It is the end of the month. You open the invoice and try to rebuild what the team did on each job from a calendar, a text thread and what you remember.
If hours are logged on paper, in a separate app, or only when invoice day arrives, you either underbill the hours you forgot or spend an evening reconstructing them.
Free: the Get Paid Faster course. A short walkthrough from a confirmed sale to a paid invoice, no retyping. Start the course
What the reconstruction costs you
Forgotten hours are revenue you never invoice. The evening spent reconstructing is time you do not get back. Either way the work was done and the invoice does not show it.
Why hours go missing
Three ordinary things cause it: logging is something the team does later, the job is not clearly marked as billed by the hour, and the log lives somewhere the invoice cannot reach. Fix those and the invoice builds itself.
The process: four steps from hours worked to invoice sent
1. Decide how each job is billed
Mark every job as billed by the hour or as a fixed price before the work begins.
Example: “Install: fixed price. Troubleshooting: hourly.”
Pro tip: Write it on the quote so the customer has seen it.
2. Log hours as the work happens
Have the team record time against the job from a phone or laptop on the day, not at the end of the week.
Example: “Two hours logged against the Henderson job before leaving site.”
Pro tip: Make the daily log the last thing before they leave the site.
Free: the Get Paid Faster course. A short walkthrough from a confirmed sale to a paid invoice, no retyping. Start the course
3. Invoice from the logged hours
Build the invoice from the log, not from memory, so every recorded hour is on it.
Example: “Invoice lines come directly from this week’s timesheet.”
Pro tip: Never type an hour into an invoice that is not in the log.
4. Show the customer the detail
Before sending, check that the hours appear with dates and descriptions, so the customer sees what they are paying for.
Example: “Tuesday: 3 hours, fault finding and repair.”
Pro tip: Clear detail prevents the “what is this charge?” phone call.
Where this runs
The four steps work with a shared spreadsheet. In the business system we set up for clients (Odoo Community), you set the service as timesheet-based on the sales order, the team logs hours against the task or project as they work, and Create Invoice pulls the logged hours in. The process is the point. The tool just keeps it going when you are busy.
Your next step
Choose one job this week and log every hour against it, then invoice from the log. If you want to see the path end to end, the free Get Paid Faster course walks you through it.
Free: the Get Paid Faster course. A short walkthrough from a confirmed sale to a paid invoice, no retyping. Start the course