Tradebook: Offline Invoicing App for Sri Lankan SMEs

Every day, thousands of small businesses in Sri Lanka write out bills by hand or fight with a messy Excel sheet. It is slow, it looks unprofessional, and at tax time it becomes a real headache, especially once your business is VAT-registered and needs proper tax invoices.

Tradebook is built to solve exactly this. It is a desktop invoicing app made for Sri Lankan small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It runs fully on your own computer, works without internet, and creates clean tax (VAT) invoices that match what the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) expects.

Here is a clear breakdown of what it does, and why it matters for your business.

Quick Answer

Why Do Sri Lankan SMEs Need a Dedicated Invoicing App?

Most SMEs here, shops, workshops, distributors, and service providers, bill their customers in one of three ways: a handwritten book, a Word or Excel file, or cloud software that only works when you are online.

Each of these has a real problem:

• Handwritten bills look unprofessional, are easy to lose, and give you no record of who still owes you money.
• Excel sheets break easily, and VAT calculations done by hand often have mistakes.
• Cloud software stores your private sales data on someone else's server and stops working the moment your internet drops.

Tradebook takes a different path. It is a desktop app that keeps everything on your own computer and works even with no internet at all.

How Is Tradebook Different?

The whole app is built around a few promises that fit how Sri Lankan SMEs really work:

Your data lives in a single file on your machine. Nobody else, no company, no server, no third party, can see it.

What Can You Do With Tradebook Every Day?

Tradebook covers the full billing cycle, not just printing a bill:

• Create invoices fast. Pick your items, set the quantity, add a discount if needed (percentage or a fixed amount), and print. Invoice numbers are given automatically in a neat format like INV-0001.
• Track who has paid. Mark each bill as unpaid, partly paid, or paid, with a live balance so you always know who still owes you money.
• Record any payment type. Cash, bank deposit, card, or cheque, and even split one bill between cash and bank.
• Save your customers. Start typing a name and the app fills in the rest. New customers are saved automatically for next time.
• Keep a product catalogue. Store your items and services with SKU, model, unit, price, photo, and stock count, ready to drop into any bill.
• Run more than one business. Add unlimited businesses and switch between them, each keeps its own customers, products, and invoices.
• See a clear dashboard. This month's sales vs. last month, outstanding balance, product count, a 6-month sales chart, and recent invoices, all on one screen.
• Print or save as PDF. Four ready-made designs (Modern, Classic, Bold, and a compact thermal receipt), plus custom templates. Supports A4, A5, Letter, Legal, and 80mm receipt sizes.
• Export to Excel. Send your invoice list to an .xlsx file for your accountant.
• Stay private and safe. Set a password on first use. It is stored in a scrambled, one-way form, so the real password is never saved anywhere.

Everything above sits on one screen the moment you open the app, so you know where the business stands before you make your first bill of the day.

Proper Tax (VAT) Invoices, the Way the IRD Wants Them

This is where Tradebook truly helps a growing Sri Lankan business.

Once your business is VAT-registered, you cannot hand out just any bill. A valid tax invoice must show specific details: your TIN, the buyer's TIN, the value of supply, and the VAT amount. Get this wrong and it becomes a problem at tax time. Doing it by hand in Excel is slow and easy to mess up.

Tradebook has a separate tax invoice mode that handles all of this for you.

Set It Up Once

In your business settings, you enter your details a single time:

• Your supplier TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number)
• Your VAT rate - the app defaults to 18% (the current Sri Lankan standard rate), and you can change it
• A separate number series for tax invoices, like TAX-0001, kept apart from your normal bills

Every Tax Invoice Is Complete

When you create a tax invoice, Tradebook collects the extra fields a proper VAT invoice needs:

• The purchaser's TIN (filled in automatically for saved customers)
• The date of delivery
• The place of supply
• The mode of payment (taken from how the customer paid)
• Any additional information you want to add

Every required field is checked before you can print, so you can never accidentally send out a tax invoice that is missing something.

The VAT Maths Is Automatic

As you build the bill, Tradebook shows a live breakdown so there is no guesswork:

• Total Value of Supply - your net total before tax
• VAT @ 18% (or your rate) - worked out for you
• Total including VAT - the final amount the customer pays

It even writes the final amount in words ("Rupees One Hundred Fifty only"), just like a formal invoice should.

Practical Example: A VAT Sale in Tradebook

It prints your supplier TIN, the customer's TIN, the date of delivery, and the place of supply on a proper tax-invoice layout, ready to file.

Who Is Tradebook For?

Tradebook fits almost any Sri Lankan SME, for example:

• A hardware or retail shop that prints many bills a day
• A distributor or wholesaler that needs VAT tax invoices for business customers
• A service provider (workshop, agency, consultant) billing clients
• Any VAT-registered business that must issue proper tax invoices

If you make bills, Tradebook can help.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

For a Sri Lankan SME, Tradebook means less time on paperwork and no internet needed to make a sale. Your business data stays private on your own computer, your bills look professional, and, most importantly, your VAT tax invoices are complete and correct every single time.

Whether you run a shop in Kandy, a distribution business in Colombo, or a service firm anywhere on the island, Tradebook gives you the billing tools of a big company in a simple app that fits how you actually work.

Bizadvisor helps Sri Lankan entrepreneurs register, run, and grow their companies, from company registration to tax and compliance. If you would like a hand getting your invoicing and VAT records in order, call us on 077 700 444 6 or email support@bizadvisor.lk.