Cost-plus invoicing
Bill from your budget with margin built into every line — Foreman prices each item from its cost and margin, and tracks what's left to invoice.
On a cost-plus project, you bill your costs plus a margin. Foreman handles this by pricing each invoice line straight from the budget: it takes the item's cost and margin and computes the client price, so you never do the math by hand. As you invoice, it tracks how much of each budget item is left to bill.
How margin pricing works
When you pull a line from the budget into an invoice, Foreman prices it with the margin formula:
price = cost ÷ (1 − margin%)
So a $1,000 cost at a 20% margin bills the client $1,250. This is true margin (profit as a share of price), not a flat markup on cost — set the margin on the budget item and the invoice price follows automatically.
Bill from the budget
- Create an invoice from Records for the project.
- Click Pick from budget in the editor.
- Each item shows its priced amount, what's already invoiced, and what's remaining.
- Set the amount or percent to bill on this invoice, then click Confirm.
Because lines stay linked to the budget, what you bill rolls up into the budget's Invoiced column, and the "remaining" on each item shrinks as you go — so the next invoice defaults to billing only what's left.
Progress billing across invoices
To bill a cost-plus project in stages, send multiple invoices over time. Each time you open the budget picker, Foreman already knows what's been invoiced on sent invoices and offers the remainder, so partial bills add up to exactly the approved total without double-billing.
Note
Frequently Asked Questions
Does cost-plus pricing change my budget?
No. The margin lives on the budget item; the invoice just reads it to compute the client price. Editing an invoice line's price doesn't change the budget.
What if an item has 100% or more margin?
Foreman guards against the formula breaking at a 100%+ margin and falls back to the item's cost so the line still prices sanely.