This is a different document from a supplier invoice in Purchase orders,
which bills a purchase order and is checked against what was ordered and received. A vendor invoice
here bills a job. If a supplier’s bill has a PO number on it, it belongs on that PO’s Invoices tab,
not here.
Quote, then invoice — the same shape, twice
A vendor’s quote is what they propose to charge before the work; their invoice is what they bill after it. Both live on the work order, in the same shape — parts and hours, line by line — so reading down the job you read the two numbers in the order they happen, and the gap between them is what’s worth looking at.An invoice is the claim
There is no separate “claim” document to raise once a job is done. What a contractor found, who did the work, and what failed — the account that used to be a document of its own — is now part of the invoice itself. Accepting the invoice is what accepts that account and posts its cost in one motion, rather than accepting an account and then separately accepting a bill for the account you’d just accepted.Reviewing an invoice
Opening one from the job — or from the vendor invoice register — shows everything needed to judge it together: every line, the vendor’s own rate cards as they stood on the invoice’s date, what the quote said against what’s now billed, and what the vendor says they found. Parts and hours are compared as subtotals, not line by line — a quote’s lines and an invoice’s lines are two different sentences about the same work, and pairing them by how similar the words sound would present a guess as a fact. The split that’s worth arguing about is parts against hours.Settling what’s owed
Accepting an invoice doesn’t mean it’s paid. What’s owed is tracked as a running total: an invoice carries a paid amount and an outstanding amount, and one or more payments are recorded against it over time rather than one “mark as paid” action. A payment that doesn’t fully settle the balance still needs a reason recorded against it, so “why do we still owe this vendor” always has an answer.The vendor invoice register
A register of every vendor invoice, across every job, answering the question a buyer actually opens a screen with — what’s come in, and what’s still waiting on me — rather than opening jobs one at a time to remember which ones had a contractor on them. Rows open straight into the same review as the job does, so accepting or querying an invoice never means judging it on fewer facts than the person standing on the job would have.Purchase orders
The other kind of invoice — one that bills an order, not a job.
Inside a vendor
Rate cards, and the work orders a vendor’s invoices are read against.