Progress claims that add up the way your contract does.

Each budget line on the job is a line on the schedule of values. When a client signs a proposal, the job's budget is built from the estimate's sections, and each line is worth exactly that section's price on the proposal, so the claim adds up to the contract the client signed. On a job you set up by hand, each line's share of the contract follows its share of the estimated cost.

An approved change order that adds to the contract becomes a line of its own, billed by its own percent complete, with the change order's number on it.

Ridgepole refuses a budget change that would leave a line worth less than what the client has already been billed on it. That is the one way a job can quietly bill past its contract, and it is stopped before the click, not found at the end.

Open a progress claim and set the percent complete on each line. Ridgepole bills completed to date less what earlier claims already billed on that line. Lines with no progress this period still appear, so the claim is a complete record of the whole schedule.

Materials delivered to site and not yet installed can be billed as stored materials on the line. They are billed when they arrive, and when they are installed the same dollars become work, so nothing is billed twice.

Holdback is withheld before tax at the job's rate. Each line is then taxed on its own mix: on a Manitoba job, a line that is two thirds materials and one third labour is charged RST on two thirds of what it bills and GST on all of it.

The claim is raised as a draft. You can change this period's amount on any line before you send it.

• Original contract sum
• Net change by change orders
• Contract sum to date
• Completed and stored to date
• Holdback to date
• Earned less holdback
• Less previous claims
• Current payment due, before tax
• Balance to finish, including holdback

Not every job is billed by percent complete. A job's payment schedule can be by milestone, percent complete, fixed draws, or time and materials, and an invoice can be raised from any item on it.

You can also write an invoice by hand, with typed lines each taxed at both rates, the federal rate only, or not at all. Invoice types are deposit, progress, milestone, change order, final and holdback release. Payment terms come from your Settings, so a builder on net 45 gets net 45 on every invoice.

A deposit cheque often arrives before there is an invoice for it. Record it on the job as a payment on account, then apply it to the invoice it was for when that invoice exists. The invoice is marked paid as of the day the money came in, not the day you applied it.

Each job is set to paper or online. An online client is emailed the invoice with a link to view and pay it, and it shows on their portal. A paper client is not emailed unless you confirm it: print the invoice, hand it over or mail it, and mark it sent.

A paper client's invoice prints how to pay you by hand: your own payment instructions from Settings, or if you have written none, who to make the cheque out to. It never prints a web address they will not use.

Invoice numbers use your own prefix if you set one, and the same number appears everywhere the invoice does: the PDF, the email, the client portal, the pay page and the sales tax report. Invoice PDFs carry your logo and your company colour.

A draft can be edited or deleted. A sent invoice cannot be edited: void it with a reason and issue a new one, so the copy your client holds always matches your records.

The Invoices page shows what every client owes, aged. Each morning, invoices past their due date are marked overdue and your team is told. A bank payment still clearing does not count as late.

Connect a Canadian QuickBooks Online company and Ridgepole enters your claims for your bookkeeper, every hour, from a start date you choose. Each client is a customer and each job is its own job under them. A progress claim goes in as an invoice with the holdback as a negative line to a Holdback Receivable account, and the holdback release invoice clears it. Approved change orders arrive as lines on the invoice that bills them.

GST or HST and PST, RST or QST go on the QuickBooks tax codes that charge the same rates, matched by rate, never by name. Each client payment is applied to the invoice it paid.