A field service company should forecast cash from issued, open progress invoices—not from the full value of an estimate or from work that has not become receivables. Connect each open invoice to the accepted estimate, completed work evidence, current customer status, internal owner, and next review date. Then assign a collection week only when the evidence supports it.

Intuit's progress-invoicing documentation explains that an accepted estimate can be converted into multiple partial invoices and that linked transactions preserve the connection between an estimate and its progress invoices. That structure is useful for field service billing, but the estimate total and the current open receivable remain different populations.

Separate the billing stages

Use one status for each stage of the job-to-cash handoff:

  • **Estimated:** Work is scoped, but no receivable exists.
  • **Approved for billing:** The internal completion or milestone evidence is ready.
  • **Invoiced:** A progress invoice has been issued and appears in the accounting source.
  • **Accepted:** Delivery or customer-process acceptance is observed.
  • **Blocked:** A named completion, documentation, dispute, or approval issue remains.
  • **Scheduled:** A specific payment commitment or schedule is documented.
  • **Received:** Payment is observed and matched in the accounting source.

Only issued, open invoices belong in an accounts receivable collections forecast. Estimated or approved-for-billing work may belong in a broader cash plan, but it should not be labeled open AR.

Build the invoice evidence row

For each open progress invoice, preserve:

  1. Customer, invoice number, date, due date, and open amount from the authorized export.
  2. Related estimate or project reference.
  3. The billed portion or milestone label shown by the business record.
  4. Evidence that required work or documentation was submitted.
  5. Any known dispute, acceptance blocker, or missing customer step.
  6. Internal owner, next action, and next review date.
  7. Forecast week, assumption rationale, and later observed outcome.

Intuit's projects documentation shows how estimates, invoices, and billable project activity can be associated with a project. That operational context should support the invoice review without replacing the receivables source.

Reconcile estimate progress without double counting

Do not add the full estimate and its progress invoices to the same collections total. Do not treat uninvoiced remaining estimate value as an overdue receivable. When multiple progress invoices are open, forecast each source invoice separately so payments, credits, disputes, and owners can be reconciled at transaction level.

If a later invoice is expected but has not been issued, place it in a separate upstream billing schedule. Move it into the AR forecast only after it appears in the authorized receivables snapshot.

The accounts receivable forecast template provides fields for invoice evidence, owners, assumptions, and outcomes. The four-week forecast guide explains supported and unsupported timing. Agencies face a related but distinct approval flow; the agency blocker workflow focuses on client and milestone handoffs rather than field-service job completion.

When a service agreement can also generate recurring invoices, use the agreement-versus-work-order invoice boundary to identify the billing source and prevent both invoice paths from entering the same cash forecast without reconciliation.

Where AR Pulse fits

AR Pulse analyzes an authorized customer-provided QuickBooks receivables export and returns a ranked cash-action list plus a four-week collections forecast. It does not request QuickBooks credentials, invoice customers, change project records, contact customers, or promise payment outcomes.

Field service finance teams with a clean open-invoice export and documented blockers can apply for AR Pulse to turn those source rows into an evidence-backed review.

Gate work before it enters AR

Completed service is still upstream of collections until billing evidence and an issued invoice exist. Use the field-service invoice-readiness checklist to connect work-order status, approval, invoice creation, delivery, and the reconciled open balance before assigning a collection week.