Invoice software you buy once, not rent forever

Somewhere along the way, business software stopped being something you purchase and started being something you rent. Invoice tools that once cost a flat fee now charge $10, $20, or $30 every month — forever. Miss a payment and you lose access to your own financial records. Cancel your subscription and your data disappears behind a paywall. Contando Pollos takes a different approach. It is a native macOS invoicing and time tracking app that costs $27.99 one time. No monthly fees. No annual renewal. No account required. You buy it, you own it, and it works whether you are connected to the internet or not. Every feature is unlocked from the moment you download it, and every future update is included at no extra cost.

One-time purchase vs monthly SaaS

The subscription model for invoicing software has become so common that many freelancers and small business owners assume it is the only option. It is not. When you compare the actual cost of a monthly SaaS invoicing tool against a one-time purchase, the numbers tell a clear story.

The real cost of monthly invoicing software

Most cloud-based invoicing tools charge between $10 and $30 per month for their standard plans. Some offer cheaper starter tiers, but those are typically limited to a handful of invoices or clients before you are forced to upgrade. Here is what the math looks like over time:

• Contando Pollos: $27.99 once. That is the total cost. Today, next year, and five years from now.
• Typical cloud invoicing at $10/month: $120 per year. $360 over three years. $600 over five years.
• Typical cloud invoicing at $20/month: $240 per year. $720 over three years. $1,200 over five years.
• Typical cloud invoicing at $30/month: $360 per year. $1,080 over three years. $1,800 over five years.

At $27.99, Contando Pollos pays for itself within the first one to three months compared to any subscription invoicing tool on the market. Every month after that is money you keep.

No hidden costs or upgrade tiers

Many SaaS invoicing tools advertise a low starting price, then gate essential features behind higher-priced plans. Need more than five clients? Upgrade. Want to remove their branding from your invoices? Upgrade. Need to send invoices in more than one currency? Upgrade. With Contando Pollos, there is one price and one tier. Every feature is included: unlimited invoices, unlimited clients, 15 templates, multi-currency support, time tracking, PDF export, and a full revenue dashboard. Nothing is locked behind an upsell.

No payment failures or access interruptions

Subscription software comes with a risk that one-time purchase software does not: if your credit card expires, if a payment fails, or if you simply forget to update your billing information, you can lose access to your invoicing tool at the worst possible moment. With a one-time purchase, there is no recurring charge to fail. The app is on your Mac and it works. Period.

Who benefits from buying once

A one-time purchase model is not just about saving money, although the savings are significant. It is about owning your tools and removing ongoing financial dependencies from your business operations.

Freelancers on tight margins

When you are freelancing, every dollar counts. Subscription fees for invoicing, time tracking, project management, and other tools add up quickly. A $20 per month invoicing subscription might seem small in isolation, but stack it alongside your other SaaS costs and you are spending hundreds of dollars a month just to run the back office of a one-person business. Contando Pollos eliminates one of those line items permanently. You pay $27.99 and never think about it again.

Small businesses watching expenses

Small businesses with two, five, or ten employees need to control costs carefully, especially in the early years. Subscription software creates a growing fixed cost that scales with your tool stack, not necessarily with your revenue. A one-time purchase for your invoicing software means one less recurring expense on the books, one less vendor to manage, and one less auto-renewal to track.

Anyone tired of recurring charges

Subscription fatigue is real. The average small business owner manages dozens of recurring software charges, and every one of them is a line item that renews whether you used the software that month or not. If you have ever looked at your bank statement and wondered why you are paying monthly for something that should have been a simple purchase, Contando Pollos is the alternative you have been looking for.

People who want to own their tools

There is a fundamental difference between renting software and owning it. When you subscribe to a cloud invoicing tool, you are licensing temporary access. When you buy Contando Pollos, you own a copy of the application on your Mac. It does not phone home to verify your subscription status. It does not stop working if a company server goes down. It is yours in the same way that a book on your shelf is yours — permanently and unconditionally.

What you get for $27.99

Contando Pollos is not a stripped-down starter app with paid upgrades. Every feature listed below is included in the one-time purchase price, with no in-app purchases, no premium tiers, and no feature gates.

