send it. Preview first; anything you catch at that point costs nothing.

It has been sent — revise it

Tap Revise. You get a draft pre-filled with everything from the original — lines, client, dates, notes, terms, custom fields. Change what needs changing and issue it. The revision takes the next invoice number, and the original is marked Replaced and kept exactly as you sent it.

The revision prints a line naming what it replaces, so your client can see which document supersedes which. You can turn that line off per document while editing the draft.

Two documents claiming the same serial while saying different things is the one thing invoice numbering exists to prevent — which is why a sent invoice gets a new number rather than being quietly rewritten.

The amount should come down — credit note

For an agreed discount, returned goods or an overcharge, raise a credit note against the invoice. The original stays standing and untouched; the credit note records the reduction and can be applied to the invoice. This is usually the right instrument when money has already changed hands. Open the credit note and use Refund, and choose how the money actually moved: I've already refunded them, if you repaid the customer yourself — outside Ochre, through your bank, Stripe, or PayPal — records the money out, dated the day it left, and a cash-basis tax report takes the tax back in that month. Where a Stripe key is on file and the note credits an invoice, Refund to their card (Stripe) is offered too: Ochre finds the original card payment, shows the most that can still go back to it, and one confirm sends the money through Stripe itself — no bank or Stripe dashboard needed. The key needs Refunds: Write for this; if it lacks it, Ochre says so and how to add it. That confirm is the only step: the money leaves your Stripe balance immediately, and it can't be pulled back from inside Ochre once sent.

It should never have existed — void it

Void retires the document. It keeps its number, so no serial is ever reused, and any payments recorded against it are reversed. The number is spent, not recycled. The PDF Ochre makes from then on is stamped VOID, with a line saying it isn't a bill and shouldn't be paid. A copy you already sent is your client's file — Ochre can't reach it, so tell them it's cancelled if they might still pay it.

If you really need to edit a sent invoice

There is a setting for it — Settings → Editing → Edit invoices after sending, off unless you turn it on. With it on, the Edit pencil stays available after sending and the invoice keeps its number. Every change is written to that document’s activity log, which you can open from the clock icon.

Be aware of what this means: your client is holding a copy that no longer matches your books, under the same invoice number. If they have already filed it, the two versions will disagree. Send them the corrected version, and check with your accountant whether a revision or credit note is expected in your market.

Trash & restore

Deleting a document doesn't destroy it outright — it moves to Trash, where it waits until you either bring it back or remove it for good.

To trash one: right-click it on the Mac, or long-press it on iPhone or iPad, and choose Move to Trash. A document that hasn't taken any payment trashes straight away. One that has recorded money against it can't trash silently — you're asked to choose: Void payments, then Trash (reverses the payments first, an audit-clean record of the reversal) or Trash, keep payments (sets the document and its payments aside together, reversibly). Either way your account balance drops by the same amount; the difference is only how the money is remembered.

A document in the Trash can't be previewed or sent. Restore it and it's live again, and prints normally. (Were a PDF of it made while it sat in the Trash, it would be stamped WITHDRAWN — "not a current record".)

Everything you've trashed lives at Settings → Records → Trash. Tap the ••• on any row for Restore, which brings the document — and, if you kept them, its payments — back exactly as they were. An issued document stays recoverable in Trash indefinitely; it owns a number in your legal sequence, so it is never permanently deleted. Only a never-issued draft offers Delete Forever, and that one really can't be undone.

Getting paid

On an issued invoice, Record payment captures the amount, the account it landed in, and a method/reference note like “Bank transfer 8842” or “Cheque 001234”. Save it and the balance rolls up, the invoice recolors to on-track, and a quiet Paid stamp settles onto the paper.

Part-payments are fine — the invoice tracks what's still outstanding, and each payment can produce a receipt PDF stamped with the reference you entered.

An invoice turns Overdue on the calendar day after its due date — the due date itself is never shown as overdue, whatever time of day it is.

A file on a payment, and the payment buttons

You can attach a file to a payment, such as a bank confirmation. On the invoice's Payments list, and on the account's ledger, the payment shows “1 file attached” with the file underneath. Tap it to see it full screen, then close it to land back where you were. The file has Share and Remove file; Remove file asks first, and leaves a line in the invoice's Activity. In the Record payment sheet you can open a file you have picked but not yet saved, to check it is the right one before you tap Record. It goes out as, for example, “Payment - Beacon Co - 2026-10-16.jpg”.

