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Create and send an invoice

Raise an invoice from work already booked to a project, review the lines Monument drafts for you, then email it so it moves from draft to sent.

What you'll achieve

Turn delivered work into a drafted invoice and email it to the client in one pass.

You'll end up with: A sent invoice drafted from real work, with the client emailed a PDF and the invoice moved from draft to sent.

Before you start

You don't build an invoice, you raise one from the work already done

Most invoicing tools hand you a blank document and expect you to remember what to bill and how much. Monument works the other way around: it already knows what work is booked to a project, what's been logged against it, and what's been agreed to be charged, so an invoice starts as a question, what are you billing against, rather than a form you fill line by line. Answer that one question and Monument drafts the lines itself.

Northlight Architects has Riverside Apartments underway for the City of Hawthorn, with the Concept Design stage in progress. This is the invoice for that stage, from the moment you start it to the moment it lands in the client's inbox.

Three choices, then Monument drafts the rest

Clicking New Invoice opens a guided window rather than a blank page: it starts with Project, Client, Bill against, and Pre-fill, then also lets you review the invoice number, issue date, due date, and notes.

Project: which project you're billing. Pick it and the client fills itself in, because Monument already knows who the project belongs to.
Bill against: what this invoice is claiming for. Progress to date is used when there is no past-due, uninvoiced billable milestone; otherwise Monument selects the most recent eligible milestone. If the project has billable milestones set up, you can bill against one of those instead.
Pre-fill line items: left on, this is what tells Monument to actually draft the lines, one for each stage currently in progress, with the fee worked out from schedule progress and whatever time or expenses are attached.

Click Create Invoice and that's it. The invoice saves as a draft and opens with its lines already sitting there, ready for you to check rather than build.

Every line still points somewhere

A drafted line isn't a floating number. It hangs off a task in the project, which is how Monument knows which stage's revenue, which hours, and which expenses feed it. A stage's progress becomes a Progress line; absorbed hours become a Time line. Each shows one amount on the invoice with everything behind it tracked underneath.

Raise the invoice

1
In Invoicing, click New Invoice.
2
Pick Riverside Apartments as the project. Watch City of Hawthorn fill in as the client automatically.
3
Set Bill against to Progress to date and leave Pre-fill switched on.
4
Click Create Invoice, and Monument infers lines and amounts from milestones, progress, dates, and recorded work.

1
Open a Progress line and compare Estimated with Actual.
2
Change Progress to fifty percent to prove an inferred line remains editable when the claim needs a correction.

The first draft is smart, not final

Open a Progress line to see the scheduled estimate beside the actual fee earned from logged work. If the project record and the claim do not agree, change Progress before sending. Monument gives you a strong starting point without locking you into its inference.

The invoice is already addressed, and numbered

The Billing Address pulls from the client's contact record automatically, and you can edit it here if this invoice needs something different, Monument saves that change back to the contact. An Opening Statement field above the lines lets you add a short note that prints on the PDF. The invoice number itself comes from a template set in Settings, INV-001 and up by default, so you never type one by hand or risk two invoices sharing a number.

Sending is a deliberate, separate step

Creating the invoice already saved it as a draft, there's nothing further to save. What turns it into something the client can see is sending, and that only happens when you choose to do it.

1
The invoice sits as a private, editable draft. Head back to the list and open the one you raised.
2
Open the Actions tab and choose Send Invoice. Monument builds the PDF and attaches it.
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Type the client's email into Recipient Email, add a CC if needed, and write a short message if you'd like.
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Click Send Invoice. Once the email is delivered, immediately or after any required approval, the status moves from draft to sent.

Draft means invisible; sent means real

Until you send, the invoice exists only inside Monument. Sending is the one action that changes that: the invoice moves to sent, starts aging toward overdue, and becomes eligible to sync to your accounting system if you've connected one. Nothing reaches the client before that.

When there's nothing to draft from

Pre-fill can only draft lines from work that already exists. If a project has no progress yet, or you want to build every line yourself, choose Start blank invoice from the New Invoice window instead. It opens the full editor with the project and client already set, but no lines. From there, Add Line Item opens a window that asks what you're billing rather than a raw line type: pick a task and Monument shows its revenue, plus any unbilled time or expenses, and you tick what you want on the invoice. For anything that doesn't come from the schedule, Custom or out of scope adds a plain line you fill in by hand.

Whichever way a line gets there, it remains reviewable. Open a Progress line to compare Estimated with Actual, then adjust Progress if the inferred claim needs correction. Other line types include Fixed, Time, Expenses, Prev. Billed, Group, and Notes.

Troubleshooting

A newly drafted invoice has no lines. Nothing on the project is far enough along yet, no stage is in progress, or the ones that are have no revenue, time, or expenses behind them. Bill against a milestone instead, or build the lines by hand with Start blank invoice.
A line shows no amount. It's pointing at a task with nothing to bill, or its source is empty. Check that task actually has revenue, time, or expenses recorded.
Changing a line's type reset its fields. Switching type clears settings that only applied to the old type, and Monument warns you before it happens. Settle on the type before you fine-tune a line.
"No PDF has been generated yet." The send dialog is telling you the invoice needs to be saved before a PDF can build. A guided invoice is already saved, so this shouldn't come up unless you're working from an unsaved draft.
A voided invoice won't send. Voiding is final for that invoice specifically. Raise a fresh one instead.

Where this fits next

The invoice is out, and a few things follow naturally from here. Pull logged hours onto a line cleanly with Bill time on an invoice, track what the client actually pays in Payments and status, and pass costs on with a markup using Recording expenses.