To simplify your invoicing process and reduce manual work, you can set up an automation rule in Productive to automatically generate invoice drafts when certain budget conditions are met.

There are two ways to automate invoice creation:

🔄 You can combine both options depending on your invoicing needs. For example, automatically invoicing certain clients on a schedule while triggering others based on manual status updates.

This setup creates an invoice draft when a specific budget is updated—for example, when its status changes to "Delivered."

📌 "Delivered" typically means work is completed and ready to bill, but make sure this status aligns with your internal process.

Start by selecting the trigger (the "When" step) for your automation.

For this use case, choose the "Budget updated" trigger, which will activate the automation whenever changes occur to a budget.

In the conditions section (the "Check if" step), set the condition to check whether the budget status has changed to "Delivered."
This will ensure that the automation only triggers when the budget reaches the "Delivered" status.

📌 Tip: You can refine your automation further by adding conditions based on specific companies or other criteria.

For instance, if you want the automation to apply only to a certain client (e.g., "ACME"), add a condition to restrict it to that company.

Next, define the action (the "Then" step).

Here, select "Create Invoice" as the action that occurs when the conditions are met.

Once the automation is set up, save and test it by changing the budget status to "Delivered." You’ll see a banner confirming that the automation was triggered.

You can monitor the automation runs in Settings > Automations > open the threedot menu > Show Runs.
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Instead of reacting to updates, you can use a time-based trigger (e.g., “every last day of the month at 6 PM”) to check for all budgets that meet your criteria and automatically create invoices.

Start your automation with a scheduled trigger like: Every first calendar day of the month at 10:00 AM.
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Add a Find Object step and select Budget.
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Then define which budgets you want to act on. For example, all budgets marked as Delivered in the last month for ACME will each get a draft invoice:

Productive will find all matching budgets and generate invoice drafts accordingly.

📌 Learn more about the Find Object step.
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In the Then step, select Create Invoice.

Then, each matching budget will get its own draft invoice.

Once set up, check the automation logs in Settings > Automations > open the three-dot menu > Show Runs, or your Invoices tab to confirm that drafts were created on the selected day.
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📌 Tip: To receive a notification when this automation runs, set up another action in the Find Object block. For example, set up a Slack message or an email to be sent to the team.
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When using the Create Invoice action — whether through conditions or the Find object step — you’ll define:

📌 If the client company you are invoicing (tied to the budget) has defaults set (e.g. payment terms, subsidiary, tax rate, or template), those will be prefilled automatically.

Note: You can configure these settings under CRM > Companies > Edit company.
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📌 For this automation, the invoicing method will apply 100% of the total budget amount.

📌 The invoice will be created as an invoice draft.
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To view the newly created invoice, go to the Invoices tab in the relevant budget. You’ll find a draft invoice created by the automation.

Open the draft to review the details:

After confirming that all details are correct, you can make any necessary adjustments before finalizing and sending the invoice.