Sales: Progress invoicing
When you need to invoice a customer over time
Watch a video on how to use progress invoicing.
Using progress invoicing, you can invoice for jobs in phases. For example, you're working on a job where you ask your customer for 25% payment at the beginning of the project, then you invoice them periodically throughout the project.
You start by creating an estimate for the job. (You don't have to give this estimate to the customer if you don't want to. Just use it for tracking purposes.) Then, as you complete each phase, you can transfer items from the estimate to an invoice. You can specify which items to include on each invoice and how much of that item you're charging for on that invoice.
Later on, you can run reports to help you track your estimated versus actual costs.
Note: Be sure you turn on progress invoicing in Preferences. (Choose QuickBooks > Preferences > Sales & Invoicing.)
To create progress invoices for a job:
- Create an invoice using an estimate. You can do this by opening an estimate (Customers > Create Estimate) and clicking Create Invoice. Or create an invoice (Customers > Create Invoice) and choose a customer name that you've created an estimate for.
- Tell QuickBooks what you want to include on the invoice, and click OK:
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Remaining amounts on the estimate. QuickBooks creates an invoice for the full unpaid amount on the estimate. QuickBooks copies all the informatioin on the estimate to an invoice. You can then
edit the invoice or you can change the invoice to a progress invoice by clicking
Progress Invoicing on the invoice.
- A percentage of the estimate. Enter how much of the estimate you want to include on the invoice. Example
- Only certain items or different percentage for each item. Choose this option to highly customize the amounts that you want to include on the invoice. You'll find out how to do this in the next step. Example
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Remaining amounts on the estimate. QuickBooks creates an invoice for the full unpaid amount on the estimate. QuickBooks copies all the informatioin on the estimate to an invoice. You can then
edit the invoice or you can change the invoice to a progress invoice by clicking
Progress Invoicing on the invoice.
- Specify the amounts you want to include on the invoice, and click OK. The amounts shown are based on what you told QuickBooks you wanted to do in the previous step. You can change any of the amounts on the invoice here, but not any of the amounts on the original estimate. Use the checkboxes at the bottom of the window to show more detail such as the quantity/rate and percentages. What's the information on this window?
- If you usually invoice for phases of a job, and you plan to turn your estimate into a series of progress invoices, divide the estimate into sections. Make each section correspond to one phase. Enter a subtotal item after items for each phase.
- When you turn the estimate into a progress invoice for one phase, it will be easy to invoice 100% (or another percentage) of the items for that phase alone.
This completes one invoice in the series of invoices you are sending your customer. To create the next progress invoice for this job, start with Step 1. The next invoice picks up where you left off with the remaining amount on the estimate.