On each payment row there are two buttons that are easy to mix up, so they say what they do: Payment receipt makes the receipt PDF to share with your customer, and Delete payment… removes the payment itself. Delete payment asks first and tells you that the payment's attached file goes out of view with it. The file's own control is Remove file, with a different icon, so the only bin on a payment is the one that deletes the payment.

Deposits

On a draft invoice or quotation, scroll to Deposit and ask for a percentage or a fixed amount upfront — set one and the other clears itself, since only one ask can be live at a time, and the figure updates as you type.

Once issued, the document carries a quiet badge until it's settled — “Deposit $500 requested,” then “Deposit paid” — right there in the list, not only on the paper. On a live quotation, Record deposit captures the cash before the job even starts, held against the quote rather than folded into an invoice that doesn't exist yet.

Convert that quotation to an invoice and the deposit follows it: the same credit, re-parented rather than duplicated, so the invoice opens already part paid.

When a quotation has more than one option and a deposit was paid on one the customer didn't accept, that money doesn't just sit there unmentioned. Ochre tells you the moment acceptance goes through — which option, how much — and the option itself keeps carrying a quiet note that it's still holding a deposit owed back, with a Record refund… button right there, until you clear it.

Payment schedules

For work billed in stages, build a schedule instead of a single deposit: add stages, name each one — “Advance,” “On milestone,” “On handoff” — and give it a percentage. Ochre keeps a running total as you go and won't save a schedule short of, or over, 100%.

A schedule and a deposit can't both be on one document. With a deposit set, Ochre asks you to clear it before you build a schedule, and while a schedule is built a deposit entry is not accepted — so a document never carries two competing asks. Once issued, every payment you record fills the stages in order, and the document shows where it stands: “Stage 2 of 3 · $600 due.” Open it and every stage is listed — settled, current, or upcoming — with the next one due named plainly.

Payment links

Under Settings → Business details → Payment details you can turn on real payment rails alongside the usual bank details and PayPal.Me handle:

• Card payments (Stripe) — paste your own Stripe restricted key (rk_…) scoped to Payment Links. Ochre uses it to create a link, to ask Stripe whether a link was paid, and — only if you also give the key Refunds: Write, which is optional — to send a refund you ask for. It is kept in the Keychain and never written into a backup; if you use iCloud Keychain, Apple carries it, end-to-end encrypted, to your other devices. A key that can refund can also send money out of your Stripe balance, so give it only what you need.
• PayPal — a plain PayPal.Me handle, which needs no credentials at all. You paste your handle and Ochre prints the link — there is nothing to connect and no key to keep safe.

Issue a cross-border invoice and Ochre prints whichever of these you've configured, leaning toward a real payment link; a domestic invoice leans toward the local rail instead — bank details, or UPI in India. Turning on more than one rail doesn't force a choice: everything you've switched on can print on the same invoice, and a preferred method, if you set one, just moves to the front of the list.

On an invoice with a working Stripe key, Check for payments asks Stripe whether it's been paid and proposes the entry — it never records one on its own. You confirm the amount and the account before anything lands in your books.

Customers & the statement of account

Open a customer to see who they are, what they owe, everything you've billed them, and the fastest path to billing them again. Every customer has a Statement button: pick a period — This month, Month to date, Last month, This quarter, This year, Year to date, All time, or a Custom range — and Ochre produces a printable statement of account: opening balance, every invoice and payment with its reference, a running balance, and the final balance due. Share, email, or print it like any other document.

Time tracking

Time in the sidebar (or on iPhone's Menu, or Settings → Records → Time) opens a running list: a timer bar at the top, then every entry — unbilled first, billed below. Start timer begins it and it counts up right there; Pause and Resume hold the clock, and Done saves the elapsed hours, rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Prefer to type hours by hand? Add hours opens the same fields a timer entry has — client, service, description, hours, hourly rate, and a Billable toggle for time you tracked but won't charge for.

Once you've logged hours for a client, a button appears for them — “Bill Atlas Studio — 4 entries” — that opens a new draft invoice with one line per entry, the rate and tax already carried from the service. Each entry is stamped as billed the moment it lands on that draft, so the same hour can never be billed twice; a billed entry turns read-only here, and you edit the invoice itself if something needs to change.

