OchreWhat's new

Version 1.0.1

What's new in Ochre 1.0.1.

Everything you would notice in version 1.0.1, in the order it is recorded. Questions about any of it are answered in Help.

Out now on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

New and changed

  • Late fees, reworked. Set the rate per day, week, 15 days, month, quarter, half-year or year; a yearly rate counts actual days over 365. Give a client their own late-fee terms, or one invoice its own, and the late-fee sheet says which rule produced the fee. Charging a fee twice no longer charges the same days twice: the next fee starts where the last one stopped, and voiding a fee frees its days. A part-paid invoice is charged on what was owed each day, not on today's balance for the whole period. An invoice paid late can still be charged for the days it was late. New and off until you turn them on: days of grace before interest starts, a one-off late-payment fee, and taxing the fee like the invoice it is charged on. Existing late-fee settings and fees already charged are unchanged.
  • Dark mode and Increase Contrast now apply everywhere at once. Change "Dark theme" in Settings and every open screen, sheet and the Mac Settings window repaint straight away instead of waiting to be reopened, and the Home Screen widget draws the same night ground you chose. With Increase Contrast on, every grey text, status colour, hint and divider steps up to a stronger value, and the faint hint text reaches a readable contrast. The printed invoice, receipt and statement stay white paper with dark ink whatever your Mac or iPhone is set to.
  • Shortcuts can now create an invoice draft for you. The new Create Invoice Draft action takes a customer, a description, a quantity and an amount, and puts the draft in the business you have open. It never issues anything: you review and issue the draft in Ochre. A customer name that matches none of yours leaves the draft with no customer. A new Outstanding Total action reads what customers still owe in that business, the same figure the Outstanding widget shows, and you can ask for it by voice. While App Lock is on and Ochre is locked, both actions stop and say to unlock Ochre first.
  • Two more Shortcuts actions. Export All as CSV writes the same CSV files as Settings, Export data, for the business you have open and no other, and hands them to the next step in your shortcut. Back Up Now writes the same encrypted Ochre backup as Settings, Backup, and it covers all of your businesses, not only the open one; it uses the backup passphrase you already saved and never asks for one. If no passphrase is saved it stops and says so, and writes nothing, rather than making an unencrypted copy. Both files stay on your device until your shortcut sends them somewhere, and both actions stop and say to unlock Ochre first while App Lock is shut.
  • Other apps, Shortcuts and web pages can now open Ochre on a new draft with an ochre:// link, for example ochre://new-invoice?customer=Acme&description=Logo&rate=150, or on a record you already have with ochre://open?document=…. A link only ever opens a screen or makes a DRAFT in the business you have open: it cannot issue, send, number, delete or mark anything paid, and it cannot reach into another business. A link that is malformed, names something unknown or asks for a different currency creates nothing and Ochre says so. An app can ask to be called back (x-success) and receives only the new draft's id. Links wait for you to unlock Ochre, and no more than five can make drafts in a minute. Shortcuts and links now also work in a book with a single business that you have never switched (for example one that arrived from iCloud on a second device); with two or more businesses and none chosen, they still ask you to pick one.
  • Share a PDF or a photo to Ochre from Files, Mail or Photos. Ochre saves it and, the next time it is open and unlocked, asks which invoice, quote or expense it supports; nothing is attached until you choose, and you can discard it instead. PDFs up to 10 MB and photos up to 30 MB are accepted (photos are reduced in size when attached, as everywhere else in Ochre); anything else is refused in words and nothing is saved. A file you never answer for is cleared after 30 days.
  • An amount you type is now kept exactly as you typed it. Some amounts, such as 8.2 or 0.07, were stored a hair off. An amount on a half cent, such as 8.075, could then round to the wrong cent on the invoice.
  • Ochre no longer waits on the Keychain before showing its window when iCloud sync is on.
  • The account ledger sheet now has a Done button, and Esc closes it.
  • Mac: File › Print… (⌘P) prints the document preview that is open. Send or Share…, Export PDF… and Mark Paid… are in the File menu too, and each is greyed out when there is nothing on screen to act on. View › Hide Sidebar and Show Sidebar are in the menu bar.
  • Edit › Undo and Redo (⌘Z, ⇧⌘Z; shake on iPhone and iPad) now take back edits inside a draft: adding, deleting or changing a line, and the draft's dates, notes, terms, discount and adjustment. Issuing, voiding and sending are never undone.
  • A PDF of a long invoice or a roll-paper receipt can no longer come out silently cut off — a single page showing only the bottom of the document — when the computer is very busy while it is being made. Ochre now measures again, and if the document still can't be measured it says it couldn't create the PDF instead of handing you a damaged one.
  • Settings, the backup step of Start fresh, the invoice's payment-method note, the refund sheet and the Stripe key row no longer stop and wait when your Keychain is locked or showing a password prompt you haven't answered — they stay usable, and fill in what the Keychain says when it answers.
  • Automatic backup on iPhone and iPad now asks iOS for the extra moments it needs to finish writing when you leave the app, and a backup passphrase you save from now on is stored so it can still be read right after you lock the phone (one saved earlier needs saving once more). If a due backup is skipped because Ochre couldn't read the passphrase, Settings now says so instead of staying silent.
  • Money: tapping an account opens its ledger, and Edit account opens the editor, where neither sheet opened before on some devices. Both now open through the same one place every create sheet does, and a business switch closes them.
  • iPhone and iPad: Ochre's launch screen now opens on the same warm paper as the app, in light and in dark, instead of the system default.
  • After you record a payment that settles an invoice in full, Ochre may ask once for an App Store rating, using Apple's own rating sheet. It waits until you have settled at least three invoices, asks at most once per version, and nothing in Ochre depends on your answer.
  • The "Add option" chip on a quote and the filter chips on Insights no longer stop short of the screen edge with a word cut in half ("Add optic"); the rows now run to the edge so it is clear they scroll, and still end with a margin when you reach the last chip.
  • Choosing a country on a customer, vendor or address form: tapping the middle of the Country row (between the word "Country" and its value) now opens the country list; before, only a tap on the words themselves did.
  • Settings › Privacy has a new switch, "Search invoices and customers in Spotlight", off until you turn it on. When it is on, an invoice's number, customer name, status and total, and a customer's name and city, can be found from the iPhone, iPad or Mac search field, and tapping a result opens it in the right business. Spotlight sits outside Ochre's lock, so the switch is unavailable while "Require unlock to open" is on; turning the lock on, turning the switch off, deleting a business, Start fresh and restoring a backup all remove what Ochre put in Spotlight at that moment.
  • A New invoice control for Control Center and the Lock Screen (iOS 18 and later). Tapping it opens Ochre on a blank invoice draft in the business you have open; from a locked phone it asks for Face ID or your passcode first. It shows no figure. If Ochre was not running, the draft still opens once it has launched. On iOS 17 nothing appears.
  • Lock Screen widgets: add Outstanding to your Lock Screen as a circle, a box or a line of text. With App Lock on they say only that Ochre is locked, never a figure, a name or an overdue count. With App Lock off they show what is still owed and how many are overdue, and whether a locked iPhone displays that is up to your iPhone’s own Lock Screen privacy settings.
  • Handoff: open a document or a draft on one device and pick it up on another signed in to the same iCloud account, from the app switcher on iPhone and iPad or the Dock on the Mac. Only which record and which business is handed over, never an amount or a name; the other device opens it only if that business is in its book, and otherwise does nothing. With App Lock on, the document waits until you unlock.

