Read the finance records in the same order Fencify uses them

This guide suits the business owner, office admin, estimator handing over to accounts, or bookkeeper who needs a clean first billing workflow. The easiest way to stay on top of project cash flow is to treat each record as a separate step in the chain.

Payment schedule

The project billing plan. It lives against the project and breaks the contract value into stages such as deposit, progress claim and final claim.

Progress claim

The stage you are ready to bill now. When you issue it, Fencify turns that schedule item into a numbered invoice and links the two records together.

Invoice

The client billing record with amount, due date, status, notes and send or sync actions. Invoice statuses include draft, sent, paid, void and cancelled.

Payment record

The money you have actually received or verified. It can be applied to a selected invoice so invoice balance, paid amount and project totals stay aligned.

Sync status

The handoff state for Xero or QuickBooks. Fencify tracks queue states such as queued, processing, retrying, conflict, failed and synced.

Once you understand that order, the rest of the workflow becomes much easier to trust.

Start at quote acceptance and let the payment structure become the project schedule

Your first finance decisions are usually made before the first invoice is sent. On the proposal side, Fencify can show the deposit amount and later payment stages from the payment structure attached to the quote. When the quote is accepted and converted, the project uses that contract value and structure to prepare the project payment schedule.

On the project, the schedule becomes the working list of what is still pending, what is due next, what has already been issued, and what has been paid. Each item carries its own label, amount and status, so the office can see whether the next action is to issue a claim, wait for payment, or move toward final billing.

That schedule is the best starting point for live work because it keeps deposits, progress billing and final payment tied back to the same project value instead of relying on memory or a separate spreadsheet.

Issue the next claim from the project when the work has reached that stage

When a project is ready for billing, open the project financial area first. Review the payment schedule item that is marked due, check its amount, and decide whether the due date should change before you issue the claim.

1. Open the relevant project.
2. Review the payment schedule so you know which stage is due now.
3. Issue the claim for the selected schedule item.
4. Confirm the invoice number, amount and due date before sending anything to the client.

Fencify creates a project invoice for that schedule item, records the claimed time, links the invoice back to the schedule item, and refreshes the schedule totals. The schedule item then moves out of simple planning mode and into active billing mode.

Use this flow for progress claims because it keeps the claim stage and the invoice record tied together. If you create billing records outside the schedule without a clear reason, the project can still be billed, but the stage-by-stage story becomes harder to follow later.

Use invoice records for sending, editing and specialised billing cases

After a claim is issued, the invoicing area becomes your working space for client billing. It shows project name, client details, claim label, ageing context, queue status and send actions in one place. You can also create an invoice directly from this area when the billing is not coming from a schedule item.

When you open an invoice for editing, Fencify lets you review:

• the total invoice amount
• paid to date and balance remaining
• due date
• status
• internal notes

The project page also supports full-invoice previewing and split billing where that workflow fits the job. If a project is being split between the client and a neighbour, Fencify can generate separate share invoices once the neighbour details are complete and before active non-deposit invoices already exist. That is useful on cost-sharing jobs, but it is a setup decision to make early, not after several ordinary invoices have already been issued.

Keep invoice notes practical. Use them for internal billing context, not as a replacement for the payment schedule or project notes.

Record payments against the right invoice so balances stay believable

When money comes in, record it from the project where the rest of the financial story already lives. The project payment form allows you to apply a payment to a selected invoice, set the payment method, capture the transaction reference and keep a note with the receipt history.

Fencify accepts practical methods such as bank transfer, cash, cheque, card, invoice and Stripe credit card. Partial payment is supported as long as the amount does not exceed the selected invoice balance. Full payment can clear the invoice entirely.

After you save the payment, Fencify updates the project paid amount, refreshes the linked invoice paid amount and status, and re-syncs the payment schedule so the next stage can move forward at the right time. That means the schedule, invoicing records and project balance continue telling the same story.

If a client lodges a payment through the public portal and it lands as pending, verify it before applying it. Once applied to the correct invoice, it becomes part of the normal payment history rather than an orphaned finance note.

Use reminders and dashboard checks before invoices drift too far overdue

Fencify gives you two strong views for staying ahead of collections. The first is the dashboard, where finance-visible users can see revenue, expenses, net profit, outstanding debt and stale quote pressure in the same operating view. The second is the invoicing list, where ageing and reminder timing are visible per invoice.

When an invoice is overdue and the client email is available, you can send an overdue reminder from the invoice actions. Fencify tracks reminder timing across the configured cadence of day 0, day 3, day 7 and day 14 after due date. Once an invoice is paid, void or cancelled, reminder tracking is cleared so your team does not keep chasing a closed item.

A good weekly rhythm is:

1. review outstanding debt and due work from the dashboard
2. open the project for any claim that should be issued this week
3. send overdue reminders only after checking the invoice status and latest payment activity
4. confirm the next unpaid schedule item is still the correct one to chase

Check accounting sync from the invoice actions and the integrations page

Sync should happen after the invoice record is ready, not before. Once your accounting connection is in place, the invoice actions menu can send the invoice to Xero or QuickBooks. Fencify also shows the latest queue result for each invoice so you can see whether the job is already in progress, already mapped, needs retry, or has hit a conflict or failure.

The integrations area adds the wider health view. It shows connected accounting providers, sync queue totals, due retries, mapping totals, queue depth and the latest success or error message. That is where you go when repeated sync trouble appears against an invoice and you need to judge whether the issue is one record or a broader connection problem.

Only one accounting provider should be connected at a time in the current workflow. If sync fails, check the connection status first, then use the retry action from the invoice where appropriate. Fencify is designed to avoid duplicate sends when an invoice is already mapped, so a clean status check is usually better than repeatedly forcing the same sync.

Know who can see financials and what to do next

Financial visibility is restricted for delegated team users. In the current workflow, the dashboard finance cards, invoicing pages, project financial tabs and accounting actions are intended for users with finance visibility, while field-focused users can continue working in operations without seeing the full billing detail.

Before you issue your first live invoice, run this short check:

• The project payment schedule matches the contract structure you intend to bill.
• The next claim amount and due date are correct.
• The invoice has the right client details and status before it is sent.
• Any recorded payment is attached to the correct invoice.
• The accounting connection is healthy before you rely on synced books.

Once this workflow feels routine, the quickest supporting references to keep nearby are Project payment schedule, Issue progress claims, Create an invoice, Send an invoice, Record full payment, Record partial payment, Accounting sync status, Retry failed accounting sync and Send overdue reminder.