Changelog
What's new in Handl
Everything we ship, as we ship it — and the honest reason behind it. I build this in public, so the messy bits are in here too.
I’m not going to batch up “exciting product news” for a quarterly email. Stuff ships, it goes here, with a real note about why. If something’s half-baked, I’ll say so. Want this in your inbox? Drop your email at the bottom.
2026-08-04
A fee-free way to get paid — and it reconciles itself
Some clients would rather wire the money than pull out a card. Now you can flip any client to bank transfer: drop your account details in once per currency, and their invoices, emails and PDFs show your details plus the invoice number to use as the reference. No card fee, no Handl fee — the money goes straight to your account (your bank's own wire fees are between you and them). And if you get paid into Wise, connect it once and Handl watches the account for you: a transfer that clearly matches an invoice is recorded automatically, a near-miss shows up as a one-click suggestion on your dashboard, and a daily sweep catches anything the rest missed. One more nicety — before Handl chases a bank-transfer client, it checks your connected books first, so nobody gets a reminder for an invoice they already paid.
2026-08-03
Invoice summaries you can actually skim
The summary at the top of every invoice — the first thing a client reads — used to be one wall-of-text paragraph. Now it renders real formatting: a short intro, a bullet per workstream, bold where it earns it. Everywhere the client sees it, too — pay page, portal, PDF, and the invoice email. Hit Regenerate and the AI writes the structured version for you, or hand-edit with the same lightweight formatting (paragraphs, lists, bold, italic — that's the set). Anything you've already sent stays exactly as it was.
2026-08-02
Handl now lives in Slack
The agent's got a third door. You can DM the Handl bot or @mention it in a channel and it does the same things it does in the dashboard — create projects, send invoices, chase late payers, answer “who owes us money?” The bit I'm proudest of: drop a signed proposal in the thread, say “set this up,” and it reads the PDF and builds the project. And you can approve an invoice from a button in Slack without ever opening a tab. It's live for everyone now. Genuinely fun to build, this one — it makes Handl feel less like software you log into and more like a person on your team.
2026-08-02
The agent got a lot smarter (and a new brain)
We moved the agent onto Gemini 3.5 Flash and put it through a real-world use-case test suite before shipping. The short version: it stopped inventing reasons it couldn't do things and started just... doing them. It now has 187 tools — basically everything you can do in the app, plus a few things you can't do by hand. Create a project, fix an invoice, pull the aging report, set up a retainer — by asking.
2026-08-01
One statement, every outstanding invoice
Client sitting on a few unpaid invoices? Stop forwarding them one at a time. Hit Send Statement on the client page and Handl builds one email listing everything they still owe — grouped by currency, each line linking straight to View & Pay. If auto-pay already has an invoice covered, the line says so instead of asking twice. Preview the exact email before it goes, add a personal note, done. Plus a Sent Emails history on every client page.
See it on the features page→2026-07-31
Edit line items on draft invoices
Need to tweak an invoice before it goes out? Draft invoices are now fully editable, right on the invoice page — change a description, adjust a quantity or rate, add a one-off line, delete one. Totals, tax and discounts recalculate as you type, so what you see is exactly what the client gets billed. Once it's sent, it locks — the fix-it window is before your client sees it, where it should be.
2026-07-31
The agent handles costs, vendors and deliverables now
Two agent upgrades. First, the honest one: managing project costs, vendors and tax settings now works reliably from chat and Slack — it already worked through MCP, but the chat channels were quietly ignoring those requests, which is exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust in an agent. Fixed. Second, genuinely new on every surface: ask the agent to list a project's deliverables and release one to the client. Every release asks you to confirm before anything ships — the agent never hands over work without a human saying go.
2026-07-31
Record any payment, not just Stripe
Got paid by bank transfer, cheque, or cash? Record it in two clicks from the invoice page — Handl updates the balance, logs it in payment history with your reference note, and recording the full payment automatically stops the reminder emails. No more chasing clients who already paid. Handles partial payments too.
2026-07-07
Deliverables that release on payment
Asset handover, fixed. Upload final files (or links) against an invoice and they unlock automatically the moment the client pays. No more handing over the keys and chasing the money after. Plus a proper Deliverables tab on every project.
2026-07-05
Set-aside reminders
Money hits your account and it's not all yours... GST, tax, profit. Set percentage envelopes and Handl reminds you to move the money every time you get paid. Reminder-only — we never touch your funds.
2026-07-05
T&M run-rate forecasting
Handl now projects income, cost and margin forward for time & materials work based on the actual pace of the team — on the forecast page, the cash-flow report and the dashboard. Includes contractor costs (CSV import for Upwork) so the margin is honest.
2026-07-05
A simpler recurring billing setup
Setting up a retainer or recurring billing is now a 2-step wizard: what you're billing and when, then team and expectations. End dates, planned team, arrears explained in plain English.
2026-07-03
Retainers that invoice themselves
Opt in and every retainer cycle generates and sends its invoice automatically. Overage on a cycle? One click turns it into a draft invoice.
