How Quivva generates and sends invoices

Quivva generates invoices differently depending on how your contract with a client is structured. Understanding the logic behind each type helps you know when to expect a draft invoice and what to do before you send it.

Retainer invoices

Retainer contracts bill clients on a recurring schedule — weekly, fortnightly, every four weeks, or calendar monthly. At the end of each billing period, Quivva creates a draft invoice automatically. You review it, make any adjustments, and send.

Pay-for-work retainers (hourly)

Pay-for-work retainers bill the client for hours actually delivered. Because the work comes first and the invoice follows, these are invoiced in arrears — the draft is created at the end of the billing period and reflects the time you tracked during it.

All timer records from that period are grouped by task name into line items on the invoice. If you tracked time under the same task multiple times, those entries are merged into a single line. You can also manually merge or split groups before sending if you want to present the work differently.

Pay-for-access retainers (fixed fee)

Pay-for-access retainers charge a flat fee for a period of availability — the client is paying for access to your time, not a specific number of hours delivered. Because the arrangement is ongoing and the fee is fixed, these are typically invoiced in advance — the draft covers the upcoming billing period rather than the one just completed.

Time tracking still applies on pay-for-access retainers. Even though the invoice amount is fixed, you may still want to record what you worked on during the period. Each tracked task appears as a line item on the invoice, giving your client visibility into how the time was spent.

Quivva includes a slider on each line item that lets you control how much of the tracked time is billed. Adjusting the slider changes both the line amount and the invoice total — useful when you’ve logged more hours than the retainer covers and want to bill only up to the agreed cap, or when you’ve decided to absorb some time and bill less than the full amount tracked.

Project invoices

Projects in Quivva are milestone-based. Rather than a recurring billing cycle, you send an invoice when a milestone is reached or about to begin. Each milestone has a target completion date, but the invoice date is set independently — and it matters, because payment terms (such as NET7) run from the invoice date, not from when you send it. Set the invoice date to reflect when you want the payment clock to start.

There are two common approaches to structuring a project.

Deposit plus milestones

For larger projects, it’s common to take a deposit upfront before any work starts, then invoice for one or more subsequent milestones as the project progresses. In Quivva, you set up the deposit as its own milestone at the start of the project, followed by the remaining milestones in order. Each milestone has its own invoice when it comes time to bill.

Milestones only

A simpler approach is to skip the deposit and use milestones alone — one invoice per phase of work. Each milestone invoice can be sent before work starts on that phase, so the client pays in advance, or after completion once the work has been delivered. Milestones are ordered and worked through sequentially, so the structure maps cleanly to however you’ve broken up the project.

Sending an invoice

Once a draft invoice is ready, you have two options for getting it to your client.

Download and send manually

You can download the invoice as a PDF and send it through whatever channel you prefer — email, a client portal, or your existing workflow. Use this if your client has a specific submission process or if you want to attach the invoice to an existing email thread.

Email directly from Quivva

Quivva can send the invoice to your client on your behalf. The email arrives from:

{Your Business Name} via Quivva <invoices@quivva.app>

The reply-to address is set to the email address in your company settings, so any response from your client comes back to you directly.

You can select which bank account details appear on each invoice before sending, which is useful if you hold accounts in different currencies for different clients.

After sending

Once an invoice is sent, its status moves from Draft to Sent. From there it can transition to Paid, Overdue, or Cancelled as the situation changes.

If you need to correct a sent invoice — to adjust a line item or fix a detail — you can revert it to Draft, make your changes, and resend. The invoice history is preserved.