Products & services

Your catalog lives under Products & services: name, SKU, price, tax class, unit, and optional HSN/SAC. Give a customer a Default discount and their new lines start at that discount. Catalog items power the autosuggest when you build invoices. Archive anything you no longer sell — it's kept for history, out of the way.

Tracking stock

If you sell physical goods, turn on I sell products under Settings → Inventory — off by default, and free. It adds a Track stock switch to each product, manual stock adjustments, and a Stock report (its own row in Settings, appearing once the toggle is on) listing every tracked product's quantity on hand, with a CSV export of either the on-hand figures or the full movement history, and an Import stock take button that reads a counted-quantities CSV back in and corrects each product to match. Turning the toggle back off hides these controls without touching anything you've already recorded.

Money & expenses

Money shows your accounts, balances, and a feed of recent payments. Add an expense with a category, vendor, and a receipt photo — Choose from Photos sits beside the usual Files picker, on iPhone, iPad, and Mac alike. Purchase orders track what you spend with suppliers. Everything is cash-basis in your base currency, with foreign amounts converted at the document's rate.

Scan receipt — photos and PDFs

Scan receipt (on Money, once you have an account to book into) reads a receipt for you: Scan with camera (where the device has a camera), Choose from Photos, or Choose file. Ochre fills in the merchant, date and amount for you to check — nothing is saved until you tap Save.

Choose file now takes a PDF too, for receipts that arrive by email. Ochre reads the first three pages and attaches the PDF itself as the receipt (up to 10 MB). If the PDF is password-protected, Ochre asks once — “This PDF is password-protected”, with Unlock or Skip — and offers one more try if the password is wrong. The password is used only to read the PDF at that moment and is never saved or logged; the PDF stays locked in your records, exactly as you received it. If you skip, or it still fails, the PDF is attached anyway and the form says “This PDF is locked — fill in the details below.”

Reading a receipt uses your device's on-device AI. If it can't run, Ochre now says why instead of blaming the device. If Apple Intelligence is switched off, it tells you to turn it on in Settings (System Settings on a Mac) and to check that Siri and your device use the same language; if it is still getting ready, it says to try again in a few minutes; only a device that truly can't run it says so. In every case you can fill in the expense by hand. Settings → On-device AI is always shown, with the reason and, on iPhone and iPad, an Open Settings button where that helps.

Open, share or remove a receipt

Tap the receipt's row on an expense to see the photo or PDF full screen (a Quick Look window on the Mac), then close it to land back on the expense exactly as you left it. This works on a new expense before you save it and on one you reopen later. Each receipt has Share and Remove; Remove asks first. On an expense you are editing, the removal waits for Save: Cancel keeps the receipt, and the file is never deleted before you save.

A receipt now goes out with a useful name — “Receipt - Acme Paper - 2026-10-16.jpg”: the vendor (or your note, if there is no vendor), then the date — instead of “receipt.jpg”, so a bookkeeper doesn't get a dozen files with the same name. A photo Ochre shrank gets the right ending (“IMG_1234.jpg”, not “.HEIC”), so other apps open it. Files already saved are not renamed.

Files shared into Ochre

Share a PDF or a photo to Ochre from Files, Mail or Photos and the Shared with Ochre sheet appears the next time Ochre is open and unlocked. It shows a thumbnail of the file; tap it to open the file in Quick Look, so you can tell which receipt or PDF it is before you choose which invoice, quote or expense it belongs to. Nothing is attached until you choose, and you can discard it instead.

Insights

Insights gives you the numbers at a glance — outstanding, overdue, paid this month, spent this month; receivables by age; and money-in versus money-out over a range you choose. A business that charges tax also gets a Tax collected report for the period (for India, by CGST, SGST and IGST). Use Print report to save or send the page as a PDF.

A filter bar sits at the top: a period menu — This month, Month to date, Last month, This quarter, This year, Year to date, All time, or a Custom range you set start and end for — plus a customer chip and a product chip, each a multi-select so you can narrow to one or several. Every figure, chart, and breakdown on the page follows the filter; a Clear button appears once anything is narrowed.

Income statement

Below the sales and tax breakdowns sits a cash-basis income statement — net sales with the tax collected shown beneath it (that's the government's money, not yours, so it's never folded into profit), expenses by category, realised foreign-exchange gain or loss where it applies, and a plain Net profit or Net loss line — the word carries the meaning, never a colour. A quiet line notes anything received without an invoice (“Not counted as income”), and the statement has its own CSV export, separate from Print report.

