It's the first week of December. Your accountant wants year-end numbers, the owner wants to know why October looked busy but the bank balance didn't, and you've got a stack of job tickets with a sticky note that says "bill this." Somewhere in your system are unbilled jobs: work your techs finished, your customers were happy with, and nobody ever invoiced.
This checklist is for the office. It walks through the eight places unbilled work usually hides, how to sweep each one before December 31, what to do with the old ones you find, and how to set things up so you're not doing this again next December.
What unbilled jobs cost you (an illustrative example)
Missed invoices don't feel expensive one at a time. A $280 drain call here, a $280 tune-up there. The problem is they repeat.
Illustrative example: say three $280 jobs a week slip through without an invoice. That's $840 a week. Over 50 working weeks, it's $42,000 of work you paid a tech to do, paid for fuel and parts to do, and never collected. For a lot of shops, that's a truck payment, a new hire or the difference between a good year and a tight one.
Cash flow is already tight for plenty of service businesses. In the Federal Reserve Banks' 2024 Small Business Credit Survey of employer firms, more than half cited paying operating expenses or uneven cash flows as a challenge. You can't fix every cause of uneven cash. You can stop giving away finished work.
Where unbilled work hides
Start with this list. Each item is a different leak, and each needs a slightly different search.
1. Jobs marked complete with no invoice
The classic. The tech closed the job on site, the office meant to bill it Friday, Friday got busy. These are the easiest to find and the easiest to fix.
2. Partial work and return visits
The tech diagnosed the problem on Tuesday, ordered a part, came back Thursday. Often the first visit gets billed and the return trip doesn't, or the return trip gets billed and the diagnostic fee from Tuesday vanishes.
3. Change orders and add-on parts used on site
The customer asked for "one more thing while you're here." The tech swapped a capacitor that wasn't on the quote, or added a second hose bib. If it never made it onto the ticket, it never made it onto the invoice.
4. Signed quotes that never became jobs
A customer said yes in September. The paperwork got signed. Then nobody scheduled the work, or the work got done under a fresh job and the quote sat there. Either way, money is stranded.
5. Deposits not applied to the final invoice
This one cuts both ways. If a deposit was collected but not credited, you've overbilled a customer and you'll hear about it. If the deposit was recorded but the balance invoice never went out, you've collected 30% of a job and forgotten the rest.
6. Service agreement fees not raised
Annual maintenance plans renew on dates nobody watches in a busy season. If a customer's agreement renewed in August and nobody raised the fee, you're servicing them for free.
7. Covered vs billable lines miscoded
Agreement customers get some work covered. They don't get everything covered. When a tech codes a billable repair as covered maintenance, the line drops to zero and nobody notices.
8. Time-and-materials jobs with unlogged hours
On T&M work, the invoice is only as good as the hours recorded. A tech who forgot to log the last two hours of a commercial job has cut your invoice by two hours.
How to sweep each one before December 31
Block time for this. Trying to do it between phone calls is how the list ends up half done in February. Times below are rough guides for a shop running a few hundred jobs a month; adjust for your volume.
- Pull every job completed this year with no linked invoice (office manager, 1–2 hours). Sort by date, oldest first. Mark each one: bill now, already billed elsewhere, or no charge (warranty, callback, goodwill). Write down why for every "no charge."
- Match return visits to the original job (office manager, 1 hour). Search for customers with two or more visits within 14 days. Check that every visit that should carry a charge does.
- Ask techs about on-site extras (service manager, 15 minutes per tech). Don't make it an interrogation. Pull each tech's jobs from the last 90 days and ask, "Anything you added on these that isn't on the ticket?" Parts receipts from the supply house help jog memory.
- Reconcile signed quotes against jobs (office manager, 1 hour). List every signed quote. Each one should have a job, and each completed job should have an invoice. Anything signed with no job needs a call to the customer this week.
- Check every deposit (bookkeeper or office manager, 1 hour). For each deposit received, find the final invoice and confirm it was credited. For each deposit with no final invoice, see step 1.
