Sample gap
Unbilled field work that never reaches invoice
Illustrative invoice value to check:
$420/day
What the records say
Two field crews each log two approved extra hours in their daily notes. The notes are correct. The invoices are correct. Neither file knows about the other.
What the comparison shows
Placed side by side, four approved hours have no matching invoice line. Illustrative math: 2 crews × 2 extra hours × $105 per billable hour = $420 of invoice value to check for a single day. Repeated across 20 workdays, that is $8,400 to check. This is not a profit estimate or a finding about your business.
What happens next
The exception goes to whoever owns billing, with the daily note and the draft invoice attached, before the invoice is sent. Closing it is a two-minute decision, but only if someone sees it in time.
Run it yourself: pull the last 20 closed jobs, list the change or extra work performed, match each line to an invoice, total the unmatched dollars, divide by working days in the period.
See how this can appear in construction businesses, or estimate the labor cost of unbilled time with the unbilled work calculator.
Estimated from public information. Verify against your actual numbers.
