A bill the department will pass the first time.
This is the money side of a contract you were awarded — by a government department, a PSU, a builder or a private owner. One running-account bill cum tax invoice, with the measurement sheet, the abstract and the tax invoice in the same document, and every deduction printed on the face of it so the client's engineer can check each rupee without ringing you.
Four screens, in the order the money actually moves.
Client, then the work order they awarded you, then the bill against it, then what they paid. You go left to right the first time and after that you live on the last two. The quantity on every bill comes from the Measurement Book — nobody retypes it.
Every party that awards you work, in one directory.
A client is not always a company. It may be a PWD division, a PSU, a municipal body, a builder who has sub-let a package to you, or one individual building a house. Each of those bills differently and each needs different paperwork, so the client carries a category — Government, PSU, Semi-Government, Private, Builder / Developer or Individual — and the category decides the code the app gives it.
If those six do not cover what you deal with, add your own. A housing board or a cantonment board can have its own category and its own code prefix.
- The GSTIN does the typing. Enter a valid 15-character GSTIN and the firm's name and PAN fill themselves. Enter the IFSC and the bank name and branch fill themselves. A PAN that is not in the ABCDE1234F shape is refused before it is saved, because a wrong PAN on a tax invoice is a rejected bill.
- One directory, every project. The same department is not typed twice. Open a client and you see every work order it has awarded you and what each one is worth.
- You cannot delete a client that has work. A client linked to a project is refused — suspend it or blacklist it instead, so the bills raised under it never lose their owner.
- Print the directory. Filter by category, status or a search, then take it as a PDF or an Excel — the print carries whatever filter is on the screen.
Category decides the code
Add "PWD Raipur" as Government and the code fills as GOV-2026-001 before you have typed anything else. The next government client is 002, and the year moves on its own.
| Category | Code | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| Government | GOV | PWD, CPWD, municipal corporation, irrigation |
| PSU | PSU | NTPC, SAIL, a state power utility |
| Semi-Government | SGV | Development authority, board, university |
| Private | PVT | A company that has awarded you a contract |
| Builder / Developer | BLD | A developer sub-letting a package to you |
| Individual | IND | One owner building one house |
What the client card tells you
Not just an address book. Each client shows the work orders it has awarded, the contract value across them, what you have certified against it, and what is still receivable — so before you ring a department you already know the number to ask about.
Read the contract once. Then every bill obeys it.
This is the award letter, entered. Its value, its scope, and its terms — retention, advance, performance guarantee, defect liability, TDS and GST. You type them the day the work order arrives, and from then on every bill under it applies them without anybody remembering to.
The scope comes out of the Measurement Book
You do not retype the awarded items. Open Scope of Work, press Import from Measurement Book, tick what the client actually awarded, and the contract value builds itself out of quantity × rate. Work that was never measured — site office rent for six months, a lump-sum item in the tender — is added as its own line.
₹10,00,000, item-wise, awarded by PWD Raipur.
Type the percentages and the app shows what each of them is worth on the full contract value while you are still typing — so the terms are checked against the award letter, not discovered on bill four.
Defect liability 12 months, TDS 2%, permissible deviation ±10%. These are the figures every bill on this work order will use unless you deliberately override one bill.
The advance is recovered from the advance, not from the bill
Set the recovery at 10% per bill and each bill recovers ₹10,000 — a tenth of the advance, whether that bill is ₹1,00,000 or ₹8,00,000. Ten bills and it is settled.
Recover a percentage of the bill instead, the way most spreadsheets do, and one large bill swallows the whole advance in a single month. You also choose which bill number recovery starts from, because a contract that gives you an advance rarely starts taking it back on bill one.
The advance itself is recorded as a receipt when the money lands — amount, date, mode and the UTR or cheque number — and no receipt above the sanctioned ceiling is accepted.
Work type is decided here, once
Item-wise, slab rate or lump sum. The choice locks how every bill under this work order is billed, so a lump-sum contract can never accidentally be billed as a measurement — the billing mode on the bill is greyed out and says it is following the work order.
A billing cycle for item-wise work
Weekly, fortnightly, monthly or your own number of days. The first bill's period starts at the work order date and every bill after it picks up the day after the last one ended, so there is never a gap or an overlap in the periods you claim for.
Print the contract back out
The work order with its terms and all its scope items goes out as a PDF or an Excel — for your own file, for the client's records, and for whoever in your office is going to execute it.
One document. Three pages. Nothing to attach separately.
A department does not want a tax invoice on its own. It wants to see what was measured, how that became money, and only then the tax invoice. All three come out of one press of a button, in that order, with your letterhead on them.
Running account: this bill is the difference, not the total
Every figure on an RA bill is cumulative. The abstract shows the work done to date; the amount you actually claim is that cumulative figure minus everything billed earlier.
| Bill | Work done to date | Billed earlier | Claimed this bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bill 1 | 2,88,365.00 | 0.00 | 2,88,365.00 |
| Bill 2 | 3,96,350.00 | 2,88,365.00 | 1,07,985.00 |
That is why a running account is safer than a stack of separate invoices. If a quantity was slightly wrong in bill 1, bill 2 carries the corrected cumulative figure and the difference settles itself — the error does not compound down the job.
