Send invoices for the share of work actually completed, not the entire contract amount. Kantivo bills incrementally against any estimate and tracks every draw down to the dollar.
Try It FreeProject-based businesses — contractors, agencies, consultants — rarely finish a job before they need to bill for it. A two-month renovation, a phased software build, or a multi-quarter consulting engagement all share one issue: costs accrue continuously, but a single end-of-project invoice puts the company's cash flow under enormous strain.
Progress invoicing fixes that by letting you draw against an approved estimate as work advances. Build the estimate once, then issue invoices for any portion — 25% at kickoff, 50% at midpoint, 25% at delivery, for instance. Kantivo tracks every draw against the estimate total, so you always know how much has been billed, what's been collected, and what's still outstanding on the contract.
Create a detailed estimate with line items, quantities, and pricing. The estimate becomes the billing baseline for all subsequent draws.
When a milestone arrives, generate a progress invoice off the estimate. Enter a percentage or a dollar amount and Kantivo handles the rest.
The billing summary panel keeps a live tally of every draw — invoiced, collected, and how much contract value still hasn't been billed.
When the work wraps, bill the final balance — including any retainage holdback. Kantivo confirms when the estimate has been fully invoiced.
Invoice any slice of an estimate at any time. There's no fixed milestone schedule to follow — bill exactly the right amount for each phase of work.
A clear panel surfaces contract value, total invoiced to date, amounts collected, and what's still pending — all in one view.
Construction agreements and milestone-based contracts often require the client to withhold a percentage until final acceptance. Kantivo keeps that holdback isolated so it doesn't get lost in the billing history.
Every progress invoice is permanently linked to its originating estimate. The complete billing history of any contract — from first draw to final payment — is one click away.
Sending a single invoice at the end of a long engagement effectively means financing the customer's project out of your own pocket for the entire duration. For a small business, that often means payroll comes due before any payment shows up — a cash flow crunch that has nothing to do with profitability and everything to do with billing timing.
Progress invoicing realigns the cash so money flows in throughout the project. Clients accept it readily as standard practice for any engagement of meaningful size. And when expectations are set upfront with a clean estimate and clear billing milestones, both sides see fewer disputes and fewer surprises.
Construction outfits billing on AIA-style schedules, IT consultants invoicing at project phases, marketing agencies running monthly retainers against annual contracts — they all use some form of progress billing. Kantivo's implementation is flexible enough to handle any of these patterns. You set the milestones, define the percentages, and choose whether retainage applies. The software keeps the math clean and the records tidy.
For jobs written around fixed draws, Kantivo lets you build the draw schedule directly into the estimate — a deposit, a foundation draw, a framing draw, a completion draw, each with its own milestone and amount. As each phase wraps up, open the estimate, hit Invoice Draws, and tick the draw you're ready to bill. Need to catch up two stages at once? Tick both and send a single invoice.
The draws you pick land on the invoice as separate, plainly worded lines — "Draw 3 of 4 — Framing complete: $15,000" — leaving zero ambiguity about what the client owes for. Once a draw is billed it's locked from being sent again, the estimate keeps a live tally of what's still outstanding, and the whole contract closes out automatically when the final draw goes out. It's the difference between managing a phased build by hand and managing it with a checklist.
Yes. Progress invoices can be entered as either a percentage of the estimate total or a specific dollar amount. If a milestone is "$5,000 upon delivery of Phase 1," you can enter that figure directly rather than working backward from a percentage.
Yes. Any estimate already in Kantivo can be used as a progress billing contract. Open the estimate and choose "Create Progress Invoice" to begin drawing against it. The estimate total becomes the billing ceiling.
Retainage — also called a holdback — is a percentage of each draw the client withholds until the project is complete or accepted. It's most common in construction and engineering work. Kantivo tracks the withheld amount as a separate receivable so it shows correctly on the balance sheet and can be invoiced as a final release at project close.
Kantivo warns you if a progress invoice would push cumulative billing past the original estimate. You can override the warning when a change order or scope expansion justifies it, or you can update the estimate total first and then create the additional draw.
Percentage progress billing is ad hoc — you bill whatever portion of the estimate you choose, whenever you choose. A draw schedule is a fixed list of named draws with preset amounts that you define on the estimate, the way construction contracts are typically structured. With a draw schedule you invoice by checking off finished draws instead of entering a percentage, and each one shows up as its own line item the client can read at a glance. Kantivo supports both, so you can match how each contract is written.
Absolutely. On the estimate, choose Invoice Draws and select every draw you want on the bill — each appears as its own labeled line. Previously invoiced draws are greyed out so they can't be double-billed, and Kantivo blocks any total that would run past the estimate amount.
Yes. The billing summary panel on any estimate lists every progress invoice generated against it, with date, amount, payment status, and cumulative billing total. A separate contract billing report shows the same information in a printable format suitable for client review or lender documentation.
Begin a free 30-day trial. Issue your first progress invoice in minutes.