Municipal contracts
An invoice the clerk won't send back.
Public work pays against a proper invoice: the PO number, the service dates, a remit-to stub, sent before the period starts. PortaPro builds that invoice from your rate card and keeps a dated record of every park visit behind it.
The invoice
What accounts payable looks for, and where it is.
A municipal AP system checks a short list before an invoice goes on the claims list. Miss one and the invoice comes back unpaid, usually after the meeting it needed to make.
- Vendor name and remit-to address
- From your company settings, in the invoice header and again on the remittance stub.
- Invoice number and date
- Every invoice carries its own number and the date it was issued.
- Service dates
- The period the rate card covers, printed as the service period.
- The amount
- Priced from the rate card for every site on the contract.
- The purchase-order number
- Entered once on the customer. It prints as PO # in the header, on the stub, and in the invoice email.
An invoice that already went out keeps the PO number it was sent with, so a new fiscal-year PO never relabels something the clerk filed.
Timing
Billed before the month starts.
A council approves claims at a meeting, so the invoice has to exist while the period is running, not after it. Switch on Bill in advance for that customer and each cycle invoice is drafted ahead of the period instead of after it. It still waits for your review, and every other customer keeps billing in arrears.
| In arrears | In advance | |
|---|---|---|
| Draft is cut | A few days before the cycle closes | A set number of days before it starts, 0 to 60 |
| Invoice covers | The period that just ran | The coming period, plus a labeled true-up of last period's extra pulls |
| Due date | Payment terms, never before the cycle's last day | Payment terms from the day it is sent |
Pair it with Net 30 or Net 45 terms and a grace period, and the overdue reminders stay quiet while the warrant run catches up. The due date the customer sees never moves.
One invoice per park, in one email.
A parks department with restrooms in twelve parks needs twelve invoices, one per budget line. Turn on one invoice per site and a single cycle produces an invoice for each park, delivered as one email that opens a page where each can be viewed, downloaded, and paid. A park or a school can carry its own PO number.
See a live examplePaper, when they want paper.
Some offices still pay from an envelope. Print Invoices prints a batch as one PDF and tracks each invoice from not sent, to printed, to mailed, so the question of whether the county's copy already went out has an answer.
Proof of service
A dated record for every visit.
Public contracts are won on price and kept on documentation. Every stop's service record carries when service started and where the truck was, the checklist answers, and the photos, each one stamped with its date, time, and GPS coordinates. The parks supervisor gets the report by email, accounts payable gets the invoice, and each site contact can open the records for their own parks in the customer portal. Switch on the service completed notice and the supervisor hears the moment a stop closes, with a link to a proof-of-service page that needs no login.
Service checklistsQuestions from operators with public contracts
The PO number changes at the start of the fiscal year. What happens to old invoices?
Nothing. Update the number on the customer and new drafts pick it up. An invoice that already went out keeps the number it was sent with, so nothing the clerk already filed gets relabeled.
Can one department bill ahead while everyone else bills after?
Yes. Bill in advance is a setting on each customer, so the parks department can get its invoice before the period while the rest of your book keeps billing in arrears.
Does the city need a login to see proof of service?
No. The service report goes out as a PDF to the people you mark as service recipients, usually the parks supervisor rather than accounts payable, and the service completed notice can email or text them a link to a proof-of-service page the moment a stop closes, no login needed. Contacts with portal access can also open the record for every visit to their own sites.
Our contract is tax exempt.
Mark the customer tax exempt and keep the certificate number on file. Their invoices go out without tax, and the exemption is on the record when an auditor asks.
How billing cycles, rate cards, and advance invoices work underneath all of this is on the 28-day invoicing page.
Bring the contract.
Send us the bid sheet or the PO. We will set up the customer, the parks, and the first advance invoice with you on the call.
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