Forecast the open balance of each issued progress invoice, not the uninvoiced remainder of the estimate. The remainder represents potential future billing until completed work, approval, and invoice creation make it a receivable.
Intuit's progress-invoicing instructions explain that an accepted estimate can support multiple partial invoices and remains linked to them. The estimate summary tracks how much has been invoiced and how much remains. Intuit's estimate and invoice overview treats estimate approval and invoice management as different steps.
Split the project value before forecasting
Use four states:
- **Estimate total:** the commercial scope, not an AR balance.
- **Issued progress invoices:** customer receivables, subject to remaining-balance and status review.
- **Paid progress invoices:** observed receipts, excluded from future expected collections.
- **Unbilled estimate remainder:** an upstream billing outlook, not yet open AR.
This split prevents a common double count: forecasting both the full estimate and the partial invoice that already converted part of it into receivables.
Reconcile linked records
For every progress invoice in the AR export, retain the invoice number, source estimate, invoice date, due date, original amount, credits, payments, and remaining balance. The estimate link is useful lineage, but the invoice is the cash-forecast unit.
Check for an invoice that was unlinked or replaced. A progress invoice can remain valid even when the estimate relationship changes, so reconcile the actual customer balance rather than inferring it from the estimate percentage. If the invoice was voided, credited, or paid, update the open balance before changing expected cash.
The field-service progress-invoice guide applies this logic to staged jobs. The unbilled-sales boundary keeps completed but unissued work outside collections.
Add a separate billing outlook
The remaining estimate can still matter for cash planning. Put it in a separate schedule with its own fields: remaining scope, completion evidence, approval owner, earliest billing date, and next review date. Label it as unbilled so it cannot be summed with open receivables by accident.
Only move a remainder into the AR forecast after an issued invoice exists in the dated source. Then forecast no more than that invoice's open balance and base timing on evidence for that invoice, not the original estimate's full value.
Decision rule
An estimate describes potential billing; a progress invoice creates a receivable. Reconcile linked records, separate billed from unbilled value, and forecast the issued invoice at its remaining balance. The four-week AR forecast guide shows how invoice-level assumptions roll into weekly cash. Finance teams can view the AR Pulse example for the evidence and action format.