When it comes to creating invoices, Productive offers three invoicing methods that adapt to your billing setup. You can invoice for:
Uninvoiced Time and Expenses
Remaining Amount (or Total Amount, if no prior invoices exist)
A Percentage of the Total Budget
Note on Draft Creation (April 2025)
The way you add line items to invoices is being updated. The new workflow—where you select the invoicing method and line item display after clicking + Add Line Items—is currently in Beta.
Some users might still see the older flow, where you choose the invoicing method, line item format, tax rate, and subsidiary before creating the draft.
While the overall functionality remains the same (only the order of steps is changing), this older setup will be phased out and replaced with the workflow described in this article.
These options are available when adding line items to a draft invoice or when editing a finalized invoice. Once you click + Add Line Items, you'll be prompted to choose the invoicing method.
📌 The available methods depend on the billing type defined for each service in the budget. For instance:
Invoicing a percentage of the total amount of the budget/service can only be applied to the Fixed billing type services if you want to invoice before logging any time in Productive.
Similarly, the Time and Materials billing type services require logging hours and expenses before being able to invoice them.
Uninvoiced Time and Expenses
This method lets you invoice for hours and expenses logged in Productive.
It works with:
Time and Materials services — where invoicing is based on logged work.
Fixed services — which can be invoiced in full, but this method allows for incremental invoicing as time is logged.
Example:
If your "Development" service has a budget of $1,000 and five hours have been logged, using this method will generate an invoice for just those five hours.
📌 Use the date picker to invoice for time entries logged during a specific period.
Remaining Amount
This method lets you invoice the portion of the budget that hasn’t been billed yet. It appears as:
Remaining Amount, if there are existing invoices
Total Amount, if no invoices have been issued
It works with:
Time and Materials services — to invoice any unbilled logged work.
Fixed services — to bill for the remaining budget amount.
📌 Draft invoices are taken into account when calculating the remaining amount. For example, if your total budget is $1,000 and you already have $200 in draft invoices, the remaining amount will be $800.
📌 Tip: You can invoice the whole budget upfront without logging any time in Productive using this method, but this applies only to Fixed billing type items.
Selecting "By Service" will add service line items to your invoice, while the "By Budget" option shows one singular line item representing the whole budget.
Invoicing a Budget Percentage
This method lets you invoice a specific percentage of the budget. Adjusting the percentage changes the quantity and total amount.
It works with:
Fixed services — always invoiceable in full
Time and Materials services — only after hours and expenses have been logged
You can invoice:
By Service — with individual lines per service
By Budget — with one line for the whole budget
📌 Time and Materials services will only contribute to the invoice after time/expenses are logged.
Monitoring Invoiced Amounts
In the Budget
In each budget, check the Invoices tab to see how much has been invoiced. Hover over the progress bar to view the invoiced amounts.
In Reports
To monitor budgets and invoicing:
Go to Reports
Click + From Scratch
Select the Budgets, Invoices, or Invoice Line Items data sources
Add fields from the Invoicing category
This lets you track how much of each budget is already invoiced, what remains, and which budgets are ready for invoicing.
Read more about Monitoring Invoice Drafts and Finalized Invoices in this article here.