India & GST

When your business country is India, Ochre turns on the GST features: correct CGST / SGST / IGST splits, tax treatment per party (regular, export or SEZ zero-rated, exempt) with the right words on the invoice, e-Way Bill capture, proforma marking on quotes, a scan-to-pay UPI QR on rupee invoices, and delivery challans from issued invoices. These stay out of the way for businesses elsewhere — Ochre is world-ready first.

Outside India, tax works the same way in spirit: Settings → Tax rates lets any business set up the tax classes it charges, with a starting rate suggested for its own country from a global catalog. These starting rates are a considered default, not a filing — confirm the numbers for your business with your own tax advisor. See how this works for your own market in the invoicing guides by country.

In a few markets the invoice's own title is part of what the law specifies, not just decoration — and it can turn on whether the seller is tax-registered at all. A VAT-registered seller in Saudi Arabia, for instance, heads their Arabic invoice فاتورة ضريبية ("Tax Invoice"), or فاتورة ضريبية مبسطة ("Simplified Tax Invoice") when the customer has no VAT number; a seller who isn't VAT-registered prints a plain Invoice instead — never a tax-invoice heading, since there's no VAT on the document to claim. Ochre looks up rules like this per market rather than guessing at them.

Ochre makes the invoice; it does not send it to a government e-invoicing system. That matters most in Saudi Arabia, where VAT-registered businesses must e-invoice through ZATCA's Fatoora platform — use a ZATCA-accredited e-invoicing solution alongside Ochre there. Setup says so when a Saudi business switches on VAT registration.

Backup & restore

Ochre keeps everything on the device you're using. There are two ways to put your books on another device you own, and neither goes through a server of ours.

Turn on Sync with iCloud (Settings → iCloud Sync) and your iPhone, iPad, and Mac keep the same books in step through the private database of your own iCloud account. It is off until you switch it on. Or leave it off and move a backup yourself: export one (Settings → Backup → Backup & restore) to iCloud Drive, or anywhere else you choose, then open Ochre on the other device and import it. Either way, no server of ours sits in between.

Sync runs through Apple's iCloud, on Apple's schedule. Changes usually reach your other devices within a few minutes, but it can take longer, especially the first time, on a slow connection, or when a device is offline or in Low Power Mode. Until it catches up, a device can show an older view.

Backups are yours to keep: .ochre files. When you export one by hand (Settings → Backup → Backup & restore → Export .ochre archive) the passphrase is optional: type one and the file is locked with it; leave it blank and the file is saved with no lock, readable by anyone who has it. Turn on Automatic backup (daily or weekly, plus a backup whenever you close the app after changes) and Ochre keeps a rolling set, always locked with the passphrase you set for it. Turning it on asks where to put them. On a Mac, pick any folder you can reach — iCloud Drive, a folder from another cloud-storage service you have set up, a NAS — or leave it in Ochre's own folder. On iPhone and iPad, pick iCloud Drive or a folder on the device itself; a folder from some other storage services may not be selectable there, and if the picker won't let you choose one, use iCloud Drive. Until you choose a folder, Settings keeps a quiet reminder that backups are only on this device and would be lost if you deleted Ochre. You can export or import by hand any time.

Setting a passphrase asks you to type it twice, so a typo doesn't lock you out later. For Automatic backup it also shows a one-time reminder to write it down. While Automatic backup is on, you can read that passphrase back at Settings → Backup with Show passphrase — it asks for Face ID, Touch ID, or your device passcode first, and only ever shows it on the device that set it.

To restore, open Settings → Backup → Backup & restore and, under Import, choose Choose .ochre file. Opening a .ochre file from Files, Mail or Finder takes you straight into the same restore flow with that file already chosen.

Restoring: Merge, Replace all, Just one business

The Mode menu starts on Merge, which adds the backup's businesses and records alongside what is already on this device. It recognises a business you have renamed since the backup instead of adding it a second time, and keeps each business's products apart even when two use the same SKU. Just one business restores a single business out of a backup that holds several.

Replace all is the one that removes things, so it asks first. The question says how many businesses it will replace, that documents not in the backup will be removed, and — with iCloud sync on — that your other devices change too. Before it replaces anything, Ochre saves a copy of your current book and tells you the file name afterwards, so the step can be undone. If that copy can't be saved (for example the device is full), Ochre says so and asks whether to replace anyway; the result line then says no copy was kept.

