From quote to invoice without typing it twice

A quote gets written carefully. Every line carries a price, the extras appear as items, 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 sat as options on the quote, the customer took two, and the invoice came off 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 happen when two people enter the same information weeks apart, knowing different amounts about the job.

The accepted quote already is the invoice

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

In Diract you invoice a job or an accepted quote directly, so the lines the customer agreed become the lines on their bill. 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 beats 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 structuring those options. A customer can then accept part of a quote and the billing still runs 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.

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

The job keeps its own status

When the invoice comes from the job, the job knows about it. Its status turns invoiced, carrying the dates, then paid once nothing remains outstanding. Nobody updates 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 gap is usually the largest in a small business. It only becomes visible once the quote, the job and the invoice form one thread.

What retyping costs, measured

Twenty finished jobs, with each accepted quote beside the invoice that followed, make the test. Count the lines that differ and add up the difference.

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

What to do first

• The invoice comes off the accepted quote rather than a job sheet
• Let the customer's own choices carry across, extras included
• Variations go on as lines the same 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