We're excited to announce that the next round of WorkflowMax invoicing improvements goes live today.

Now your invoices can show even more detail about a job or project’s progress compared to your original quote. You can add new merge fields into your custom print templates that will pull in detailed information on your invoice about:

• Quoted/estimated amounts
• Previous invoice amounts
• Total claimed amounts
• Total unclaimed amounts or balance remaining

This functionality will be great for keeping your customers informed of what’s been spent against the budget and what’s coming up to pay – all in one place. You’ll save a lot of back and forth and admin time dealing with customer queries about billing and payment.

These new fields support either fixed price or calculated quote methods, but your invoice has to be based on the ‘quote/estimate time and costs’ invoice type. If you’ve previously raised a deposit invoice based on % of quote or $ amount, and absorbed the deposit in the progress or final invoice, the credit for the deposit will still show on the invoice and reduce the invoice total by the deposit invoice.

Let's take a closer look

Here's the extra information you can show in your invoices as of today. Note that you'll  need to be using custom print templates for your invoices in order to take advantage of this new functionality.

If you don’t currently use progress invoices (also known as progress billing), they’re a type of invoice that requests payment for work completed to date. They’re a great option for architects, builders and anyone who’s quoting based on fixed price amounts.

Progress invoices are commonly prepared and submitted for payment at different stages or phases of a project or job. They’re standard for long-term projects because they let you split an estimate or quote into as many invoices as you need. Instead of asking for full payment at the beginning of a project, you can invoice customers for partial payments as you complete work, and add items from the initial estimate to the invoices.

Check out the examples which show how you can use these new template fields, from the “Samples” tab in the Custom templates menu.  Look out for the invoice type named “progress claim to date”.

Benefits of using the progress invoicing method

Invoicing smaller, regular increments helps your cash flow

Progress invoicing bills a larger number of smaller amounts, which may be easier to collect from your customers. Rather than chasing a single lump-sum payment from a customer, you may be more successful collecting on smaller payments regularly which will help your immediate cash flow.

Get cash in the door faster

Progress invoicing helps you get funds faster to support the next steps of the project. Examples include buying materials for upcoming project stages and paying subcontractors as their work is completed.

Clearer communication with your customers

These types of invoices put you in regular communication with your customers, ensuring that you’re both on the same page regarding a project’s financial status. You’ll even be able to manually add in percentage complete amounts against each task as an extra measure.

Never miss a deadline

Using progress invoices can motivate subcontractors who get paid as the work is completed. The direct connection between progress on the project and payment helps subcontractors like electricians, plumbers, web developers or freelancers keep to deadlines.

Budgeting and forecasting is easier

Because project invoicing requires close monitoring of project completion, it can help inform your estimates on future revenue, expenses and profit - making budgeting and forecasting easier.

Create a report builder report

Using the existing Job report type, and existing fields, create a report with the same fields as your printed invoice so you can manage upcoming revenue due and the progress through the project against your quoted amount.

Help is at hand

If you’re not using progress invoicing methods from your fixed price quotes, or tapping into WorkflowMax custom print templates feature, then reach out to our CX team! We can advise on how to get them up and running in no time.

If you need further guidance on how to reconfigure your current templates, our customer success team can help or contact one of our certified partners.