Sync

  • On the Mac, Settings → iCloud Sync no longer gets stuck reading "Checking iCloud…" forever on a book that has plainly already synced, and the "Last uploaded…"/"Synced…" line keeps ticking while you're looking at it instead of freezing at the moment it first appeared. It also no longer reads a past event in the future tense ("in 0 seconds").
  • The "arrived from iCloud" banner is confirmed to stay dismissed, per business, once you tap Switch to it or Dismiss — a device restart no longer brings it back for a business you already acted on.
  • Joining an existing book on a fresh device no longer shows "Can't reach iCloud" for minutes while it's actually still looking, and the waiting screen no longer repeats "Checking iCloud…" or shows two lines that disagree about whether iCloud is reachable.
  • Settings now says plainly, while sync is on, that iCloud moves on Apple's own schedule and changes usually take a few minutes to reach your other devices — sometimes longer, especially the first time or when a device is offline. The help and user guide carry the same note.
  • If two devices each changed an invoice and iCloud kept the line from one and the total from the other, Ochre now says so on that invoice ("Lines and total disagree") instead of printing or sending a page whose lines don't add up to its total. Open it on the device you issued it on and amend it if the lines are wrong.
  • The same care for the invoice's total itself: if it no longer adds up from its own subtotal, discount, tax and adjustment, Ochre says "Total doesn't add up" rather than print it.
  • Settings no longer says "Checking iCloud…" forever on a book that synced minutes ago, and the sign-out note no longer says "iOS" on the Mac.

