Getting Paid As You Go: Progress Invoicing for Maine Contractors
Picture a six-week job. Materials get purchased in week one. Payroll goes out every Friday. Fuel, dump fees, and the occasional surprise all land along the way.
And the invoice? On a lot of jobs, it goes out when the work is done — which means the customer's money arrives weeks after yours went out the door. On a big project, that gap can be tens of thousands of dollars.
There's a name for a business that fronts all the costs and gets paid at the end: a bank. And unlike a bank, you're not charging interest. Here's how to stop financing your customers' projects — and how to set it up in QuickBooks.
The cash flow math of invoicing at the end
Say you're running a $40,000 job over six weeks: $15,000 in materials up front, roughly $3,000 a week in labor. By the time you invoice, you've laid out over $30,000 of your own cash. If the customer takes 30 days to pay — common — you've floated that money for well over two months.
Now multiply that across two or three jobs running at once. This is why contractors can be profitable on paper and still feel broke all summer. The problem isn't the margin — it's the timing.
Deposits: the first fix
The simplest change is requiring a deposit before work begins — commonly a quarter to a third of the contract price, or enough to cover materials. It's standard practice, it filters out customers who were never going to pay reliably, and it means the job starts funded instead of financed.
One bookkeeping note: a deposit for work you haven't performed yet is technically the customer's money until you've earned it. At minimum, track deposits so you always know how much of your bank balance represents unearned work — that's not money to spend on a different job's payroll.
Progress invoicing: getting paid in stages
For anything beyond a short job, break the billing into stages. Two common approaches: milestone billing (an amount due at deposit, rough-in, and completion, for example) or percentage billing (a set percentage of the contract at agreed intervals).
The key is putting the payment schedule in your estimate or contract before work begins. Customers rarely object — a clear schedule actually builds trust, because they know exactly what's due and when. Surprises are what strain relationships, not structure.
Setting it up in QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online supports progress invoicing directly: turn it on in your account settings, then create your estimate as usual. From that estimate, you can generate invoices in stages — a percentage of the total, a fixed amount, or specific line items — and QuickBooks tracks how much of the estimate has been invoiced and what remains.
This does two useful things at once. Your customer gets clean, professional invoices that reference the original estimate. And you get an accurate picture of where every job stands — billed versus remaining — without a side spreadsheet.
If you're already doing job costing, progress invoicing plugs right in: you can see costs and billings on the same project and catch a job drifting underwater before it finishes.
What to say to customers
If you've always billed at the end, changing terms can feel awkward. It doesn't need to be. Something as simple as: "For projects over [amount], we work on a payment schedule — a deposit to secure materials and your spot, a payment at [milestone], and the balance at completion."
Said plainly and put in writing up front, it reads as professionalism, not distrust. The contractors who struggle with this conversation are usually the ones having it mid-job. Have it before the job, and it's just part of the paperwork.
The bottom line
You can't control when customers feel like paying — but you can control when payments come due. Deposits and progress invoicing turn a season of cash flow whiplash into a steady, predictable rhythm.
And late July is a good moment for this change: the jobs you're quoting now will run into fall. Put a payment schedule on the next estimate you send.
McAfee's Bookkeeping works with Maine contractors on the systems behind steady cash flow — progress invoicing, job costing, and books that stay current through the busy season. If you'd like help setting it up, a free consultation is a good place to start. Schedule here.