2026-07-03
Simpler, flatter fees
Payment fees restructured: flat 0.5% on card and 0.25% on bank payments, on every plan. Plus we now record the real Stripe fee on every transaction, not an estimate.
2026-07-03
Pay by bank
Clients can now pay invoices by bank rails — PayTo and BECS (AU), ACH (US), NZ bank transfer — with the lower bank fee applied automatically. You control which payment methods show, and in what order.
2026-07-03
Payments page
A proper transaction history for your agency: every payment, method, fee and payout in one place.
2026-07-03
ClickUp integration
ClickUp joins the PM-tool lineup — connect, link lists to projects, live webhook updates.
2026-07-03
Cash-flow report, phase 2
Weighted pipeline split and what-if controls, so you can drag the assumptions and watch the runway move.
2026-07-03
One payment experience
The client portal and the public pay page are now the same thing: a clean branded page with the biller's identity, the work behind the invoice, attachments, saved cards, and partial payments that show up everywhere.
2026-07-02
Invoice emails, done properly
Invoices now send from a verified platform domain so they land in the inbox, not spam — no Gmail warnings for any agency. Branded email shell with your logo, attachments, a rich reminder composer... and when a client replies to an invoice email, the reply is captured against the invoice.
2026-07-02
Client reminder cadences go live
Automated, opt-in reminder sequences per project. You set the cadence per email type, see exactly what's queued per project, and every message is visible in the project's Communications tab. Honest triggers, one-click unsubscribe.
2026-06-30
Invoices grouped the way clients read them
Group T&M invoice lines by task category (Dev, QA, Design...) or by day, with categories configurable per agency. Show a team member's role instead of their name if that's how you bill. Per-line discounts on T&M work.
2026-06-26
Invoice attachments + auto summaries
Attach files to any invoice (they ride along on the email), and Handl now writes a plain-English summary of the invoice for you — editable, even after send.
2026-06-24
Projects, grouped by client
The projects page got a full redesign: new toolbar, card layout, and a by-client view with an owed-by-client chip so you can see who's holding your money.
2026-06-24
Slack digests, your way
The Slack digest is now per-user configurable — pick what you want, when you want it.
2026-06-23
Team invites that just work
Full invite-acceptance flow with Google sign-in, pending invites visible (resend/cancel), and invited members land in your agency — not a new one.
2026-06-23
Invoice discounts
Percentage or fixed discounts on invoices, with the tax math done right, everywhere an invoice shows up — UI, PDF, portal, agent.
2026-06-22
Tax on invoices
Set your tax label and rate at the agency level (GST, VAT, sales tax...), override per project, and every invoice snapshots the tax it was issued with.
2026-06-22
Recurring T&M billing
Time & materials projects can now bill on a schedule — weekly, fortnightly, monthly — with control over what level of detail the client sees.
2026-06-22
A faster app
Big performance pass: project tabs load in parallel with caching and prefetch, the dashboard loads in one hit, and we keep production warm. Feels snappy now.
2026-06-19
Dashboard v2: KPIs + a smart action feed
Six KPI cards that actually mean something, projects and money health side by side, and a smart action feed that surfaces what needs you today — overdue invoices, milestones ready to bill, projects with no billing plan. Dismiss with undo.
2026-06-19
Paste a screenshot into the AI chat
The agent now has eyes. Paste or attach screenshots into chat — a client's email, a spreadsheet, a proposal page — and it works with what it sees.
2026-06-18
Money health on the dashboard
Cost rollup across the agency, revenue vs cost side by side, period-over-period trends, income by project. The dashboard finally answers “are we actually making money?”
2026-06-17
The big integrations wave
Toggl and Clockify wired into sync. Harvest fixed up. Asana with per-task logged hours and webhooks. Monday.com support including project discovery. Plus Xero invoice push, with QuickBooks rolling out.
2026-06-16
Tasks tab: status buckets + hours per task
Tasks grouped into status buckets with colour-coded progress, latest-sprint default, and logged hours shown per task. Plus a mobile responsiveness pass across the app.
2026-06-15
Handl finds your projects for you
Project discovery: Handl scans your connected timesheet and PM tools, finds projects you haven't set up yet, and imports them — mappings, time backfill, tasks, the lot. Turn on auto-import and new projects just appear.
2026-06-15
Every invoice backed by evidence
Invoices now carry a frozen snapshot of the work behind them — the hours, the tasks, the who-did-what — rendered on the PDF, the portal, the pay page. One toggle controls whether the client sees the detail. No more “can you break this down?” emails.
2026-06-14
Billing, unified
One billing engine under everything: milestones, retainers, recurring, one-offs. Retainers get included-hours with overage and rollover done properly, and clients see their upcoming invoices, recurring schedule and retainer balance in the portal.
2026-06-13
Create projects from a link
Drop a public Google Docs, Slides or Drive link at the agent and it reads the proposal — scope, milestones, payment schedule, effort estimates — and builds the project. Also works with files dropped into Slack.