Documents

  • On Mac, opening a draft's Preview now shows "Preparing the preview…" with a progress indicator and a Cancel option while the PDF is being built, instead of an empty box.
  • Fixed: after backing out of a draft, starting a new one could re-show an older draft you had already left — each back press after that looked like a new draft appearing. One back now always returns you to the list.
  • Fixed: a deposit you typed on a quote, then left by pressing Tab or clicking another button (such as Add option), could be dropped, so the quote went out without it. The deposit is now kept as you type.
  • Fixed: on iPhone, a section could reopen on an invoice or draft you had already backed out of, sometimes hours earlier, and tapping a customer, product or document could leave an old one underneath it. Leaving a section from its list, and backing out to the list, now always brings you back to the list. Switching between a quote's options no longer makes Back cycle through them; one Back returns to the list.
  • Cancelling a draft you built from tracked time now puts those hours back under Unbilled, ready to bill again. Before, they stayed marked Billed against a draft that no longer exists. Hours on an invoice that already has a number are left as they are.
  • A voided invoice now carries a VOID stamp beside LOCKED every time you open it, so it never looks like an invoice that is still owed once the "Voided" message has faded.
  • Mac: editing a line's Description, Qty or Rate by clicking between fields no longer closes the editor, drops what you typed, or opens an extra blank line — only Done or Return on Rate does. Pressing Tab from Rate no longer jumps out to the Issue date field. Also fixed: a brand-new line being typed into could close its own editor moments later, with no click at all.
  • Mac: New customer's "Add" and Record payment's "Record" now take effect on the first click, even right after typing into a field — a second click was needed before.
  • When a sent invoice's lines and total disagree, it now offers the fix the message names: Amend, or "Open draft revision" if one is already in progress — before, that message had no button behind it. Tapping a revision in an invoice's revision list now opens it, instead of doing nothing.

Accessibility and help

  • VoiceOver now reads a document's amount in words on the Documents list ("Nova Traders, ₹ seventy thousand eight hundred, Overdue"), the same way the amount inside the card is read; the Insights cash-flow chart has a spoken summary of every month's money in and out with the currency; rows that open something (invoice lines, repeating invoices, tax classes) are announced as buttons; section titles are announced as headings; and the Apple Watch complications have spoken labels ("Outstanding $125,000", "Ochre, 3 overdue", or "Ochre, locked" when app lock is on).
  • On iPhone and iPad, swiping a New customer, New product, Add expense, repeating-invoice, clause or Compose sheet down after you have typed something no longer throws it away: Ochre asks "Discard Changes?" first. A sheet you have not touched still closes with a swipe.
  • On iPhone, VoiceOver now reads the home menu properly: each section says how much is open ("Invoices, 5 open"), the outstanding total and its overdue count are one swipe, the Documents section can be collapsed and expanded from VoiceOver's actions, and focus starts at the top when the menu opens.
  • On a draft, the two clause menus now read "Insert clause into notes" and "Insert clause into terms" (they used to read the same, and "Insert a clause" did not match the words on screen, which Voice Control listens for).
  • With Reduce Motion on, the Backup screen and the restore sheet now jump straight to the "working", "done" or "failed" line instead of scrolling to it with an animation.
  • VoiceOver now speaks Ochre's on-screen messages as they appear, without moving where you are: "Issued as ...", "Payment recorded", "Couldn't issue: ..." and the rest of the status toasts, the confirmation after you choose Repeat, and the notices after restoring a purchase. Before, they were only drawn on screen, and a message that clears after three seconds could not be found by swiping.
  • Mac: you can now reach more of Ochre from the keyboard. Money accounts, repeating invoices, tax classes, the Tax basis row, your saved clauses and the lines on an invoice are Tab stops that Space opens; ⌘↩ issues the draft you are looking at; Return and Esc now confirm and cancel in the Compose, Paste address, Restore, Statement and similar sheets (never on a destructive confirm such as Erase now); and New customer, New product and Add expense open with their first field ready to type. Saved clauses also have a right-click Delete, not only a swipe.
  • VoiceOver now reads a Money account row as a button naming the account (for example, "Business account, Bank"), with a hint that it shows the account's transactions, instead of reading it as plain text with no way in. Reopening an expense you had attached a receipt to also shows that receipt again, instead of an empty "Attach receipt" section.
  • The + button on the Customers and Vendors lists is now announced as "Add customer" or "Add vendor", so VoiceOver no longer reads it the same as the form's own Add button.
  • VoiceOver now reads each suggested category on the Add expense sheet by its own name ("Rent", "Software"…), instead of calling every one "Category suggestions".
  • On iPhone, the "…" (More actions) button on a sent invoice is now a full-size tap target; before, it answered only to a tap on the small icon itself.
  • VoiceOver now reads a partially paid invoice's card as "Partially paid", the same word the card shows, instead of "Sent".
  • The deposit percentage and deposit amount fields on a quote now each announce their own name, instead of both saying "Deposit requested".
  • "Chase…" on an overdue invoice now opens after you switch from Money back to Documents; before, the tap did nothing.
  • At the largest text sizes, the Documents screen's "…" menu now lists every kind of document you can start (invoice, quotation and the rest) instead of one "New invoice" row that only folded and unfolded, and the search field keeps its "Search by number or client" hint instead of fading to an empty bar.
  • The Stripe key and PayPal fields now carry a "Where do I get this…?" link to the help article that walks through finding it.

