Not every payment lines up neatly with a finished phase. Sometimes you’ve made real headway on several parts of a job at once — a little plumbing here, some electrical there, a start on the HVAC — without fully completing any single milestone. Your subs have billed you for that work, and you’d like to bill your client for the progress, even though nothing is “done” yet.
Eano handles this with progress payments: you can bill for part of a milestone, collect it, and have it tracked against that milestone — so the numbers always add up, and the milestone stays open until you’re actually ready to close it out. This is the way higher-end, professional contracts are typically billed (an AIA A101 contract, for example, is a fixed-price, milestone-based agreement where the milestones usually aren’t billed in full at each stage).
When to Reach for This
Say you have three milestones:
Rough plumbing — $10,000
Rough electrical — $10,000
Rough HVAC — $10,000
This month you finished half the plumbing, a fifth of the electrical, and a third of the HVAC. None of them is complete, so marking any milestone as done would be inaccurate. But you’ve earned progress on each, and you want to bill:
$5,000 for plumbing
$2,000 for electrical
$3,000 for HVAC
That’s exactly what progress payments are for. You put all three on a single invoice, send it, and each amount is credited against its milestone — without any of those milestones being marked complete.
The Main Way: Add Milestones to a Manual Invoice
When you build a manual invoice, milestones now show up as one of the things you can pull in — right alongside your scope items and tracked expenses.
Open the project’s Finance tab and start a + New Invoice.
In the invoice builder, add a line and open the item selector. Along with scope and expense suggestions, you’ll see your project’s milestones, each labeled Income from Milestone. Each one shows how much is still left to bill (Remaining) and the milestone’s full contracted value (Projected Total).
Pick a milestone. It drops in as a line item with the milestone’s name already filled in, and you type in the amount you want to bill for the progress you’ve made.
Repeat for as many milestones as you like — you can put several on the same invoice.
Send the invoice the same way you’d send any other.
A few things behave a little differently on a milestone line, by design:
The name isn’t editable. It’s copied straight from the milestone so your records stay tied together. (There’s no quantity to set either — you’re billing a dollar amount, not units.)
You can bill any amount — less than what’s left, or even more if you have a reason to. If you enter more than the milestone has remaining, Eano shows a gentle heads-up (something like “Only $2,000 left to receive”). It’s just a warning — it never blocks you from saving or sending.
The full milestone amount stays visible next to the amount you’re billing, so you always have the context of the whole while you bill a piece of it.
The Shortcut: Request a Progress Payment from the Milestone
If you’d rather start from the milestone itself, you can. Open the milestone from the Payment Milestones tab and click Request Progress Payment. Enter the amount and an optional note, and Eano creates the request and a matching invoice for you. It’s the same underlying idea — a partial payment credited against that milestone — just started from the other end.
One difference to know about: credit card fee pass-through isn’t available on this shortcut yet. If a client pays a progress payment requested this way by card, the processing fee comes out of your end. If you’d like the client to cover the card fee, build the progress payment on a manual invoice instead (the path above) — the standard credit card fee toggle applies there.
How Payments Track Against the Milestone
However you create it, once a progress payment is collected it’s logged against the milestone. On the milestone you’ll see a running tally — how much has been Paid so far and how much Remaining is still to bill — plus each individual payment and its status (Requested, Payment Processing, or Paid). So even though the milestone is still open, you can see at a glance exactly how much of it you’ve already collected.
What Happens When You Finally Complete the Milestone
Progress payments and the milestone’s own completion stay independent, which keeps you in control:
Paying a milestone off in full through progress payments does not mark it complete. Even if your partial payments add up to the whole amount, the milestone stays open until you close it yourself. When you’re genuinely ready, use the normal Complete Milestone flow.
Completing a milestone only bills the difference. If a $10,000 milestone already had $1,000 collected through progress payments, completing it generates an invoice for the remaining $9,000 — not the full $10,000. You never double-bill the part you’ve already collected.
Finish any open progress payment first. If a progress payment is still awaiting collection, wrap it up (collect it or cancel it) before completing the milestone.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Progress payments are for partial billing, not for completing work. They’re the tool for “we’ve made progress” — completion is still a separate, deliberate step you take when a phase is truly finished.
You can mix and match. A single invoice can carry progress against several milestones, and you can still use scope items and expenses on that same invoice.
The warnings are guidance, not gates. Billing over a milestone’s remaining balance is allowed — Eano just flags it so nothing slips by unnoticed. An over-collected milestone will simply show as overpaid.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to complete a milestone to bill against it? No — that’s the whole point. Add the milestone to a manual invoice (or request a progress payment from the milestone) and bill whatever portion you’ve earned. The milestone stays open.
Can I bill against more than one milestone on the same invoice? Yes. Add as many milestones as you need, each with its own amount, and send them together on one invoice.
What if I bill more than what’s left on a milestone? You can. Eano shows a non-blocking warning so you’re aware, and the milestone will show as overpaid. Nothing stops the invoice from going out.
Will collecting progress payments automatically mark the milestone complete? No. Completion is always a separate step. Even a milestone that’s been paid in full through progress payments waits for you to close it out through the normal completion flow.
If I already collected part of a milestone, what does completing it invoice for? Only the remainder. Eano subtracts what you’ve already collected and invoices the difference, so you never re-bill money that’s already in.
Where do I see how much I’ve collected against a milestone so far? On the milestone itself. It shows the amount paid, the amount remaining, and a log of each progress payment with its status.
Can I pass the credit card fee to my client on a progress payment? Yes — when you bill the progress payment on a manual invoice, the usual credit card fee toggle applies. On the Request Progress Payment shortcut, fee pass-through isn’t available yet, so any card fee comes out of your end. Use the manual-invoice path if you want the client to cover it.