A large or passphrase-locked backup takes a moment, and the screen says what it is doing. When you choose Replace all, it shows “Reading the backup…” while Ochre counts the businesses in the file for that question; nothing in your book changes until you answer it. Once the restore runs it shows “Decrypting…” (and, before a Replace all, “Saving a copy of your current book…”). Merge doesn't ask first — it adds to what you have.

Backups Ochre saved itself

The safety copy from Replace all, and the files automatic backup writes, live in Ochre's own folder, which the Files app can't show on iPhone and iPad. In Settings → Backup → Backup & restore, Saved in Ochre lists each one, newest first, as a plain-words kind (“Before Replace all”, “Automatic backup”, “Year archive”), the date and the size. Tap one for Restore… (it picks the file in Import with Merge selected — Replace all still asks first), Share, or Delete, which asks first and can't be undone.

Archive a year, and what Ochre holds

When a financial year is finished and fully settled, you can move it out of the live book to free space. Open Settings → Backup → Backup & restore, choose Archive a year… under Year archive, and choose the year. Ochre shows what moves out (documents, payments and expenses, files and PDFs) and what stays the same (your balances and stock), then asks you to confirm. It saves a copy where you choose and another in Ochre's own Backups (listed under Saved in Ochre), and only then removes the year. Only a year that has ended and is fully settled can be archived; one that can't be yet says why, in words.

An archived year comes back with Merge back on its “Year archive” row under Saved in Ochre, which puts everything back with your balances unchanged. Don't use Just one business for it — that mode refuses a year archive and points you to Merge back. If you issue a document dated into an archived year, Ochre warns first and then lets you go ahead; its number continues after the archived ones, so no number is ever reused.

What Ochre holds (just below) counts your documents, payments and expenses, clients and vendors, products, files and PDFs for the business you have open, with a size for files and PDFs, and says what archiving each year would free.

CSV files

Settings → Backup → Export data (CSV) writes one file per record type — clients, vendors, products, one file per document kind, line items, and transactions — for the business you currently have open. The same clients, vendors, and products files also come one at a time from the Export CSV button on those lists themselves. Every file opens in any spreadsheet; nothing here needs Ochre to read it.

Money prints as a plain decimal with a dot — 1500.5, never $1,500.50 — in the figure's own currency, never converted. Dates are ISO 8601 date-time, UTC. An ID column is a UUID: not something to type, but how one file points at a row in another. A voided, cancelled, or superseded record is not left out of its file — it carries the word that says so.

Ochre-Clients.csv and Ochre-Vendors.csv

Same columns, one kind of party per file.

• Name — free text.
• Email — free text, optional.
• Phone — free text, optional.
• Billing address 1 — free text, optional.
• Billing address 2 — free text, optional.
• City — free text, optional.
• Region — free text, optional (state or province).
• Postal code — free text, optional.
• Country — free text, optional; whatever is on the record, not a fixed list of codes.
• Tax ID — free text, optional; the identifier a jurisdiction assigns a business (India's GSTIN is one example). Used as the second match on import, after the row's own ID.
• Currency — three-letter ISO 4217 code (e.g. USD); blank if this client or vendor has none of its own set.
• Payment terms (days) — plain integer.
• Tax treatment — one word: standard, zeroRated, exempt, or reverseCharge.
• Default discount % — decimal with a dot, no percent sign (5 means 5%).
• Archived — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC; blank while the record is active.
• ID — UUID, this row's own stable id. The document files point back at it through their own Party ID column, and Ochre-Transactions.csv through Vendor ID.
• Default notes — free text, optional; the notes a new document for this party starts with.
• Default terms — free text, optional; the terms a new document for this party starts with.

Ochre-Products.csv

• SKU — free text, your own stock code.
• Name — free text.
• Description — free text.
• Sale price — decimal with a dot, in the product's own currency.
• Purchase price — decimal with a dot, in the product's own currency.
• Currency — three-letter ISO 4217 code; blank if the product has none of its own set.
• Unit — free text (pc, kg, hr, and so on).
• Tax class — free text: the tax class's own name, exactly as set up under Settings → Tax rates. Not a rate.
• Item / HS code — free text; the item-classification code some jurisdictions expect on paper (India's HSN/SAC is one example). Blank where none applies.
• Archived — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC; blank while the product is active.
• ID — UUID, this row's own stable id — how Ochre-LineItems.csv's Product ID column refers to it.

