Getting started
The first time you open Ochre it asks for your business — name, address, tax ID, and base currency. Three quiet steps 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.
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.
You can run more than one business from the same app. The name at the top of the sidebar is a switcher: tap it to add another business or move between them. Every screen, number, and document is scoped to the business you're in.
The workspace
The sidebar is your map: Documents, Customers, Vendors, Products & services, Money, Insights, Settings. Documents expands into Invoices, Quotations, Credit notes, and Purchase orders — 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:
Outstanding
Below it, documents are grouped by what needs you — Needs attention then in-flight, then 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.
Creating a document
Hit New invoice — its chevron also opens Quotation and Purchase order. 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 to complete the top one (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.
Paid at sale issues the invoice and records its payment in one step — for over-the-counter sales.
Customizing the paper
Ochre ships three composed templates — Editorial, Classic, and Statement — under Settings → Business → design. There you also choose:
- Accent color — used only on labels; money is never colored.
- Money typeface, density, and paper size (A4 or US Letter, by country).
- Fields on the paper — show or hide tax ID, ship-to, e-Way Bill, HSN/SAC, payment details, the scan-to-pay QR, signatory, the reference line, and — for India — the delivery challan button. Money facts can never be hidden.
Every change flows through to already-issued documents too — the paper is presentation; the facts stay frozen.
Sending, saving & printing
The same invoice, three clients. Ochre picks the paper size, date order, digit grouping, currency placement, reading direction, and the document’s language from the client’s market — you do not set any of it per document.
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, WhatsApp, Gmail, 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. Ochre stores no email account or password of its own.
- Print — straight to any printer (AirPrint on iPad).
The same flow makes receipts for payments and delivery challans (India) from an issued invoice.
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.
Invoice · INV-2026-0006
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.
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, last month, this quarter, this year, all time, or a custom start–end 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.
Products & services
Your catalog lives under Products & services: name, SKU, price, tax class, unit, and optional HSN/SAC. Set a customer's price tier and their new lines start at that discount. Catalog items power the Tab-complete autosuggest when you build invoices. Archive anything you no longer sell — it's kept for history, out of the way.
Money & expenses
Money shows your accounts, balances, and a feed of recent payments. Add an expense with a category, vendor, and receipt photo. 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.
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. India users also get a GST tax report by component and period. Use Print report to save or send the page as a PDF.
Deeper filtering — year-to-date and month-to-date, per-customer and per-product breakdowns, and custom date ranges — is planned.
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.
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 both run through your own Apple ID.
Turn on iCloud sync (Settings → 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: save one (Settings → Data → Back up) 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.
Backups are yours to keep: encrypted .ochre files, protected by a passphrase only you hold. Turn on Automatic backup (daily or weekly, plus a backup whenever you close the app after changes) and Ochre keeps a rolling set. You can export or import by hand any time.
Without your passphrase a backup cannot be restored. To move to a new device or recover: install Ochre, then import your .ochre file.
Starting over
Settings → Data → Erase all data wipes every document, contact, product, account, and setting on this device and returns the app to onboarding. It doesn't reach any other device — each keeps its own local copy — and your encrypted backup files on disk are not touched; import one to restore. Take a fresh backup first if there's any doubt.
Privacy
- Local-first — reads and writes stay on your device; nothing leaves it unless you share, print, email, or back it up yourself.
- No third-party servers, trackers, or ad SDKs.
- App Lock — optionally require Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode to open the books.
- Backups are encrypted with your passphrase.
Keyboard shortcuts
On a Mac, or an iPad with a hardware keyboard.