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
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.
Group your line items:
By Service — invoice includes individual lines per service
By Budget — one line for the whole budget
By Project — one line for the whole project
By Task — invoice includes any tasks linked to the time entries being invoiced
Custom — manually set up what's included in your line items
📌 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 non-billed logged work.
Fixed services — to bill for the remaining budget amount.
Group your line items:
By Service — invoice includes individual lines per service
By Budget — one line for the whole budget
By Project — one line for the whole project
Custom — manually set up what's included in your line items
📌 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 "Service" in the "Group line items by" section will add service line items to your invoice, while the "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 — can be invoiced in full or partially always
Time and Materials services — can be invoiced only after hours and expenses have been logged
Group your line items:
By Service — invoice includes individual lines per service
By Budget — one line for the whole budget
By Project — one line for the whole project
Custom — manually set up what's included in your line items
📌 Time and Materials services will only contribute to the invoice after time/expenses are logged.
Grouping Options (Beta)
You'll notice a "Group line items by" section right below the invoice method picker. It dictates how your line items are shown on your invoice.
Budget — invoice includes one line for the whole budget
Service — individual line items per service
Project — one line for the whole project
Task — invoice includes any tasks linked to the time entries being invoiced
Custom — manually set up what's included in your line items
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.