Ochre-Invoices.csv, Ochre-Quotations.csv, Ochre-CreditNotes.csv, Ochre-PurchaseOrders.csv, Ochre-Bills.csv, Ochre-DebitNotes.csv

One file per document kind, and every one carries these same columns, in this order.

• ID — UUID, the document's own stable id; never blank.
• Kind — one word (invoice, quotation, creditNote, purchaseOrder, bill, or debitNote). Repeats which file this is, so a row still explains itself if it's ever moved out of that file.
• Status — one word from Ochre's own status list (draft, sent, paid, void, superseded, and so on) — kept as a word, never dropped, even for a document that has been voided or replaced.
• Number — free text, the number exactly as issued (e.g. INV-2026-014); blank on a draft that was never issued.
• Party ID — UUID, pointing at the ID column of Ochre-Clients.csv or Ochre-Vendors.csv.
• Party name — free text, the party's name at the moment of export; carried for a person reading the file, and as the last-resort match on import when no ID lines up.
• Currency — three-letter ISO 4217 code the document was issued in.
• Issue date — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC.
• Due date — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC.
• Subtotal — decimal with a dot, before discount and tax, in the document's own currency.
• Discount total — decimal with a dot, the amount the whole-document discount comes to, in the document's own currency.
• Document discount % — decimal with a dot, 0–100, no percent sign; applied after the line totals and before tax.
• Adjustment amount — decimal with a dot, can be negative; a flat add-on such as shipping, handling, a round-off, or a goodwill deduction — added after tax, and never itself taxed.
• Adjustment label — free text, what that add-on is called on the printed document; blank uses Ochre's own default wording.
• Tax total — decimal with a dot, in the document's own currency.
• Total — decimal with a dot, in the document's own currency.
• Amount paid — decimal with a dot, in the document's own currency.
• Parent document ID — UUID, pointing at another row across these six files: the invoice a credit note credits, the quotation an invoice was converted from, or the earlier document a revision replaces. Blank when there is no such parent.
• Trashed — yes/no.
• Imported at — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC; blank for a document created in Ochre itself, set for one brought in from elsewhere. Ochre never adjusts stock or renumbers for a document carrying this.
• FX rate to base — decimal with a dot, the exchange rate from the document's own currency to the business's base currency, locked at the moment it was issued. 1 when the document was already in the base currency.

Ochre-LineItems.csv

• ID — UUID, this line's own stable id; blank on a handful of very old lines created before Ochre gave every line one.
• Document ID — UUID, pointing at the ID column of whichever of the six document files holds this line's parent.
• Order — plain integer, the line's position on the document, counting from 0.
• Product ID — UUID, pointing at Ochre-Products.csv's ID column; blank on a free-text line with no linked product.
• Product SKU — free text, the linked product's SKU at the moment of export; the fallback match on import when no Product ID lines up.
• Description — free text.
• Qty — decimal with a dot (can be fractional — hours worked, for instance).
• Unit price — decimal with a dot, in the document's own currency.
• Discount % — decimal with a dot, 0–100, no percent sign.
• Tax class — free text, the tax class's own name — not a rate.
• HSN/SAC code — free text, the item-classification code some jurisdictions expect (India's HSN/SAC is one example); blank where none applies.
• Net amount — decimal with a dot, this line's total after its own discount, before tax. Written for a reader's convenience only — recompute it from Qty × Unit price × (1 − Discount %) rather than trust the column.

Ochre-Transactions.csv

Every payment, receipt, and non-cash credit application — one row per ledger entry. Ochre has no stable id for an account, so this file identifies one by its name together with its currency (Account and Account currency, side by side) — two accounts called "Bank" in two different currencies are two accounts, not one.

