Cost plus jobs allow you to invoice your client based on the actual costs incurred throughout the job, with a markup applied to those costs.

This guide covers the complete cost plus invoicing process, including:

Watch the video below for a complete walkthrough of setting up, invoicing, displaying, sending, and receiving cost plus invoices. Full written steps are below the video.

When creating a job from an estimate, select Cost Plus as the invoice method and select Create Job.

Once the job has been created, we recommend accepting the estimate. This locks the estimate as a point-in-time record of the original budget provided to the client.

For some jobs, the estimate may be accepted automatically when using the digital signature option.

The basic cost plus workflow is:

Purchase orders and work orders → Outgoing invoices → Customer invoice

Once a cost has reached the appropriate status, it becomes available to be added to a customer invoice.

For purchase orders, the status must be:

For work orders, the status must be:

Costs that haven't reached these statuses won't be available to bill on the outgoing invoices screen.

The description and instructions on an order can be displayed on the customer's invoice, depending on your invoice settings.

Because these details may be visible to the client, it's best to write them in a client-friendly way—even if your current settings don't display them.

From the Outgoing Invoices screen, you can filter by status to find costs that haven't yet been invoiced.

Select the individual orders you want to bill, or bulk select multiple orders, then select Invoice.

Give the invoice a clear name that makes sense to your client. For example, you might use a billing period such as "August 2026" or "Progress Claim 3".

If you realise you've missed an order after creating the invoice, you can add it to an existing invoice while that invoice is still in Pending status.

The markup used for a cost plus invoice is a default, but you can change the markup on individual line items when required.

For example, you might choose to bill a particular cost at cost as a goodwill gesture.

The markup can therefore be adjusted to suit the circumstances of each item.

When creating the invoice, you can update:

Customer-visible comments are useful for providing context about what the invoice covers, such as materials purchased or work completed during a particular period.

Once you're finished, you can select Save and Close or Save and Send.

Save and Close saves the invoice and allows you to review it before sending.

Save and Send takes you directly to the sending process.

The Show order instructions setting controls whether order instructions appear on the invoice.

If this setting is turned off, the instructions section won't appear.

The Show breakdown setting displays the individual items that make up an order.

For example, if a purchase order contains multiple items, enabling this setting lists each item separately on the customer invoice.

If you prefer a more concise invoice, leave the setting turned off.

Grouping can be particularly useful when a job has a large number of work orders or timesheets.

You can choose to group:

Costs can be grouped by the relevant contact or supplier, helping keep the invoice concise while still showing the applicable date range.

This is especially useful when billing many individual timesheets for the same person or supplier.

Keep an eye out for missing tax when preparing an invoice.

If an item has had its tax removed, you may see an alert indicating that tax is missing. Review the item and correct the tax before marking the invoice as invoiced.

You can configure your payment terms from the invoice settings.

Payment terms can include information such as:

Once configured, your payment terms can be reused on future invoices.

When you select Share, you can choose to send:

You can then select the recipients, edit the email body, and add additional attachments as required.

If your account uses the client portal, you may also have the option to publish the invoice to the portal.

A statement provides a history of the customer's invoices.

For cost plus jobs, the statement shows invoices that have already been created rather than attempting to predict future invoices.

It can therefore provide the client with a record of:

An invoice marked as Invoiced has been issued but hasn't been recorded as paid. Once payment is recorded, its status changes to Received.

When a customer pays an invoice, you can record the payment using Add Payment Receipt.

You can record the invoice as fully received, after which its status changes to Received.

If the client needs proof of payment, you can print the invoice again. A paid watermark will appear on the invoice.

If you're connected to Xero or QuickBooks, payment information can be returned from the accounting platform automatically.

When the payment is received in the connected accounting system, the invoice status can update to Received and the payment details are added automatically. Note this ONLY works if the original invoice was created in Buildxact and then synced to your accounting system.

Note that variations/change orders function differently for cost plus jobs, head to the article on this topic to learn more.

Anything else, reach out and we can help.