Backups

  • You can now back up or restore a single business on its own, instead of only the whole store. In Settings → Backup, "Just one business" lists every business a backup holds (with its document count and last entry date) and brings back only the one you pick — your other businesses are never touched. Settings → Businesses can also back up one business before deleting it, and restore a business from a backup directly. If that business is still here, Ochre offers to unarchive or open it instead of making a copy; if a different business already shares its name and tax ID, Ochre asks before restoring it as its own separate business.
  • After restoring a backup from Settings, Ochre now says it checked the file first and found nothing changed or damaged, instead of only "Restore complete."
  • Restoring a backup while setting up a new device, or with "Restore my books", now ends with the same line on your Documents screen: the backup was checked first and nothing in it had been changed or damaged. Before, the app moved on without a word.
  • The backup screen now says plainly what a passphrase does and what losing it costs — on export, on automatic backup, and when a passphrase is asked for during restore — instead of one short warning. The automatic-backup note no longer names a fixed folder it might not actually be using.
  • Every backup passphrase field (export, automatic backup, restore, and "Back up first" before Start fresh) now types as dots, with a "Show passphrase" eye button to check what you typed — before, export and confirm showed the passphrase in plain text as you typed it. Export's passphrase is also optional now: leave it blank to save an unencrypted file, same as before, without a separate switch — type anything and Confirm appears. Every field asks for a passphrase, never a "password" — a short phrase of a few words is suggested instead, with a note against reusing your Apple ID or email password.
  • Fixed: typing a restore passphrase on the Backup screen could also silently fill in the export passphrase field above it (and the reverse) — the two now keep their own text.
  • If automatic backup can't write to your chosen folder — it went read-only, the cloud provider was offline, or it was out of space — Ochre now saves that backup to its own folder on this device instead of skipping it, and Settings tells you which folder failed so you can choose a new one. If even that fails, Settings now says the last automatic backup failed.
  • Opening a .ochre file from Files, Mail or Spotlight now takes you straight into the restore flow with that file already chosen, instead of leaving you on whatever screen Ochre happened to be showing.
  • Fixed: with automatic backup on, a slow or prompting Keychain could freeze launch with no window on screen, because Ochre checked your passphrase before checking whether a backup was even due. It now checks due-ness first and reads the passphrase only when a backup is actually about to run, off the main thread.

Look

  • On iPhone and iPad, Ochre's icon now has its own Dark and Tinted versions, so it matches your Home Screen when you choose a dark or tinted icon style.
  • The plus/minus controls (payment terms, quotes valid for, late-fee days, and the rest) are now the standard light pill instead of a dark block. When one is switched off at its lowest value, such as “Interest starts on the due date” at 0 days, it shows a dimmed minus instead of a blank block; VoiceOver reads that row as “on the due date” or “N days after the due date”.

Settings

  • The privacy notes in Settings now say the whole truth, briefly: there is no Ochre account and no Ochre server receives your data, but if you turn on iCloud sync your books are copied to your own iCloud (Apple), and if you use Stripe payment links Stripe receives the amount and invoice number. It used to say your data stays on your devices and that there is no server at all.
  • Start fresh's "What to erase" now opens on This device only, the least destructive choice, instead of Everywhere. Everywhere is still there and still explains exactly what it erases — it's just no longer pre-selected.