Page II, as it prints
Three items on a foundation package. Prev plus present equals total, and every amount on the row is that row's quantity times its rate.
| Description | Rate | Prev qty | Present qty | Total qty | Prev ₹ | Present ₹ | Total ₹ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Earthwork in excavationClause 2.8.1 · cum | 213.45 | 400.000 | 100.000 | 500.000 | 85,380.00 | 21,345.00 | 1,06,725.00 |
| PCC 1:3:6 under footingsClause 4.1.6 · cum | 5,842.00 | 20.000 | 5.000 | 25.000 | 1,16,840.00 | 29,210.00 | 1,46,050.00 |
| RCC M25 in footingsClause 5.33.1.1 · cum | 7,178.75 | 12.000 | 8.000 | 20.000 | 86,145.00 | 57,430.00 | 1,43,575.00 |
| Work value (cumulative) | 2,88,365.00 | 1,07,985.00 | 3,96,350.00 | ||||
The Excel export of the same three pages carries live formulas — the amounts are real multiplications and the totals are real SUMs, so the client can open it and satisfy himself on his own computer.
Filling the measurement sheet
Import WO Items lists every item in the contract with its work order quantity, what has already been billed and what is pending — and it will not let you import more than the pending balance. Whatever you leave out simply rolls to the next bill.
Import from DPR does it the other way. Give a date range and the quantities your site team already reported in the daily progress report come straight into the bill, so the billing engineer is not measuring work the site has already recorded.
Finalise and lock
Once the bill is checked, lock it and no figure in it can move. The app refuses to lock until the period from and period to are both filled and in the right order, because a bill without a period is not a running-account bill. If the client returns it with a correction, reopen it, fix it and lock it again.
A blank box means "follow the contract"
Leaving retention, guarantee, TDS or GST empty on a bill does not mean zero — it means read the work order. Type a number only when this one bill genuinely differs, and Follow Work Order throws your override away and puts the contract terms back.
The papers stay with the bill
A Documents tab on each bill holds what came with it — the client's measurement certificate, the approved drawing, a photograph of the joint measurement. Two years later, when the account is being closed, the attachment is on the bill and not in somebody's inbox.
Every deduction on the face of the bill. Nothing netted off quietly.
The single biggest cause of a bill going back and forth is a client who cannot see how you got to the net figure. So the app prints each step as its own line, in the order a department works it, and the arithmetic is there to be checked.
₹1,00,000 of work. ₹1,01,000 receivable.
Round numbers, so the arithmetic is obvious. The app works to the paisa.
Rupees One Lakh One Thousand only — printed in words under the figure, because a departmental bill is passed on the words.
And the money held comes back the same way
Retention and the performance guarantee are not lost, they are held. When the defect liability period ends and the client releases them, they come back as lines that are added on a later bill — not as a separate letter that somebody has to chase.
Each release is capped at what has actually been held on that contract, so you cannot release more security than the client ever took.
What each line is, in plain words
Work never matches the agreement exactly. Prove it, item by item.
Every bill compares what was executed against what was agreed, for each item, and tells you which ones have crossed the limit your contract allows. Then it writes the approval letter for you — and when that letter comes back approved, it puts the extra quantity into your estimate.
The statement the client asks for
Contract quantity against executed quantity, the difference in both quantity and percentage, the excess or the saving in rupees, and a status on every line.
| Description | Agreement | Executed | Deviation | Excess ₹ | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCC M25 in footings₹7,178.75 a cum | 100.000 | 150.000 | +50.000 +50.0% | 3,58,937.50 | excess |
| PCC 1:3:6 under footings₹5,842.00 a cum | 25.000 | 26.500 | +1.500 +6.0% | 8,763.00 | within limit |
| Anti-termite treatment₹108.20 a sqm | — | 240.000 | new item | 25,968.00 | extra item |
The permissible deviation limit is the one you typed on the work order. At ±10%, the PCC line is inside it and needs nothing. The RCC line is at +50% and is flagged red — it needs a formal approval before you can expect it to be passed.
Three different things, kept apart
A quantity that has come out short is not treated as a saving on a running bill — on a running account, under-billing is simply work in progress. It is certified as a saving on the final bill, which is the only place it is honest to certify it.
A change-order proposal in the standard seven parts.
Press Prepare Proposal on a deviated line and the letter opens already filled from the bill's own figures. You correct the wording, not the numbers.
| # | Element | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Change description | What is being changed, in one paragraph |
| 2 | Reason | Site condition, drawing revision, client instruction |
| 3 | Quantity | Agreement 100.000 cum against executed 150.000 cum |
| 4 | Rate | The contract rate, or a rate derived and justified |
| 5 | Amount | Original against proposed, and the net effect |
| 6 | Approval | Who is being asked to approve it, and its status |
| 7 | Impact | What it does to the contract value and the programme |
It is numbered — CO-40-01 — kept as a draft until you mark it approved, and printed on your letterhead with the three signature blocks a change order needs.