• ID — UUID, this transaction's own stable id.
• Kind — credit (money received into the account) or debit (money paid out).
• Document ID — UUID, the invoice or bill this payment settles; blank for a standalone transaction.
• Contra document ID — UUID, the credit note applied here, when this row is a non-cash credit application rather than a cash movement (Account is blank on those rows).
• Account — free text, the account's name. See the note above on how it's matched.
• Vendor ID — UUID, pointing at Ochre-Vendors.csv's ID column; who a standalone expense went to.
• Amount — decimal with a dot, in the account's own currency (Currency code).
• Settled amount — decimal with a dot; blank unless this payment was made in a different currency from the document it settles, in which case it's the figure that actually settled the document, in the document's own currency.
• Currency code — three-letter ISO 4217 code for Amount.
• FX rate — decimal with a dot, the rate used to convert this row to the business's base currency.
• Posted at — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC.
• Memo — free text, optional.
• Category — free text, optional (Travel, Software, and so on) — meaningful on a standalone expense.
• Payment method — free text, optional (Cash, Bank transfer, and so on).
• Voided — yes/no; a voided payment stays in the file rather than disappearing, so a corrected ledger is still a faithful one.
• Account currency — three-letter ISO 4217 code; the second half of the (name, currency) key an import matches an account by.
• Payment group ID — UUID, shared by every leg of one payment recorded across several invoices at once; blank on an ordinary single-invoice payment.
• Internal note — free text, optional; never printed on anything.
• Entered at — ISO 8601 date-time, UTC; when the entry was recorded in Ochre, which can differ from Posted at. Blank on older rows.

Bringing a book into Ochre

The same files, read the other way: matching each row to what's already in the business before adding anything new.

• Matching — a client, vendor, or product already in the book is matched first by its own ID, then by its tax ID (clients and vendors only), then by name. A new record is only created when none of the three line up.
• Numbers stay put — an imported document keeps the number it already carries. Ochre's own numbering picks up from one past the highest number among the imported documents, so a gap in the old system's numbering doesn't read as a gap in Ochre's.
• Stock never moves — an imported document is history, not a new transaction; it never changes a product's stock on hand.
• Tax comes from the file — each document's tax figure is kept exactly as the file states it, never worked out again under today's rates.
• Payment rows are a choice — off, each document keeps the paid amount and status the file already gives it, and account balances don't move. On, Ochre also recreates the payment rows themselves against an account matched by name and currency (creating one if none matches) — which does change account balances, so it's a deliberate switch, not the default. Credit applied from a credit note travels either way: a part-used note arrives knowing exactly how much of it is left, whatever you chose for payment rows.
• A currency has to exist first — a document billed in a currency the business hasn't set up is skipped, with a reason given, rather than guessed at. Add the currency in Settings, then import again.
• Nothing comes in twice — a document already in the book, whether by its own ID or by matching kind and number, is skipped rather than duplicated. Running the same import a second time adds nothing.
• Documents need a subscription — importing invoices, quotations, or credit notes needs the same subscription that issuing a new one does (the trial counts); importing clients, vendors, and products is free either way, subscribed or not.

Starting over

Settings → Data → Start fresh… erases your books — every business, with its documents, contacts and products — and returns Ochre to its first-run state. Backup files you have already saved to disk are never touched; import one to restore.

Start fresh asks you to save a backup first, and Erase now stays unavailable until that backup has actually been saved. You can skip the backup, but only by turning it off and confirming that you mean it. If Ochre asks you to, quit and reopen it to finish erasing.

Privacy

• Your books stay on your device — nothing leaves it unless you share, print, email, or back it up yourself, turn on iCloud sync (your own iCloud, not ours), or connect your own Stripe account. Once a day Ochre also checks for updated tax-rate tables; that request carries none of your data.
• No trackers, analytics, or ad SDKs in the app.
• App Lock — optionally require Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode to open the books.
• Automatic backups are always locked with your passphrase. A backup you export by hand is locked only if you type a passphrase.

App Lock

Turn it on at Settings → Privacy → Require unlock to open (on iPhone, Settings sits behind Menu). With it on, Ochre opens behind Face ID, Touch ID, or your device passcode — nothing new to set up, just the check your device already trusts.

On iPhone and iPad, leaving the app is what re-locks it — switch to another app or go to the Home Screen, and opening Ochre again asks you to unlock. Control Center and similar overlays don't count as leaving: they cover the screen for a moment but don't ask for an unlock when you come back. When it does relock, anything you had open is covered, not closed — a half-filled sheet, a document you're reading, whatever it was, is exactly as you left it once you unlock, and the app-switcher preview shows the lock face rather than a snapshot of your books.

On a Mac, Ochre asks you to unlock each time it opens. Switching to another app does not lock it again.

The lock also reaches the places that talk about your books from outside the app itself. The Home Screen widget and the Apple Watch face both show a plain "Locked" instead of your outstanding total and overdue count, and a due-date or overdue reminder notification drops the client's name and the amount, keeping only the fact that something needs your attention.

