Financial Systems
Fiscal Desk
A custom invoicing and financial-record application, built on PostgreSQL, for professional-services billing — tracking time, fees, disbursements, tax treatment, billing narratives, and generating multi-page invoices.
Professional-services billing involves mixed tax treatment, pass-through disbursements, detailed billing narratives, and a need for financial records that stay connected to the underlying time and fee entries. The billing workflow in this practice did not map well to the invoicing products I evaluated, so Fiscal Desk was built around the actual billing model from the start.
What it solves
- Invoice generation and disbursement tracking not well served by off-the-shelf billing software for this workflow.
- Mixed GST and tax treatment requiring explicit handling rather than a flat-rate assumption.
- A need for a financial record that keeps invoice, disbursement, billing narrative, and supporting detail together in a queryable form.
Technology stack
My role
Built and used in my own consulting practice. Requirements are driven by real billing and financial-record needs.
Highlights
Generates professional-service invoices from underlying time, fee, and disbursement data, including multi-page output and supporting detail.
Disbursements and pass-through costs are recorded against the billing record, keeping the financial picture complete.
The application handles mixed GST scenarios common in professional-services billing rather than applying a flat-rate assumption.
Invoice, disbursement, and narrative data is stored in PostgreSQL as the system of record, enabling direct querying and reconciliation.
Why a custom application
The billing workflow in this practice — professional-services time and fees, disbursements, narratives, mixed tax treatment — did not fit the products I evaluated. Fiscal Desk was built around that workflow rather than bending the workflow to fit available tooling.
Current status
Fiscal Desk is in production and in active use. It continues to evolve as billing and financial-record requirements develop.