2026-06-13
Charts in Slack
Ask the agent for numbers in Slack and get branded charts back as images, not walls of text.
2026-06-13
A faster, sharper agent
Streaming responses, smarter model routing (fast for reads, strong for writes), milestone lifecycle and project-cloning tools, and confirmation required before anything destructive.
2026-06-13
Proactive alerts that reach you in Slack
Default alerts out of the box — budget burn, overdue invoices, allocation overruns — and they land in Slack, not just a bell icon.
2026-06-09
Handl speaks MCP — use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor
This one's for the AI-native crowd. Handl now exposes your whole billing operation over the Model Context Protocol, so whatever AI assistant you already trust can query your projects, draft invoices, pull reports and push proposals into your approval queue — under the same autonomy rules as everything else. Most “AI billing” makes you come to their chat box. We went the other way: your billing, available inside the AI you already use. MCP access is part of the Team plan.
2026-06-09
Approve the money stuff from anywhere
Anything the agent does that moves real money now goes through a proposal queue — it drafts, you get a card with Approve / Reject. Works in the dashboard and in Slack. Full control, none of the typing. This is the bit that makes “let the AI run my billing” actually safe instead of scary.
2026-05-14
Payment schedules
Billing untangled from delivery. Schedule payments on dates, on milestone start, or on completion — independent of how the work is structured. Scheduled income shows as its own stream in the cash-flow forecast, clients see upcoming invoices in the portal, and $ badges on the roadmap show where the money lands.
2026-05-13
Milestones as % of budget
Enter milestone values as a percentage of project budget with a $/% toggle — everything recalculates when the budget moves.
2026-05-12
Internal projects
Track internal work — your own product, admin, R&D — with time synced and costs counted, but walled off from invoicing so it can never leak onto a client bill.
2026-05-04
The milestone roadmap
A visual timeline for every project: drag milestones, zoom from days to years, colour-code, reorder... and allocate team members to milestones with rates and date ranges, so every block on the roadmap knows what it costs. Click any milestone for an in-place editor with allocations, status actions and invoice creation.
2026-04-22
Five new reports
The reports hub lands: revenue, profitability, outstanding invoices, aging and more — real numbers pulled straight from your projects and invoices.
2026-03-30
Linear integration
Full Linear support, same depth as Jira: link teams and projects to milestones, live webhook updates, story points, task sync.
2026-03-27
Time & Money, redesigned
One view per project for hours and dollars: project health, alerts, a trend chart, task filters. Know if a project is going sideways before the invoice does.
2026-03-26
Project setup, overhauled
New 3-step project wizard, tabs that adapt to project type, feature toggles per project, and billing automation with a preview — see exactly what the next auto-invoice will look like before it's generated.
2026-03-26
We're now handl.works
New home. Same product, better address.
2026-02-25
The communications engine
Every client email in one system: template management with intent-based categories, per-project overrides, AI-drafted suggestions, delivery tracking, and agency-specific sending addresses.
2026-02-20
A smarter AI agent
Full agent rebuild on structured data primitives: it can now answer real questions across projects, time, invoices and team — with pagination, follow-up memory, markdown tables, and a resizable chat panel.
2026-02-19
Forecast calendar
See expected income laid out on a calendar — now the default forecast view.
2026-02-18
Clients approve projects online
Send a project for acceptance and the client approves it on a branded page — optionally adding a card up front so milestone invoices auto-pay on completion. New clients get walked through account setup on the way.
2026-02-18
Quotes → milestones
Proposals became Quotes, and an accepted quote now converts straight into project milestones. Quote editor moved to a side drawer with rich-text terms and an auto-pay option.
2026-02-16
Onboarding that does the typing for you
Sign up, drop in your website, and Handl scrapes your logo, brand colours, services and team to pre-fill your account.
2026-02-10
Plans + free trial
Solo, Team and Agency plans with a 7-day free trial.
2026-02-05
Live task progress from Jira
Jira webhooks mean task changes show up in Handl in real time — with a live progress bar on every linked milestone.
2026-01-20
Pipeline & forecast
Track opportunities through a pipeline and see projected income before the work is even signed. Plus the first cut of the client portal.
2026-01-01
Get paid online
The big one: clients pay invoices by card straight from the invoice. Partial payments, saved cards, payment plans, PDF downloads, automated payment reminders, and transparent fee configuration.
2025-12-15
Jira integration + client portal progress
Link milestones to Jira sprints and epics, sync tasks, get milestone alerts by email, and give clients a portal view of real progress.
2025-12-11
Time & materials billing
Build invoices from actual tracked time: per-member rates with cost visibility, time rounding, currency per invoice, saved drafts, and an approval workflow. Plus ad-hoc invoices and scheduled auto-invoicing for retainers.
2025-12-01
Handl exists
First commit. Projects, milestones, invoicing, multi-currency, team rates, and an AI agent from day one.
Get the next update when it ships
Reclaim your time
Stop being your own debt collector.
Get paid faster with automated invoicing and reminders.
