Solo Founder Finance: Invoice, Track, Get Paid

Who This Is For

You're a freelancer, consultant, or indie founder. You have clients. You do the work. You often forget to invoice. When you do invoice, you use a Google Doc and manually track it in a spreadsheet. You find out a payment is 30 days late when you check your bank account and feel vaguely anxious.

This playbook fixes that.

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What It Builds

Invoice Generator — Describe what you did for a client, Claude generates a professional invoice as a formatted document ready to send.

Payment Tracker — Ask "what's outstanding?" and Claude checks your Stripe records, cross-references against invoices, and tells you exactly who owes you what.

Polite Chaser — Claude drafts a follow-up email for overdue invoices. Firm but not rude. You review and send.

Monthly P&L — At month end, Claude generates a simple profit-and-loss statement from your income and categorised expenses.

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MCP Servers Required

| Server | Purpose |

|---|---|

| Stripe MCP | Read payment data, create payment links |

| Filesystem MCP | Read/write invoice documents locally |

| Gmail MCP (optional) | Send invoice emails directly |

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Setup

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stripe": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-stripe"],
      "env": {
        "STRIPE_SECRET_KEY": "sk_live_your_stripe_key"
      }
    },
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/Users/yourname/Invoices"]
    }
  }
}

Stripe key: Dashboard → Developers → API Keys. Use a restricted key with read-only access to Charges and Customers for safety.

Filesystem: Point it at your Invoices folder. Claude will read and write documents there.

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The Prompts

Generate an Invoice

Generate an invoice for:

Client: Acme Corp (contact: jane@acme.com)
Invoice #: 2024-047
Work done: March 2024 retainer — product strategy consulting
Amount: $4,500
Payment terms: Net 30
Due date: April 26, 2024
My business details: [your name, address, bank/Stripe details]

Save it to my Invoices folder as "INV-2024-047-AcmeCorp.md"
and also give me a formatted version I can paste into an email.

Check Outstanding Payments

Check my Stripe account for all payments from the last 90 days.

Tell me:
1. Total collected
2. Any failed payments
3. Any payment links that were sent but not paid

Also check my Invoices folder — list any invoices where I haven't
received a corresponding Stripe payment yet.

Chase a Late Payment

Invoice INV-2024-039 for $2,200 was due 2 weeks ago.
Client is Brightwave Ltd, contact is tom@brightwave.io.
This is the first time I'm chasing.

Draft a polite follow-up email. My tone is professional but warm.
I want to be helpful, not aggressive — maybe there's an issue
with the payment link.

Monthly P&L

Generate a P&L for March 2024.

Income: Check my Stripe account for all settled payments in March.

Expenses (I'll list them):
- Notion: $16
- AWS: $43
- Figma: $12
- Accountant retainer: $200

Produce: Total income, total expenses, net profit, effective hourly
rate (I worked approx 85 hours in March).

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The Follow-Up Schedule

Most late payments aren't malicious — they're forgotten. Use this schedule:

• Day 0: Send invoice (Claude drafts, you send)
• Day 30: Polite nudge — "Just checking this landed in the right place" (Claude drafts)
• Day 45: More direct — "This is now 15 days past due, please advise" (Claude drafts)
• Day 60: Final notice before escalation (Claude drafts, you decide what comes next)

Never skip the Day 30 nudge. Most payments arrive within 48 hours of a polite first chase.

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What This Won't Do

• File your taxes (you still need an accountant for that)
• Handle VAT or complex multi-currency accounting
• Replace proper bookkeeping software if you have a team or inventory

For solo freelancers and indie founders generating under ~$500K/year, this covers 90% of what you need day-to-day.