> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.assetinfinity.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Vendor invoices on a job

> What a contractor bills for a job, not a purchase order — quoting, invoicing, accepting, and settling what's owed.

Work sent to a vendor without a purchase order above it — a contractor called out to a breakdown —
still has to be quoted and billed. This is that cycle, and it lives on the work order rather than in
procurement, because there's no order here to match a bill against.

<Note>
  This is a different document from a **supplier invoice** in [Purchase orders](/commercial/purchase-orders#tabs),
  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.
</Note>

## 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](#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.

<Warning>
  Nothing is charged to the job — no stock movement, no labour cost — until a buyer **accepts** the
  invoice. A contractor's own submission never writes to your ledgers on its own.
</Warning>

## 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.

<Card title="Purchase orders" icon="file-signature" href="/commercial/purchase-orders">
  The other kind of invoice — one that bills an order, not a job.
</Card>

<Card title="Inside a vendor" icon="handshake" href="/commercial/vendor-detail">
  Rate cards, and the work orders a vendor's invoices are read against.
</Card>