- Walk the service agreement list (office manager, 1–2 hours). For each active agreement, confirm the last renewal fee was raised and paid. If you run a membership program, this is a good time to check your service agreement renewal rate while you have the list open.
- Spot-check covered vs billable coding (service manager, 1 hour). Pull 20 agreement-customer jobs at random. If more than a couple were miscoded, widen the check.
- Compare T&M hours to the schedule (office manager, 30 minutes per large job). For each T&M job, compare billed hours to the time the tech was assigned and on site. Gaps over an hour deserve a question.
When you're done, you'll have three piles: bill now, call the customer first, and write off.
What to do with the old ones
The September jobs are easy. Send the invoice with a short, friendly note: "We found this one during our year-end review; sorry it's late." Most customers pay.
Older work takes judgment.
- Call before you invoice. For anything more than a couple of months old, a quick call beats an invoice out of nowhere. Remind them of the visit, confirm the work, then send the bill. It protects the relationship.
- Know when to write it off. If the job is small, the customer is a good long-term account, and the work is a year old, eating it may be the better business decision. Record it as a write-off so your books are honest, and tell your accountant.
- Don't sit on it. There's a legal time limit for collecting on unpaid work, and it varies by state and by the kind of agreement you had. Don't guess. If you've found something large and old, talk to your attorney or accountant before you send it.
Keep a simple log of everything you billed late or wrote off, with the reason. That log is next year's training material.
How to stop it happening next year
The sweep fixes this year. These habits fix the cause.
Invoice from the job, the same day. The longer the gap between "job complete" and "invoice sent," the more invoices fall through it. If the invoice is built from the job record (same customer, same line items, same parts), there's nothing to re-type and nothing to forget.
Make the paper trail one chain. Signed quote becomes a job. The job becomes the invoice. Deposits ride along. When each step creates the next, you can't end up with a signed quote and no job, or a job and no invoice.
Make "no charge" a decision, not a default. Every zero-dollar job should carry a reason someone chose: warranty, callback, goodwill.
Review weekly, not yearly. A 15-minute Friday check of completed-not-billed work beats a two-day December dig. If you're already tracking field service metrics, add this one to the list.
Where FSM Navigator fits
FSM Navigator runs the work from first call to renewals, so the invoice comes from the same job record your tech closed. Here's what's on each plan.
On every plan, Free included:
- You invoice straight from the job (up to 100 invoices a month on Free; unlimited on Pro).
- The Financials & Tax tab summarises revenue invoiced and collected, and sales tax, for a year or any period you pick, and exports a CSV for your accountant. It's a summary for your accountant, not tax advice.
On Pro:
- With quotes, customers choose a good, better or best option and e-sign. The accepted quote turns into a job in one step, and the invoice bills the chosen option at the signed price.
- A deposit the customer pays online is credited on the final invoice.
- Customers pay online by card or US bank in the customer portal.
- Automatic invoicing, once the owner turns it on, raises the invoice when a job is completed for a customer with a service agreement in force, or for a job that came from a signed quote.
The trade-off: the Free plan gets you invoicing from the job, which closes the biggest leak, but the quote-to-job-to-invoice chain and automatic invoicing are Pro. Start where your leaks are.
FAQ
What counts as an unbilled job?
Any completed work you haven't invoiced. That includes whole jobs, return visits, on-site extras, renewal fees and unlogged hours on time-and-materials work.
How often should I check for completed jobs not invoiced?
Weekly is a good rhythm. A short Friday review catches most misses while the tech still remembers the job and the customer still remembers the visit.
Should I bill a customer for a job from months ago?
Usually yes, but call first. Confirm the visit, explain you found it in a year-end review, then send the invoice. For large or very old amounts, check with your attorney or accountant first.
What should be on a year-end close checklist for a service business?
At minimum: unbilled jobs, unapplied deposits, service agreement renewals, open quotes, write-offs with reasons, and a revenue and sales tax summary for your accountant.
Close the gap before December 31
Run the sweep this month, bill what you find, and set up same-day invoicing so January starts clean. If you want to invoice straight from the job on every plan, start free — free for up to 5 users, no credit card.