The report went out three weeks ago
Month end, and your finance manager is putting together the invoice run. They ask operations for the list of engagements completed this month. Operations send a list from the scheduling spreadsheet. Finance cross-checks against the proposals in the CRM for prices, and against emails for anything agreed since, such as an extra day or a change to scope.
Several things turn up. An engagement finished last month but the report went out this month, and nobody knows whether it was invoiced. A retest was chargeable but not on the list. A client agreed to pay for an extra day of testing on a call, which the tester mentioned in a message. One engagement has a deposit on booking and a balance on report, and only the deposit was ever billed.
The invoices go out late, some are corrected later, and a couple of small items are quietly dropped because nobody can confirm them.
Payment follows invoice, so every week of delay is a week longer your cash sits with clients, on work your testers finished long ago.
Why engagement invoicing slips
- Price and payment terms are in the proposal or statement of work, not in the accounts package.
- The trigger for invoicing (report issued, retest done) is an operations event that finance does not see.
- Extras and scope changes are agreed informally and not recorded against the engagement.
- Staged payments (deposit, balance, retest) are tracked by memory.
- Different clients have different purchase order and invoicing requirements.
What late or missed invoices cost
| Slip | Result |
|---|---|
| Invoice raised weeks after the report | Cash delayed |
| Balance after deposit never billed | Revenue lost |
| Chargeable retest missed | Work given away |
| Extras agreed on a call not billed | Unpaid days |
| Wrong purchase order number | Invoice rejected, paid later |
The engagement invoicing we build
- When a statement of work is signed, its price, payment stages, purchase order number and client invoicing requirements are recorded against the engagement.
- Each payment stage is tied to an event: booking confirmed, testing complete, report issued, retest issued.
- When the event happens in operations (for example, the report is released through your portal or reporting platform), a draft invoice is created in your accounts package, such as Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, with the right reference and PO.
- Extras and scope changes are logged against the engagement by the tester or account manager as they are agreed, with the client's confirmation attached, and appear on the next invoice or as a separate one.
- Overruns not agreed as extras are shown to the account manager to bill or waive, with the decision recorded.
- Finance reviews and sends drafts, and sees a list of engagements with stages due but not yet invoiced.
We connect this to your CRM, reporting platform or portal, and accounts package through their APIs, so nothing is retyped.
What finance sees afterwards
Draft invoices appear when the work is done, not at month end. Staged payments are never forgotten because each stage has its trigger. Extras are billed or waived deliberately. Purchase order numbers are on the invoice first time. And the list of unbilled stages shows at a glance whether anything is outstanding.
Operations benefit too. They are no longer asked for a list of completed work every month, and account managers can see an engagement's billing status without asking finance.
Picture the same month end with this running. The engagement that finished last month already has its balance invoiced, raised the day the report was released. The chargeable retest created its own draft when the retest report went out. The extra day was logged by the tester the day it was agreed, with the client's email attached, and sits on the balance invoice. Finance's month end is a review of drafts that already exist.
Signs your invoicing needs linking up
- Invoices are raised from a list operations send at month end.
- Balance payments after deposits have been missed.
- Chargeable retests or extra days go unbilled.
- Invoices are rejected for missing purchase order numbers.
- Nobody can see which engagements are delivered but not invoiced.