• Unlimited invoices — Create as many invoices as you need. There is no cap, no throttle, and no per-invoice charge. Whether you send five invoices a month or five hundred, the price is the same.
• Unlimited clients — Store and manage your entire client base without limits. Add names, addresses, contact details, and notes for every client you work with.
• 15 professional invoice templates — Choose from 15 professionally designed templates that cover a range of styles, from minimal and modern to detailed and traditional. Every template is included.
• Built-in time tracker — Track billable hours directly inside the app. Start and stop timers, log hours manually, and convert tracked time into invoice line items without switching between tools.
• Multi-currency support — Invoice clients in their local currency. Contando Pollos supports multiple currencies so you can work with international clients without workarounds.
• Product and service catalog — Build a catalog of your commonly billed items with descriptions, rates, and tax settings. Add them to invoices with a single click instead of retyping the same information every time.
• PDF export — Export any invoice as a high-quality PDF ready to send to your client. The exported PDF matches your chosen template exactly.
• Revenue dashboard — See your income at a glance with a built-in dashboard that tracks revenue, outstanding payments, and invoice status over time.
• Automatic backups — The app automatically backs up your data on a regular schedule. Manual one-click backups are also available whenever you want an extra copy.
• Multiple languages — Create invoices in multiple languages to serve clients across different regions and markets.
• Custom themes — Personalize the app interface with built-in themes. Choose the look that fits your workflow.
• Data export and import — Export your complete data set to move between machines or create portable archives. Import data into a fresh installation without losing anything.

Free updates forever

When you buy Contando Pollos, you are not buying a frozen snapshot of the software as it exists today. You are buying the app and every improvement that comes after it.

New features at no extra cost

As Contando Pollos grows, new features, templates, and capabilities are added through regular updates. Every one of those updates is delivered through the Mac App Store at no additional charge. There is no "version 2 upgrade fee," no annual maintenance cost, and no pressure to renew a license. If you bought the app at any point, you get every update that follows.

macOS compatibility updates

Apple releases a new version of macOS every year, and software occasionally needs adjustments to stay compatible. Contando Pollos is updated to support each new macOS release, and those compatibility updates are included in your purchase. You will never be told to pay again just to keep the app running on your current operating system.

Bug fixes and performance improvements

If a bug is discovered, it gets fixed in an update. If there is an opportunity to improve performance or refine the user experience, that improvement ships in an update. All of this is part of the one-time purchase. There is no "active support plan" you need to maintain in order to receive fixes.

Privacy and control advantages

The one-time purchase model does more than save you money. Because Contando Pollos is a native Mac app with local-only storage, buying once also means you maintain complete control over your business data.

Local-only storage

Every invoice, client record, time entry, and setting is stored on your Mac and nowhere else. There are no cloud servers holding a copy of your financial data. There is no remote database that a third party could access, breach, or subpoena. Your data lives on your hardware, protected by your security practices and whatever disk encryption you have enabled.

No vendor lock-in

With subscription invoicing tools, your data is stored on the vendor's servers in the vendor's format. If you want to leave, you are at the mercy of whatever export tools they provide — if they provide any at all. Some services make it deliberately difficult to extract your data because keeping you locked in is part of their business model. Contando Pollos stores your data locally and includes a full export system. You can extract everything at any time. You are never dependent on a vendor's continued operation or goodwill to access your own records.

No data held hostage if you stop paying

This is the most important distinction between one-time purchase software and subscription software. With a subscription tool, if you stop paying, you lose access. Your invoices, client history, and financial records are locked behind a paywall until you resubscribe. Some services delete your data entirely after a grace period. With Contando Pollos, there is nothing to stop paying. The app is purchased. Your data is local. Even if you stop using the app for years and come back to it later, everything will still be there, exactly where you left it.

No account means no attack surface

Contando Pollos does not require you to create an account. There is no username, no password, no email address on file, and no authentication server. That means there is no account to be compromised, no password to be leaked in a data breach, and no credential stuffing attack that could affect you. The app runs locally on your Mac and has no online identity associated with it.

Frequently asked questions