Spotlight search is the one place the lock does not reach. Settings → Privacy → Search invoices and customers in Spotlight is off by default; while it is on, invoice numbers, customer names, totals and statuses can be found from the system search field, outside the lock. It is unavailable while Require unlock to open is on.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, or an iPad with a hardware keyboard.

On a Mac with keyboard navigation on (System Settings › Keyboard), the whole flow works without a mouse: ⌘1 for Documents, ⇥ until the focus ring sits on the invoice you want, Space to open it.

What the buttons mean

On iPhone there is no room for six or seven labelled buttons across the width of the screen — Ochre used to try, and the words broke apart mid-syllable. So on iPhone many action buttons show an icon alone, while iPad and Mac have the room to show the name beside it. Every button in Ochre’s action bars is listed here, whether or not your device draws its name.

Using VoiceOver? You are not affected by any of this. Every button reads its full name aloud on every device, whether or not the name is drawn on screen.

On a draft

On an issued or sent invoice

Edit and Revise are not the same act. Edit corrects the invoice you already have. Revise leaves it standing and creates a second one, with the next number, that replaces it. If you only want to fix a typo on something nobody has seen yet, you want Edit.

On any open document

On a payment

In the PDF preview

Elsewhere in the app

Sending an invoice for the first time is what locks it. See Correcting a document for what to do after that.

Widget & Apple Watch

Home-screen widget

Add the Outstanding widget (small or medium) from your Home Screen's widget gallery. It shows your business name, your total outstanding across open invoices, and how many are overdue — read straight from the app, refreshed roughly hourly. It carries no connection of its own; it just displays what Ochre last wrote.

On iPhone and iPad, Outstanding is also available for the Lock Screen, as a circle, a box or a line of text. With App Lock on, every size says only that Ochre is locked. On iOS 18 and later you can also add a New invoice control to Control Center or the Lock Screen; it opens Ochre on a blank invoice draft and shows no figures.

Apple Watch

The Watch app is a glance, not a second copy of your books: your business name, either your outstanding total or a running time-tracking timer, and how many invoices are overdue. Two buttons — Start/Stop timer and a dictate-a-new-invoice button — queue an action back to your phone; the Watch never writes to your books directly. Both stay hidden until your phone has sent its first update, and you'll feel a haptic (with an optional notification) the moment a payment comes in.

Accessibility

Invoicing is not optional work, so the app that does it cannot be optional about who can use it. Accessibility in Ochre is checked by machines on every change — contrast is measured, not eyeballed — and then checked again by hand. Here is what that means in practice.

VoiceOver

Every button in Ochre has a spoken name, including the icon-only ones on iPhone — the button glossary above lists exactly what each one says. Amounts are spoken as words (“₹ fifty‑nine thousand”, not a string of digits), and a document’s status is always announced as a word — Paid, Overdue, Draft — never carried by colour alone. Each invoice card on the home screen reads as one element: client, amount, status, in one pass.

A menu says what it is set to, not just its name — “Kind, Customer”, not “Kind, Kind” — and the business switcher says the business name once. A saved receipt, attachment or payment file reads as a button, such as “Attachment, contract.pdf, 1.2 MB”, with a hint that it opens the file; each row in Saved in Ochre reads once, as its kind, date and size; and each item in Trash is one stop with Restore and Delete Forever offered as actions on it.

Larger text

Ochre’s type scales with your system text size, up to the largest accessibility sizes. At the top setting the invoice screen rearranges itself rather than squeezing: the total takes a full line of its own, invoice numbers shrink slightly instead of losing digits, and action buttons stack with their full names.

Contrast & dark mode

Every shade of text in the app — down to the quiet captions and de‑emphasised amounts — meets the WCAG AA contrast bar against every surface it appears on. That holds in dark mode too, in all four of Ochre’s night papers: Settings › Appearance lets you choose between Ochre charcoal, Ink, Teal ink and Espresso, and the ink stays readable on each. With Increase Contrast on, the quietest text steps up further.

Keyboard

On a Mac the whole app works without a mouse — see Keyboard shortcuts for the full route, including moving through the document stream with ⇥ and opening with Space.

Found something VoiceOver reads wrongly, or a screen that misbehaves at a large text size? That is a bug, not a preference — tell us and it gets a ticket like any other defect.