Billing goes through one door: you bill the job. The job knows its contract, its approved change orders, and what's already been asked for, so the invoice writes itself against real numbers.
The Waterfall
Every job carries the same chain of numbers, and each one means one specific thing. The base contract is the signed agreement. Approved change orders add to it, giving the current contract. Invoiced is what you have asked for. Collected is what has actually arrived.
From those, the useful figures fall out: the balance due is the contract minus what's collected, and the unbilled amount is signed work you haven't asked for yet. Nothing here is a stored running total that can drift — it's all computed from the invoices and payments themselves.
- Current contract = base contract + approved change orders.
- Balance due = current contract − collected.
- Unbilled = signed work not yet invoiced.
- Billed means asked for. Collected means arrived. Never the same number.
Pro tip: Unbilled backlog is the number most contractors never look at. It's signed work you've already earned and simply haven't asked for — the fastest cash in your business.
Drafts Count Too
A ready invoice you haven't sent still reserves what it covers. The billable amount is what's unbilled minus what's already reserved by ready invoices, so two people can't accidentally bill the same slice of a job twice.
Every billing path is clamped to that number. You cannot over-bill a job by mistake, whether you're taking a milestone draw, a percentage, or a custom amount.
- Drafts reserve the amount they cover.
- Billing is clamped so a job can't be over-billed.
- Pending change orders show as a projected balance, separately.
Where To Start It
Bill a Job is on the plus button and on the Money page. Pick the job, and the draft is prepared against that job's contract, its payment schedule, and what's already been invoiced.
If the agreement has a payment schedule, the draft draws the next milestone and links to it. Delete an invoice and the milestone unlinks itself, so the schedule never points at something that no longer exists.
- Bill a Job from the plus button or from Money.
- Milestone draws link to the payment schedule.
- Deleting an invoice unlinks its milestone automatically.
- Invoices are numbered under the customer's account — 1042-I1.