Progress invoicing lets you bill a single estimate in multiple partial invoices instead of one lump sum, by percentage, by specific line items, or by a custom amount, as a project moves forward. It's built for QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced; turn it on under Account and Settings, then convert an accepted estimate into however many invoices the project needs.
1. Turn on progress invoicing. Go to the gear icon, then Account and Settings > Sales, find the Progress Invoicing section, and switch on "Create multiple partial invoices from a single estimate." Save.
2. Create the estimate like normal. Build the full-project estimate the way you'd build any other, every line item and the total amount the whole job is worth.
3. Get it accepted. Mark the estimate Accepted once the customer signs off; progress invoicing works from accepted estimates specifically.
4. Convert it to the first invoice. From Sales transactions, open the estimate and select Convert to invoice. Choose how to split this round: a percentage of the whole estimate, specific line items billed in full, or a custom amount per line.
5. Let QuickBooks track what's left. Each progress invoice shows what's already been billed against the estimate and what's still remaining, so you're not manually subtracting to work out what's left to invoice.
6. Repeat at each stage until the estimate is fully invoiced. Convert the same estimate again at the next milestone, picking up where the last invoice left off, until 100% of it has been billed.
Progress invoicing handles the math once you tell it what to bill, but it doesn't know a project actually hit a milestone. Someone still has to notice the job's at 30% and remember to go convert the estimate, type in the right percentage, and send it, the same manual trigger invoicing has always needed, just applied to a smaller slice each time instead of one lump sum.
That gap gets worse, not better, on multi-stage projects. More invoices means more chances for someone to forget a stage, bill the wrong percentage, or lose track of how much of the original estimate is actually left to invoice.
A job management or field service tool marks a phase complete, and the matching progress invoice goes out at the percentage tied to that phase, instead of someone remembering to check the project and convert the estimate by hand.
What's been billed, what's left, and whether a stage is running ahead of or behind the originally estimated split gets tracked automatically, instead of someone cross-checking invoices against the estimate line by line.
A phase finishing, a date on a calendar, somebody just remembering: tell us what really decides when a progress invoice should go out, and we'll tell you if QuickBooks can send it the moment that happens.
Tell us how you currently decide a project has hit the next billing stage, and we'll tell you if that trigger can create and send the invoice itself. Progress invoicing is one manual step in one workflow; n-frames looks at whatever else in your business still depends on someone remembering to do it.
Let's talk →Mark the estimate Accepted, open it from Sales transactions, select Convert to invoice, and choose a percentage, specific items, or a custom amount for this round. That one estimate can generate as many progress invoices as the project needs.
The underlying idea is the same, billing an estimate in stages, but Desktop's version lives in Premier and Enterprise (not Pro): create the estimate, then use Create Invoice and choose to invoice a percentage of it, remaining amounts, or specific line items, rather than Online's separate Progress Invoicing toggle.
In QuickBooks Online, yes, it requires Plus or Advanced; Simple Start and Essentials don't include it. In Desktop, it's available in Premier and Enterprise editions.
Yes. Beyond the standard percentage-of-estimate option, QuickBooks lets you pick specific line items to bill in full or enter a custom amount per line, so a progress invoice doesn't have to follow a strict even percentage if the project's billing schedule doesn't work that way.