What Is a Billing Schedule or Invoicing Milestone?
A billing schedule is a plan that defines when you’ll invoice your client over the course of a job. These checkpoints, called invoicing milestones, are often based on time (e.g. 10% each month for 10 months) or job phases (e.g. 50% upfront, 50% on delivery).
In Productive, there are two common ways to reflect these milestones:
Option 1: Use Draft Invoices in a Single Budget
Create multiple draft invoices for a single budget. Set the invoice date for each invoice to match your billing milestones.
Both options allow you to report on expected revenue and track invoice progress through dashboards and custom reports.
Choosing the Right Billing Type: Time & Materials vs. Fixed Price
Before setting up invoicing milestones, consider which billing type best fits your job:
Time and Materials (T&M): You bill based on hours worked and expenses tracked. This method is best for ongoing work or projects with changing scopes. Milestones are less relevant here, as billing is tied to real-time effort.
Fixed Price: You agree on a total amount for the project. Milestone billing works especially well in this model, as you can break the project into phases and invoice based on progress or deliverables.
📌 Milestone billing is a structured way to handle Fixed Price budgets. Whether you create multiple budgets (one per milestone) or schedule draft invoices in advance, Productive helps you stay on top of both delivery and invoicing checkpoints.
Who Is Milestone Invoicing For?
Milestone invoicing is especially useful for teams working on mid- to long-term projects where invoicing is tied to progress or project phases rather than weekly or monthly cycles.
This structure suits agencies and service businesses delivering fixed-scope packages, like discovery, design, or development phases.
By assigning invoice dates to specific deliverables, teams maintain cash flow while giving clients clear visibility into what’s being billed and when. If your projects follow a structured timeline or your clients require more formal invoicing checkpoints, milestone invoicing in Productive gives you the flexibility to handle both.
Option 1: Creating Draft Invoices with Future Dates
You can create multiple draft invoices and set the invoice date in the future for a single budget.
Each draft invoice will appear in the budget’s Invoices tab, as well as in reports based on invoice data. You can use the invoice date (issue date) to reflect billing milestones in your schedule.
To create a future-dated draft invoice:
Go to the Budgets tab (Financials > Budgets).
Select a budget and click New Invoice. Alternatively, navigate to the Invoices tab and click Create from there.
Add the desired line items. For example, if you are splitting your budget into four milestones, create four draft invoices, each equating to 25% of the total budget.
Set the Invoice Date to a future milestone.
As a best practice, add a clear and recognizable invoice subject. For example, "Design Budget 1/4" for the first invoice out of four. Then click Save Changes to apply your adjustments.
Repeat this process for each invoicing milestone you want to plan ahead for.
Option 2: Tracking Milestones Using Multiple Budgets
In this approach, you'd create a project and add a budget to represent each of your billing and/or project milestones.
Then, each budget representing a milestone can be invoiced separately, meaning you can create draft invoices ahead of delivering each phase.
📌 You can coordinate invoice draft creation and finalization after delivering each budget in the series (described in the paragraph below in Automating Invoice Creation for Milestones).
If you use separate budgets for each billing milestone, you can still forecast your invoicing progress by:
Viewing the Invoiced Amount and Draft Invoices Amount fields on the Budgets screen
Filtering budgets by client, project, or naming convention (e.g. P1, P2)
Creating reports/dashboards based on Invoices or Budgets to track invoicing per milestone
Monitoring Scheduled Invoices in Reports
To track these billing milestones, use the Invoices or Invoice Line Items data sources in reports. Key fields include:
Invoice Date (to see when a draft invoice is scheduled)
Status (Draft, Sent, Paid)
Amount (expected revenue per milestone)
Setting Up Invoicing Milestones Dashboards
Once you’ve created reports to track your invoicing milestones, you can bring them to a dashboard in the Home tab. This allows you to monitor progress, deadlines, and expected revenue in a centralized location.
For example, you can set up an "Invoicing" dashboard by pulling in reports that show upcoming invoices, expected payments, and the status of each billing milestone.
With such dashboards, you can get a real-time overview of your invoicing progress
without needing to dig through multiple reports.
Automating Invoice Creation for Milestones
Once you’ve set up milestone billing, you can reduce manual work by automating draft invoice creation. If your billing schedule follows a predictable pattern, like monthly phases or post-delivery billing, you can use the Find Object automation step to generate invoices automatically.
Here’s how it works:
Go to Settings > Automations, click + New Automation.
In the When step, select At a Specific Time and set your schedule (e.g. monthly on the 1st).
Add a Find Object block and choose Budgets as the object type.
Add filters to find budgets that match your milestone criteria (e.g. status = Delivered, Custom Field Values = XYZ).
In the Then step, add the Create Invoice action.
Optionally, follow up with a Slack or email notification.
This setup is useful for recurring invoicing workflows, such as monthly billing based on project phase or delivery status. Learn more in the Find Object article.
Example: Automating Monthly Milestone Invoicing
Trigger: First day of the month at 10:00 AM
Find: Budgets marked as Delivered ➕ Budget custom field is Ready for Invoicing
Actions: Create invoice draft ➕ Send a Slack notification to finance
