The job lifecycle

A job is the spine of the app. A proposal becomes one, the schedule fills with visits against one, the Payments page is one row per job, and several automations fire the moment one changes status. Understanding the statuses is most of understanding the product.

The statuses

Status	What it means
Lead	An enquiry, not yet priced
Estimate	Priced and quoted, waiting on an answer
Approved	The customer said yes. Not scheduled yet
Scheduled	A visit is on the calendar
In progress	Work has started
Complete	The work is finished
Cancelled	It is not happening

The Jobs page filters by every one of these, with a live count, so “how many approved jobs am I sitting on that nobody has scheduled” is one click. There is a List view and a Board view of the same jobs, plus filters for service type and priority.

What actually happens when you move one

Status is not just a label — each transition does something.

→ Approved. The job starts counting as sold in your metrics. Not when it is finished, not when it is paid — when it is approved. More on that below, because it is the one that surprises people.

→ Scheduled. Happens on its own when you put a visit on the calendar; a job created with a visit starts here rather than at Estimate. Booking a visit fires the Appointment booked automation, and the reminders that follow hang off the visit date.

→ Complete. Sets the completion date for you, and that date is what the Job complete automation looks for — so the review-request sequence and the “work is done” message run from here. The job also becomes awaiting invoice if you have not raised one.

→ Cancelled. Drops the job out of your pipeline figure entirely.

Note

A visit has its own separate states — scheduled, en route, on site, complete, problem, cancelled — and they are not the job’s status. Marking a tech en route is what fires the Technician en route text to the customer, and it does not change the job. A job with three visits can have one complete and two still to run.

Why the same job counts differently in three places

This is the part worth reading carefully, because three screens use three definitions and all of them are correct.

Figure	Counts jobs at
Open pipeline (Jobs page)	Estimate, Approved, Scheduled, In progress
Sold (Metrics)	Approved, Scheduled, In progress, Complete
Unbilled (Payments)	Complete and not yet invoiced

Read that as three different questions:

• Pipeline is what might still land, so it includes unanswered estimates and drops jobs once they are finished.
• Sold is what you won, so it starts at Approved and keeps counting after the work is done — but it says nothing about whether you have been paid.
• Unbilled is finished work you have not billed for, which is why a job still in progress with no invoice does not appear there.

Caution

Your revenue figure counts a job from Approved, not from Complete or Paid. A month with a lot of approvals and no finished work will look strong in metrics and empty in the bank. That is the correct behaviour for a sold figure, but it is not a cash figure — for cash, use Collected on the Payments page, which counts payments actually received.

Invoicing and getting paid

Separately from its status, every job carries a billing state: unbilled, invoiced, paid, or the derived partly paid. You can see it on each row of the Jobs page.

Two things worth knowing:

• You can invoice a job without taking payment. Raising the invoice and collecting money are separate steps, so a job can be invoiced and unpaid without anything being wrong.
• A deposit does not settle a job. A deposit-paid job reads partly paid and stays open, because it still needs finishing and still needs collecting.

For what each figure on the Payments page means, see Reading the numbers on Payments. For turning on card payments in the first place, see Take card payments.

Three figures on the Jobs page

• Open pipeline — the value of everything still live, as defined above
• Scheduled this week — what is actually booked
• Awaiting invoice — finished work you have not billed

Awaiting invoice above zero is money you have earned and not asked for. It is the most useful number on the page.

A normal job, start to finish

1. An enquiry arrives — from your booking page, the estimator, or typed in — as a Lead
2. You price it, which makes it an Estimate, and send the proposal
3. The customer signs, and it becomes Approved — it now counts as sold
4. You put a visit on the calendar, so it becomes Scheduled and the customer gets a confirmation
5. On the day, the tech is marked en route and the customer gets a text
6. Work happens; the job moves to In progress, then Complete, which fires the follow-up
7. You invoice it, the customer pays, and it reads paid

Not every job follows all seven. A service call booked online can go from lead to scheduled in one step, and a job priced and closed on the spot may never sit at Estimate at all.