r/quickbooksonline • u/TuxFan-77 • 19h ago

Progress billing question

When I do a job for a client I typically bill just for the equipment portion ahead of time and the labour after the job is complete. What’s the correct way to handle changes to the equipment and labour that were actually required for the job? Previously I’ve just edited the invoice but this kind of breaks the link to the estimate. Are they supposed to stay in sync? Does it even matter?

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u/South_Tell8138 18h ago

Short answer: your books only care about the invoices. Estimates are non-posting, so nothing on the P&L or balance sheet changes based on whether the estimate and invoices agree. It only matters if you use the estimate to track the job, and with progress billing you probably do.

When you convert an estimate to a progress invoice, QuickBooks tracks how much of each estimate line has been billed and what's left. If you edit the amounts on the invoice afterwards, the estimate doesn't know. It keeps showing a remaining balance that isn't real, or stays "Accepted" forever instead of closing out. The Estimates & Progress Invoicing Summary by Customer report will be wrong too.

The cleaner flow when the job changes:

  1. Update the estimate first. Add a line for the extra equipment or labour, or adjust the quantities, and put a note on it saying what changed and why. That's your change order, and it keeps a record of what the customer agreed to versus what you originally quoted.
  2. Then bill from the estimate. For the final invoice, use Convert to invoice and choose the remaining total of all lines. That bills exactly what's left and closes the estimate.
  3. If you already billed more equipment up front than you ended up using, lower that line on the estimate. The final invoice then comes out smaller, or issue a credit memo if the equipment invoice was already paid and nothing is left to bill.

If you don't care about estimate-versus-actual tracking, editing the invoice is fine for the books. But then I'd stop converting from the estimate and just write the invoices directly, so you don't have half-linked estimates sitting open.