Paper

  • The Attention line on an invoice is now written in the invoice's own language (for example "z. Hd." in German, "À l'attention de :" in French, "عناية:" in Arabic). You can still change the wording yourself.
  • Customers and vendors can hold named contacts (name, role, email, phone). Pick one as Attention on a draft and it prints under the bill-to address; email goes to that contact.
  • Add your business's own contact lines, such as Billing or Director, and choose which ones print on the letterhead. Long lines wrap rather than being cut off.
  • Every invoice, quote and bill has private Notes: dated, never printed or exported, and they carry over to the invoice a quote becomes, a revision and a credit note. Deleting a business deletes its notes.
  • A new Total setting under Invoice design: keep the big signature total, or choose Regular to print the amount due at the same size as the line amounts. Invoices you have already sent keep the size they were sent with.
  • Your invoice can now use your own brand colour: pick "Custom…" under Accent ink or Header band, then choose a colour or type its hex code. If a colour is too pale to read on paper, Ochre darkens it just enough to print clearly and tells you so.
  • Arabic on invoices and receipts is now set in Geeza Pro, so every Arabic word — labels, customer names, notes, Persian and Urdu too — copies, searches and reads aloud exactly; before, the printed page looked right but copied out as scrambled letters.
  • Letter-spaced labels on an Arabic invoice or receipt (the title and the column headings) now reach the PDF's text, so they can be searched and copied, not only seen.
  • Opening two Preview PDF sheets at once — two documents that happen to share a number, including two drafts — no longer risks Share, Save PDF… or Email sending the wrong one out under the right one's name.
  • Dates on invoices, receipts, statements and reports are always Gregorian, even on a device set to the Islamic or Japanese calendar.
  • An invoice PDF drawn before the invoice had fully arrived from another device is drawn again once the real figures arrive, instead of being kept and shared with the old amounts. PDFs saved by earlier builds are redrawn once, the first time you open them.

Credit notes

  • A credit applied to an invoice can now be removed from that invoice's payments ("Remove credit"); its amount goes back to the credit note, which reopens if it had been used up. If two devices applied the same credit at once, the credit note now shows how much it was over-applied and how to put it right.

Purchases

  • The plans screen now reads "Start your 7-day free trial" (it said "7 days"), and its heading fits where you are: it only says "after your trial" once you have actually used the trial. The auto-renew terms now sit directly under the Yearly and Monthly buttons in larger type, instead of in small print below Lifetime. If issuing is blocked, the message no longer assumes you had a trial.
  • If a purchase is waiting for a family organiser's approval (Ask to Buy), Ochre now says so — and that you don't need to buy again — instead of saying nothing.

Reminders

  • A reminder for an invoice you've just been paid for no longer goes off: reminders now update whenever you leave or come back to Ochre, not only when it first opens.
  • PayPal links are only offered in currencies PayPal accepts. Invoices in dirham, rupees, riyal or rand show your next payment option instead of a PayPal link that can't be paid, and yen, forint and Taiwan dollar amounts no longer carry decimals PayPal rejects.

Reminders, widget and Watch

  • Tapping a payment reminder now opens that invoice — switching to its business first if needed, and waiting for App Lock to unlock.
  • Reminders stay within the 64 that iOS allows, keeping the soonest, and only changed reminders are updated — a large book no longer re-sends every reminder each time you leave the app. A deleted invoice's reminder is now removed too.
  • The widget and the Watch update within a second of recording a payment or issuing an invoice, instead of up to an hour later.
  • Switching business right after recording a payment no longer lets the widget or Watch show the previous business's figures, and a reminder tapped while Ochre was closed now opens its invoice.

Speed

  • Opening Ochre with a very large book no longer freezes for seconds on every launch: a maintenance pass that re-ran every time now runs only after an update, and the rest lets the screen draw between steps.
  • Launch checks on a large book now fetch only what they need: about 10 s down to about 2.4 s on a 5,000-invoice book on a Mac.
  • The Documents screen is quicker on a large book. Searching, switching business and opening Ochre each do much less repeated work, so a keystroke in search takes a fraction of a second on a book of thousands of documents. Nothing on screen changed: the same documents appear in the same order, and every total and count is the same.
  • The home screen opens faster on a large book. The figure at the top — what is still owed, and how much of it is overdue — is now worked out once and reused until something changes it. A payment, a refund, a credit note, a write-off, a restore, or a change arriving from another device all still update it immediately.

Readability

  • Secondary text across the app now uses Ochre's measured greys instead of the system's, which could fall below readable contrast inside lists and forms.
  • The same measured greys on the Apple Watch and the home-screen widget.

Compose

  • The AI compose preview shows amounts with the currency's own decimals — none for yen, three for dinar.
  • A message that pops up over a draft (“Couldn’t issue: add at least one line first”, “Issued as …”) no longer swallows your next tap. Its tap area used to cover the whole Cancel draft / Preview / Issue bar underneath, so the first tap on a button only dismissed the message; now only the message itself dismisses it and the buttons answer at once.

Mac

  • With two Ochre windows open, ⌘N (or File ▸ New) now makes one draft, in the window in front — it used to make one in every window.