How Scaly works

Getting started

1. 01

   Sign in

   On the landing page, click Sign in to Scaly. The form opens inside the ticket — no separate page. Signing in for the first time creates your workspace; there's no separate sign-up step to hunt for.

2. 02

   Add the business you invoice as

   Go to Customers → Business → Add your business. This is the From block on every invoice, so nothing can be sent until it exists.

3. 03

   Add someone to bill

   Customers → Add Customer. Or, if they also use Scaly, skip typing and use Connect with code instead.

Your business

You can hold more than one — a studio and a side consultancy, say. Each is a separate From block with its own connect code.

Default, Edit, Archive

The one marked Default is pre-selected on new invoices; use Make Default to move it. Archive hides a business from new invoices without touching the ones it already issued — financial records keep their issuer. Archiving is refused while an active recurring schedule still points at it.

Customers

A customer carries their own currency, addresses and notes. Two toggles, Show on invoice, decide whether the billing and shipping addresses print — some clients want a PO box on paper and a warehouse for delivery, some want neither.

Each customer's details are snapshotted onto the invoice when it's issued. Rename a client next year and last year's invoices still show the name you actually billed.

Create an invoice

New invoice sits on the dashboard, in the chat dock, and on the Recent invoices card. The editor is a form on the left and a live preview on the right — the preview is exactly what the PDF will look like.

1. 01

   Pick both parties

   The From / Bill To tabs at the top. Each has a + New Business / + New Client shortcut if the one you want doesn't exist yet.

2. 02

   Set the meta

   Leave Invoice No. blank and the server allocates the next number in your sequence (INV-0001, INV-0002, …) when you save. Currency defaults from the customer, then your account default. Set the issue and due dates.

3. 03

   Add line items

   Description, quantity, price. The running total sits in the Items header. + Add item for more; the × removes one.

4. 04

   Save it

   Create invoice. It's saved as a Draft — nothing has been sent to anyone yet. Download PDF works at any point, including before saving.

Statuses & payment

There are five, and they mean exactly one thing each.

Change one from the Status dropdown on the invoice. Setting Paid with no recorded payment writes a balancing entry for the outstanding amount, tagged as a manual adjustment — revenue reporting is payment-derived, so it has to reconcile, and tagging keeps real cash separable from balancing entries.

The assistant

The bar at the bottom of every screen — Chat with Scaly… — drafts invoices from a sentence.

It matches the client and the sending business, fills in the line items, and stops. You get Create invoice, Open in editor and Discard. Nothing is created until you choose. If it had to guess at a name it says which record it landed on.

Recurring invoices

In the editor, tick Repeat this invoice and pick an interval: weekly, monthly, every 3 months, every 6 months, or yearly. The schedule then lives under Recurring.

A job runs daily at 00:00 UTC and issues whatever is due. The sending business is pinned when you create the schedule, so changing your default sender later doesn't retroactively change who future invoices come from.

Dashboard & analytics

The dashboard opens on KPI tiles — overdue, paid this month, due soon, revenue, transactions, forecast — plus a revenue trend and your recent invoices. Customize adds and removes tiles, and the layout is saved to your account.

Analytics is the same numbers with room to breathe: a 12-month revenue curve and a month-by-month breakdown. Invoices is every invoice you've ever sent, paged.

Connect two businesses

If the business you bill also uses Scaly, you can skip email entirely. Connect once with a code, then invoices travel inside Scaly: you press Send, it appears in their Inbox, and when they mark it paid your books update.

Your connect code

Every business has one, shown on Customers → Business in the form SCL-7K2M-9QX4 — hit Copy and send it however you like: a message, an email signature, a business card. Scaly never contacts anyone on your behalf.

The flow, both sides

1. 01

   They connect

   Customers → Connect with code → paste your code → Connect. Case, spaces and hyphens don't matter. If they hold several businesses they pick which one is connecting.

2. 02

   Both sides get a customer

   You appear in their Customers, they appear in yours, each pre-filled from the other's business profile and badged Connected. Neither of you typed the other's details.

3. 03

   Someone sends an invoice

   Create an invoice to that connected customer as normal, open it, and press the Send button — it names them, e.g. “Send to Meridian Studio”. The invoice becomes Sent and the button turns into a dated “Sent to Meridian Studio” line.

4. 04

   It lands in their Inbox

   Inbox appears in their sidebar with a count of unpaid received invoices. They can open it, read the same invoice you see, and download the PDF.

5. 05

   They mark it paid

   Mark as paid records the full balance against your invoice — tagged as confirmed by them — and flips it to Paid. Your dashboard, analytics and history all update.

What each side can do

No copy of the invoice is handed over. The recipient reads your record through a grant tied to that one invoice, which is why they can never see anything else in your account.

Disconnecting

Either side can Disconnect from the customer's row. Neither can send new invoices afterwards, but invoices already sent stay readable to both — a delivered invoice is a record. The customer rows remain, badged Disconnected — and reconnecting with the code later revives the same connection rather than creating duplicates.

Settings

Account shows who you're signed in as. Edit your name with Save profile; your verified email is read-only. Sign out returns you to the landing page.

Defaults holds your default currency — used for new invoices and customers that don't set their own — and the light/dark theme. Both apply once you press Save settings.

Reference