Cut the time from job completion to invoice

Work on site is finished. The customer is satisfied. And yet the invoice goes out days or weeks later. If that sounds familiar, it is worth checking your own process first, before chasing anyone harder.

Why the gap matters

Finished work is not cash. It becomes cash only when it has been invoiced and then paid, and every day between completion and invoice is a day you are funding the job yourself.

Part of the gap may be internal: someone is waiting for a photo, a signature, a figure or a decision. Because each wait looks small, nobody owns the total.

The method below will help you see your own gap, find where it comes from and shorten it. It does not depend on buying anything.

Where the time actually goes

When you follow a finished job to its invoice, the delays can fall into five places.

• Waiting for site evidence. The job is done, but the photos, certificates or completion sheets are still on a phone or in a van.
• Waiting for sign-off. A supervisor or customer has to confirm the work, and nobody is chasing it.
• Unresolved variations. Extra work was agreed on site, but it has not been priced, so the final invoice cannot be completed.
• Re-keying into finance. Someone in the office retypes job details into the accounts system, which takes time and introduces errors.
• Batching to month end. Invoices wait for a regular invoicing run, even when the job was ready weeks before.

Seeing the gap as a list of waiting jobs, rather than a vague sense that invoicing is slow, is what makes it manageable. A job that has been complete for a week and is not yet invoiced is a question with an answer, and that is where the improvement starts.

Measure the gap first

Before you change anything, measure. Take your last ten completed jobs and, for each one, find four dates.

1. The date the work was completed on site.
2. The date the evidence was complete and in the job record.
3. The date the work was approved or signed off.
4. The date the invoice was raised.

Now look at the time between each pair of dates. The longest gaps show you where to start. Use the table to read what you find.

Ten jobs is a workable sample to start with. If you run both short reactive jobs and longer projects, audit ten of each, because the delays can differ. A short job may be held up by one signature, a long one by unsettled variations.

Do not worry if some dates are hard to find. That is a finding in itself: if you cannot tell when evidence was complete, nobody can manage it.

Fixes, in order of effort

Start at the top. The first two cost almost nothing.

1. Define "ready to invoice". Agree in plain words what must be true before a job can be invoiced: evidence attached and work approved. Write it down, and say how a disputed variation is handled separately.
2. Capture evidence at source, on the day. Ask the person doing the work to attach photos and sign-offs before they leave the site, not when they get back.
3. Agree variations while the work is happening. A change that is priced the same day is far easier to settle than one reconstructed a month later.
4. Give each approval a named person and a deadline. "Someone will sign it off" means nobody will. Name the person and say by when.
5. Invoice from the job record. If the invoice is built from a separate spreadsheet, you are re-keying. Build it from the record the job already has.
6. Review the gap weekly. Ten minutes, one list of jobs that are complete but not invoiced, and a named reason for each.

Mind your contract. Where your contract sets application or payment dates, work within them and check the terms, asking your adviser if you are unsure. "Ready to invoice" must not mean holding back undisputed work until every variation is settled. Separate what is undisputed from what is disputed, and invoice the undisputed part.

It helps to say who does what, so that each fix has an owner.

• The person doing the work: evidence captured before they leave the site.
• The supervisor or approver: sign-off within the agreed time.
• Whoever manages the commercial side: variations priced as they arise.
• The office or finance team: invoices built from the job record, as soon as a job is ready.
• A director or operations lead: the weekly review, and the decision on anything stuck.

Notice that none of these require new software. They require agreement on what "done" means and a habit of looking at the list.

What not to do

• Do not just add more chasing. Chasing treats the symptom. If the evidence has nowhere to go, chasing people for it will not change that.
• Do not add more fields. A longer form slows people down and encourages them to leave it until later. Ask for fewer things and make them quick to give.
• Do not wait for a perfect system. The audit and the first four fixes can start this week, and they will tell you what any future system needs to do.

Where a system helps

Once the process is clear, a system can make it easier to follow. Our job management software holds notes, documents, evidence and approvals against each job and includes a handover from completed job to invoice, so the invoice starts from the record rather than a rebuilt spreadsheet. Variations tracking, site forms, photo evidence capture and any connection to your accounts system are built to your requirements and scoped per project.

A system will not fix a process nobody has agreed. If "ready to invoice" is not defined, software only makes the confusion faster. Do the definition first.

The evidence and approvals differ by sector, so the same method applies differently in construction and telecoms. If you want to see what the delay is costing you in your own terms, the business-case calculator lets you enter your own figures. For the cost side of the same job, see our explanation of CVR in construction.

A one-page checklist

Print this and use it on your next job review.

• Do we have a written definition of "ready to invoice"?
• Do we know the date each of our last ten jobs was completed, evidenced, approved and invoiced?
• Do we know which of those gaps is the longest?
• Is evidence captured on the day, by the person doing the work?
• Are variations priced while the work is being done?
• Does every approval have a named person and a deadline?
• Is the invoice built from the job record, not retyped?
• Do we look at the list of complete-but-not-invoiced jobs every week?
• Do we invoice when a job is ready, rather than waiting for a regular run?
• Where our contract sets application or payment dates, do we work within them, and do we invoice undisputed work separately from anything disputed?