The sale was never properly recorded.
Goods leave against a phone conversation. Finance has a dispatch note but no approved selling price, or a miscellaneous item that nobody can confidently identify.
Solution 06 · Invoicing
The goods have left. The invoice should not be waiting for the owner.
Connect the confirmed order, dispatch record and freight decision so finance can prepare the correct invoice without reconstructing what was sold, what shipped and what the customer agreed to pay.
Where work gets stuck
Admin cannot invoice a story with missing chapters.
Every freight charge needs a judgment call.
The carrier cost is available, but the customer charge depends on an unwritten markup, a special agreement or a promise of free delivery. The draft joins the owner’s queue.
Partial deliveries blur what is billable.
One order can involve a deposit, several shipments and a remaining balance. Treating “dispatched” as a single switch can bill the wrong quantity or miss a charge.
How we would build it
From a billing event to a checked invoice.
Match the transaction before creating a draft. Keep the approved terms visible throughout.
A dispatch, milestone or agreed billing event is confirmed
System · preparation
Match the customer, order, shipped quantities and existing invoices. Gather approved freight treatment, PO reference and billing terms.
Check before proceeding. Missing price, disputed quantity, credit note or duplicate transaction? Assign the exception and keep it out of the ready-to-approve queue.
Is the billing basis complete?
Full shipment
- System
Prepare the invoice pack
Bring the order lines, dispatch evidence and agreed charges together.
- Your team
Check the commercial details
Confirm billing contact, references and applicable treatment.
Partial shipment
- System
Reconcile what is billable
Separate dispatched quantities, prior billing and remaining balance.
- Your team
Approve the allocation
Check freight and other charges against the agreed split.
If the path stopsAn earlier deposit must be reconciled, not charged again.
Milestone or exception
- Your team
Confirm the agreed trigger
Verify the contract or customer agreement and completion evidence.
- System
Prepare a supported draft
Use the accounting workflow appropriate to that billing arrangement.
If the path stopsDo not force milestone billing into a shipment-only rule.
Confirmed handoff
Finance approves and issues the invoice
Save the accounting reference back to the order. Reconcile the integration result before retrying. Confirm invoice delivery separately from payment receipt.
Built around your business
The same discipline.
Different operating realities.
For custom manufacturing
Deposits, progress claims, variations and final invoices may follow different commercial events. We map the agreed contract terms and existing accounting process rather than assuming every job is billed on dispatch.
For equipment and parts
Account customers, prepaid orders, customer-arranged freight and loan or repair returns need different treatment. The workflow identifies the transaction type before it prepares a charge.
Start with the systems you own.
ERP and accounting products already produce invoices. Our work is to make the upstream evidence and approval rules dependable. For example, shipment-based invoicing still needs explicit checks for freight and other charges. Finance owns tax configuration, approvals and adjustments; we do not replace those decisions with AI guesses.
A useful result is measurable
Agree the baseline.
Then improve it.
We define the measures before the build, then review them with the people using the workflow.
- 01Billing delay
- Time from the agreed billing event to invoice issue.
- 02Review effort
- Drafts approved without chasing sales, warehouse or the owner.
- 03Invoice quality
- Missing charges, duplicates, corrections and disputed quantities.
Before we begin
Practical questions.
Will every dispatch automatically send an invoice?
No. Dispatch can prepare the draft where that matches your terms. Finance reviews the invoice before issue, and exceptions follow their own route.
What happens if the accounting sync fails?
The task stays open with a visible error and owner. Before retrying, the workflow checks whether the destination already created the transaction, avoiding a second invoice.
Does faster invoicing guarantee faster payment?
No. It removes avoidable delay before the invoice is issued. Payment timing also depends on terms, delivery acceptance and the customer. We measure those separately.
Start with the audit
Show us where
the work slows down.
We trace the process with your team, check what the current tools can do, and agree which improvement is worth building first.
Talk to us about your process