How Your Data Moves Between TidyPapers Tools (What's Automatic and What Isn't)

TidyPapers is not one app — it's 18 separate free pages (invoice generator, change order generator, tax dashboard, timer, calculators, and more) that all live under tidypapers.com. A common question from first-time users: "if I fill in my name on one tool, does it show up on the others?" This guide answers that honestly, tool by tool, so you know exactly what to expect before you start typing.

Short answer: nothing you type is ever uploaded anywhere — every tool saves its data only inside your own browser (this is called "local storage," and it's covered in detail in a moment). On top of that browser-only storage, TidyPapers now shares one business profile across every tool, and a handful of tools can hand off a piece of work directly to the invoice generator — no copy/paste required. This guide names each connection so you know which is which, and what's still a manual step.

What "local storage" means, in plain terms

Every TidyPapers tool remembers what you typed the last time you used it, so that if you close the tab and come back tomorrow, your invoice, timer sessions, or tax settings are still there. This is done using your browser's own storage (a feature every browser has, sometimes called "local storage"), not a TidyPapers account or server. That's why there is no sign-up, no login, and no password anywhere on the site — nothing to create, nothing to lose, nothing that could leak from a TidyPapers server, because TidyPapers never receives what you type in the first place.

The trade-off: this storage is tied to one browser on one device. If you switch from Chrome to Safari, or from your laptop to your phone, none of your saved invoices, timer sessions, or settings travel with you — you're starting fresh in that browser. Clearing your browser's site data / cookies for tidypapers.com will also erase everything you've saved there, including your shared business profile.

Your business profile is shared across tools — fill it in once

This is the piece that changed most recently: TidyPapers now keeps one shared business profile — your business name, address, email, VAT/tax ID, logo, currency, and default hourly rate — in a single place in your browser, and several tools read from it automatically.

Look for the "Your business profile" panel near the top of a tool's form. It appears, in some form, on:

Fill in the panel once on any of these pages and click Save profile — the same values are then ready to use on every other tool in the table above. Practically, that means: type your business name into the Invoice Generator once, and it's already there the first time you open the Change Order Generator, the Deposit Invoice Generator, or the Client Onboarding Kit Generator.

Two things worth knowing about how it fills in:

• A value you've already typed directly into a tool's own field always wins. The shared profile only fills in a field that's still empty — it never overwrites something you typed on that specific page.
• Not every tool reads the profile. The Late Payment Interest Calculator, the tax calculators, and the Payment Fees Comparison tool don't have a business-identity field at all, so there's nothing for the profile to fill in there.

The connections that now happen automatically, no copy/paste

Beyond the shared profile, three tools can push a finished piece of work straight into the invoice generator as a ready-made line item or prefilled invoice — you click one button on the source tool, then open the invoice generator and it's already there, with a small banner confirming what arrived.

Timer → Invoice

On the Billable & Pomodoro Timer (/billable-timer/), each finished session's log row has an "Add to invoice" button next to "Copy as invoice line." Click it, and that session (task, client, duration, rate) is queued for the invoice generator. Open / and it's already added as a time-based line item, with a banner reading something like "1 line item received from Timer." The older "Copy as invoice line" button is still there too, for when you want to paste the text somewhere other than TidyPapers' own invoice generator.

Converters → Invoice

The Minutes to Decimal, Decimal to Minutes, and Hours to Decimal converters (/minutes-to-decimal/, /decimal-to-minutes/, /hours-to-decimal/) each have a "Use in invoice" button. Click it after converting a time value, and a time-based line item is queued the same way — open the invoice generator and the converted hours are already sitting in a new line item.

Late Payment Interest Calculator → Invoice

On /late-fee-calculator/, the "Create reminder invoice" button takes the calculator's current numbers — the original invoice amount and the accrued interest/fees — and queues them as two separate line items (and the currency) for the invoice generator. A confirmation line appears on the calculator page itself: "Reminder invoice ready — open the Invoice Generator to download it."

Invoice Generator → Tax Dashboard

This connection predates the profile/handoff work above and still works the same way: every invoice you build and download logs itself into the Freelancer Tax Dashboard automatically, under the month matching its issue date. Open /tax-dashboard/ after downloading an invoice and the row is already there. There's also a smaller connection running the other way: the invoice generator's "Show my-tax summary on invoice (informational)" checkbox pulls your current Tax Dashboard figures onto the invoice PDF as a reference block — informational only, it never changes the invoice's total.

What each handoff actually queues (and how to tell it worked)

Under the hood, each of these buttons queues one small item in your browser (nothing leaves it), and the invoice generator reads that queue the next time it loads. That's why the order matters: click the button on the source tool *first*, then open or switch to the invoice generator tab — a tab that's already open won't pick up a handoff sent after it loaded until you reload it.

Once the invoice generator applies a handoff, it's consumed — reloading the invoice generator again won't re-add the same line item a second time. If you want the item back, go click the source tool's button again.

What's still a link, not a hand-off

Not every cross-link on TidyPapers moves data. Pages like the Client Onboarding Kit Generator, Payment Fees Comparison, and the tax pages carry a small "Where this goes" chip pointing at a related tool, and the site nav and footer link between all 18 pages — these are still navigation shortcuts, not automatic data transfers. If a tool doesn't appear in either table above, assume it's a link, not a pipe: open it and type your own numbers in.

Quick-reference table: is it automatic or manual?

Why this is worth knowing before you start

If you're setting up several TidyPapers tools for one client or project, fill in the shared business profile first — that one panel now covers most of the tools you'd otherwise re-type your details into. And if you're timing work, converting hours, or chasing an overdue invoice, look for the "Add to invoice," "Use in invoice," or "Create reminder invoice" button before you reach for copy and paste — there's a decent chance the number you need is already waiting in the invoice generator.