From quote to invoice without typing it twice

A quote is written carefully. Every line is priced, the extras are itemised, and the customer reads it and agrees.

Then the job finishes, and somebody sits down to write the invoice from scratch. That second typing is where the money goes.

Three things go missing between the two documents

1. The extras the customer picked. They were optional on the quote, the customer chose two, and the invoice was written from the base price.
2. The variation agreed on site. It exists as a conversation and a nod, and the person invoicing was not there.
3. The prices themselves. A line retyped from a job sheet gets the round number rather than the quoted one, and the difference is always in the customer's favour.

None of these is carelessness. They are what happens when the same information is entered twice, weeks apart, by people with different knowledge of the job.

The accepted quote already is the invoice

Once a customer has accepted a quote, the argument about what the job costs is finished. The invoice is not a new document, it is the same lines with a different heading, and treating it as new is what reopens the question.

In Diract you invoice a job or an accepted quote directly, so the lines the customer agreed to become the lines they are billed for. What they picked is what carries across, including the optional extras they chose and the choices they made.

Which means the extras survive

Optional extras are the clearest case. The customer opened the link, ticked two of them, and accepted. That is a record of what they agreed, made by them, and it is worth more than anybody's memory of the conversation.

An invoice built from that record bills both extras without anybody needing to remember they existed. Quoting for trade jobs covers how to structure those options so a customer can accept part of a quote and you can still bill it cleanly.

Variations still need recording, on the day

Carrying the quote through does not solve the work added after acceptance, and nothing will except recording it when it happens.

Add the variation as a line while you are on site, with a photo if it is the kind a customer might later query. A variation added at the job costs thirty seconds. Reconstructed at month end it costs either an argument or the money.

The job moves itself along

When the invoice comes from the job, the job knows about it. Its status becomes invoiced with the dates filled in, and paid once nothing is owed, without anybody updating a second record to match.

That is what makes done but not invoiced a number rather than a worry. Getting paid on site, before you leave covers why that particular gap is usually the largest one in a small business, and it only becomes visible when the quote, the job and the invoice are one thread.

What retyping costs, measured

Take twenty finished jobs and compare the accepted quote against the invoice that followed. Count the lines that differ and add up the difference.

Most businesses doing this for the first time find the invoice is lower than the quote more often than it is higher, and that the gap is made almost entirely of extras and variations. That total is what the second typing costs per twenty jobs, and it repeats all year.

What to do first

• Raise the invoice from the accepted quote rather than from a job sheet
• Let the customer's own choices carry across, extras included
• Add variations as lines on the day, with a photo where it helps
• Let the job take its status from the invoice instead of updating both
• Compare twenty quotes against their invoices and total the gap
• Fix the biggest category that comparison names, which is usually extras