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Working with customer invoices

Customer invoices are the bills you send your customer for a job — the homeowner, or the insurance carrier. You build them from the project’s Financials tab out of what’s ready to bill: completed trades, authorized change orders, the deposit. The homeowner can pay online from a link in the email. This feature is available on select XBuild plans. If you don’t see it in your account, contact support@x.build.
Looking for what you pay XBuild? That’s your subscription billing — see Invoices and receipts from XBuild. If you invoice from QuickBooks, see Invoice with QuickBooks below.

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1. Before you invoice: a signed contract

Invoicing needs a signed contract. Until there is one, + Generate invoice is disabled with “Needs a signed contract — upload it or mark signed externally from Construction.”
  • Retail jobs: the homeowner signs the proposal — see E-signatures and authorization.
  • Insurance jobs: when the homeowner signed outside XBuild, use the Homeowner contract panel (on the Construction tab, in Financials’ invoices section, or on the Overview) — Mark as signed, and Attach the signed PDF. The claim must be published and priced first.
Work orders and dispatch don’t wait for the signature — only invoicing does.

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2. Generate an invoice

  1. On the Financials tab, under Invoices, click + Generate invoice. (Or use Generate invoice for [Trade] → on a completed work order or in the By trade section.)
  2. Choose who it’s to: Homeowner or, on insurance jobs, Carrier (enter the carrier’s email).
  3. Pick what to bill:
  1. Click Draft invoice.
Change orders, supplements, the deposit, and the deductible go on one invoice only — once one is on an invoice, it leaves the list. Other — fees & allowances is also billed once, and a trade can be billed across several invoices; once fully billed, both stay in the list greyed out and marked invoiced. Once the deposit invoice has been sent, later homeowner invoices credit the deposit automatically with a Less deposit line. A deposit invoice still in draft isn’t credited yet, and carrier invoices never carry the credit. Without the Construction features on your plan, you can bill the deposit and the deductible; trades and fees need Construction, and change orders and supplements are created on the Construction tab. The draft opens as the document your customer will get, numbered INV- and a project code. Edit the lines — edits save automatically. XBuild warns, without blocking, when an invoice would bill more than the contract.

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3. Send it

Sending is for admins. Anyone else sees “Saved as draft — an admin sends invoices.”
  1. Click View PDF to check the document.
  2. Click Next · email preview. Check To, and edit the Subject and Message if you like.
  3. Click Send.
The email carries the PDF and, for a homeowner, a Pay invoice button. Pay links need your payment account connected in Settings → Wallet — see Deposits and getting paid. Carrier invoices never get a pay link: carriers pay by check or ACH, which you record under Payments when it lands. The invoice is marked Sent even if the email doesn’t go out — fix the address and Resend. Resend emails the same invoice again; the pay link stays the same. Invoices are due on receipt.

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4. Get paid

Online: the homeowner opens the pay link — no account needed — and pays by card or bank transfer (ACH) through Stripe. A card payment is recorded, applied to the invoice, and marks it Paid right away. A bank transfer takes up to about four business days to settle: until it does, the invoice stays Sent with no payment recorded, and the pay link won’t take a second payment. Don’t record it by hand in the meantime — XBuild records it when the transfer settles. Any other way: click Record payment on the invoice’s row, or on the Financials tab, and pick the invoice under Toward which invoice?. An invoice shows Received (payments applied to it) and Balance (what’s left). It turns Paid on its own once payments cover it — you never mark an invoice paid by hand. Void or lower a payment, and the invoice goes back to Sent. Each invoice row’s menu has Record payment, View PDF, Copy pay link, Resend, and Void, plus the QuickBooks actions when you’re connected.

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5. Void an invoice

Admins can void a draft or sent invoice from its row menu. Voiding takes it out of what’s been billed, so what it billed can be billed again. It doesn’t change Balance due on the Financials tab, which counts payments, not invoices. The pay link then shows “This invoice was cancelled.” You can’t void an invoice with payments applied to it — void or re-apply those payments first. A paid invoice can’t be voided.

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6. Invoice with QuickBooks

If your books live in QuickBooks Online, an admin can click Invoice with QuickBooks instead. Pick what to bill the same way, map the lines to your QuickBooks products, and XBuild creates one invoice on the project’s QuickBooks customer. QuickBooks then handles the customer: XBuild sends no email and no pay link. A payment taken in QuickBooks doesn’t record itself in XBuild — record it under Payments so the job’s balance drops. Voiding in XBuild voids the QuickBooks copy too. The button shows only once invoice push is set up in the QuickBooks connector (Push estimates & invoices to QuickBooks), and the project needs a linked QuickBooks customer — see the QuickBooks connector. Invoices generated from a pushed QuickBooks estimate show on the project read-only.

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7. On the mobile app

On the mobile app’s Finance tab you can view invoices, record payments against them, copy the pay link, and — as an admin — resend and void. Generating, editing, and the first send are on the web app.

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8. Troubleshooting common issues

  • I can’t generate an invoice. The contract isn’t signed. Get the proposal signed, or on an insurance job use Mark as signed.
  • A trade isn’t in the list. Every work order in the trade has to be complete, and trades need the Construction features on your plan. A fully billed trade stays in the list, greyed out and marked invoiced.
  • A change order isn’t in the list. It has to be authorized and add to the contract. It may already be on another invoice.
  • I can’t send. Only admins send, resend, and void invoices.
  • I can’t void this invoice. Payments are applied to it, or it’s paid. Void or re-apply the payments first.
  • The homeowner paid in QuickBooks, but the balance didn’t drop. Record the payment in XBuild.
  • The email shows no Pay invoice button. It’s a carrier invoice, or your payment account wasn’t connected in Settings → Wallet when the invoice was first sent. The pay link is created on that first send, so connecting later doesn’t add one to that invoice, and Resend won’t either. Connect the account, then void the invoice and generate a new one. If a payment is already applied to it, edit that payment to leave it unapplied first, since an invoice with payments can’t be voided. Don’t void a payment you really received.
  • I don’t see Invoice with QuickBooks. Only admins see it, and only after invoice push is turned on in the QuickBooks connector.
  • The homeowner says the link says cancelled. That invoice was voided. Send them the new one.
For further assistance, contact XBuild Support at support@x.build.