Task

Approved extra work that never reaches the invoice

The approval, the work, and the bill have to meet.

Extra work can be approved and completed without making it onto the invoice. Most of these gaps can be handled better. Whether it's worth doing is a separate question. What follows is one common form of the problem, described in general terms, because your version will differ. These are possible challenges, not a description of your business, and some should be left exactly as they are. If it sounds like your week, that's worth a conversation.

Watch: Done, but Not on the Invoice

Sound familiar?

The customer agrees to extra work on site, and nobody writes it down.
The approval is a text on somebody's phone.
The invoice matches the quote, not the job.
The missing extra is noticed after the invoice has gone out.

What it looks like

The crew is on site for the work that was quoted. The customer walks out and asks whether, while they are here, they can also take care of something else. The lead agrees, and the work gets done. What was agreed may end up as a line on the sheet, a text to the office, or nothing written at all. Either way, nobody records the scope where billing will see it.

Back at the office, the invoice is built from the original quote or work order, because that is the document that says what the job is. The addition lives somewhere else: a line at the bottom of a sheet, a text on one person's phone, a conversation nobody wrote down. Unless whoever builds the invoice goes looking, it bills what was quoted.

What it costs

The extra is the part with the least paperwork. The quoted work went through an estimate, an approval, and scheduling. The addition was agreed in a sentence on site. It has the weakest record of anything on the job, and the invoice is built from the strongest.

Adding it later is harder than getting it right the first time. A second invoice for a job the customer thought was settled invites a question. The answer depends on showing three separate things: that it was approved, that it was done, and what it covered. If any one is missing, the office may reasonably decide not to bill it.

Leaving it off can also bend the job's numbers. If the labor and materials for the extra work are recorded against the job but the work is not billed, the job looks less profitable than it was, and the next quote is built on that picture.

Where it goes wrong

Approved is not the same as done. A signed change does not show the work happened, and work that happened does not show it was approved.
The approval stays with whoever took it. A phone, a truck, a clipboard. It has no clear path to the desk where the invoice is built.
The invoice follows the quote. The person building it sees the original scope and nothing that changed on site.
It is found after the invoice goes out. By then somebody has to rebuild what was approved, what was done, and what was billed, from memory.

What a better version looks like

Additions are recorded where they happen and attached to the job, with approval and completion kept as separate facts. Before an invoice goes out, anything added to the job that is not on the invoice is raised for the person building it.

Nothing is added to the bill automatically. The flag is a question, not a charge.

What still needs a person

A person confirms the extra work was done, checks what the approval covered, and decides what belongs on the invoice. When the records disagree, somebody who was on the job has to settle it.

Questions worth asking about your own operation

When work is added on site, where does it get written down?
Does the person building the invoice see what changed on the job?
Are approval and completion recorded separately?
How often does an invoice go out and then need a second one?

If this sounds familiar

Bring me the version you actually have. I'll learn how the process really works before I suggest anything. If it isn't worth changing, or isn't a fit for me, I'll say so. Talk through a problem