Approved means the estimate changes too
This is the part offices normally do by hand and then forget. Mark a proposal approved and the app writes the extra quantity back into the Measurement Book item as a marked row that reads "Variation vide Bill #2 — CO-40-01 (approved)".
From that moment the estimate carries what was actually sanctioned. The item shows a small Variation, Deviation or Extra Work chip, and clicking it tells you which bills billed that item and which change orders were approved against it. Un-approve the proposal and the row is taken out again.
Slab rate and lump sum bill by stage, not by measurement.
Plenty of contracts are not measured item by item. A per-floor slab-rate job, or a lump-sum package, is paid a fixed share of the contract as each stage completes. So the work order carries the stages instead of a billing cycle, and the bill asks you which stages finished this period.
- The stages must total exactly 100%. The badge on the work order stays red until they do. You cannot leave a contract planned at 90% and discover the missing 10% at handover.
- A stage cannot be billed twice. Stages billed in an earlier bill come up already ticked and locked, so the same slab is never claimed in two months.
- The bill follows the work type. Because the work order says slab rate, the billing mode on every bill under it is fixed — there is no way to accidentally raise a measured bill on a lump-sum contract.
- The abstract prints stage-wise — the work stage, its slab area and slab rate, the percentage billed previously, the percentage in this bill, and both amounts — instead of an item list that would mean nothing on a lump-sum job.
Everything after the abstract is identical. GST, retention, the guarantee, TDS and the advance are applied exactly as they are on an item-wise bill, and the same three-page document comes out at the end.
The same ₹10,00,000 contract, billed by stage
Four stages agreed at the work order. Bill 2 claims the plinth, and the app carries the foundation forward as already billed.
| Work stage | Share | Value | This bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation | 20% | 2,00,000 | billed earlier |
| Plinth | 15% | 1,50,000 | billed now |
| Slab | 25% | 2,50,000 | pending |
| Finishing | 40% | 4,00,000 | pending |
| Total | 100% | 10,00,000 |
A bill raised is not money. This is where it becomes money.
Record what the client actually paid, against the bill it settles, and the balance receivable on that client's card falls in front of you. When the department asks for a reconciliation, you send a statement instead of building one.
Recording a payment
Amount, date, mode and the reference — the UTR, the cheque number, the RTGS reference. Then the one field that matters: which bill it settles.
- Tag it to a bill and that bill's balance falls. The dropdown shows only that client's bills, each with its own balance, so you cannot post to the wrong job.
- Or leave the bill blank for a general, on-account receipt — money the client has sent that has not been apportioned yet.
- It warns you if the amount is more than that bill's balance, and refuses zero or negative amounts.
- A paid bill cannot be quietly reopened. Once a receipt is sitting against a bill, that bill is closed to editing — record the receipt when the money is actually in.
| Bill | Net certified | Received | Balance | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill 1 · Apr 2026 | 2,88,365.00 | 2,88,365.00 | 0.00 | settled |
| Bill 2 · May 2026 | 1,01,000.00 | 90,000.00 | 11,000.00 | 24 days |
| Balance receivable from this client | 11,000.00 | |||
Ageing, so you know which bill to chase
Outstanding is split into 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days, per client and across the project. A ninety-day-old bill and a five-day-old bill are not the same problem and should not sit in the same total.
The statement you send at month end
Every bill with its net certified, what has been received against it and what is left, then every receipt with its date, mode and reference — as a PDF to send and an Excel for the client's own accounts to work in.
Retention and the performance guarantee held on the contract are carried in the same view, so it is clear what the client is holding as well as what he owes. Each receipt also prints as a voucher you can hand over.
Two ways money comes in. One place it lands.
A construction company earns in two completely different ways, and confusing them is how offices end up with two sets of books. Civil Limitless keeps them apart on the way in and brings them together in the accounts.
You are selling the project
A private development of your own — flats, shops, plots. There is no client to bill. There is a buyer, a booking, a construction-linked payment plan, and a demand raised the day a stage completes, with interest worked out if he pays late.
See the Sales moduleAnd the money going out
The mirror of this page. You allot work to a sub-contractor, he bills you against measured quantity, and you deduct his retention, his TDS and his advance recovery — the same discipline, pointed the other way.
Contractor billingWhere the bill lands
Every client bill, every receipt and every deduction posts itself into double-entry accounts — debtor, income, output GST, TDS receivable. Trial balance, P&L and balance sheet come out of the same data, with nothing entered a second time.
See FinanceThe bill is not a document you build at month end. It is the estimate, plus what the site reported, minus what the contract says the client keeps. If those three are already in the app, the bill is a button.
Bring the bill you are arguing about.
Thirty minutes on a call. Send us a work order and a running bill from a live job, and we will build it in the app while you watch — deductions, deviation and all.