Track the invoices

The bid went out as an Invitation to Bid, the award came back as a Bid Confirmation, and now the job is live and the invoices are arriving. One or two you could handle with a single fill. A whole job's worth, month after month, is a different problem: you need to keep every one, see what is owed and when, and know at a glance which job site each belongs to. That is the work this step is built for, and it is where you graduate from running templates into running an operation.

Everything below runs on the Pro pipeline, The Operation. The earlier steps (the ITB and the confirmation) work on Free (The Filler) and Lite (The Library). Cases, mailboxes, and the dashboard views are Pro: on Free or Lite you see an upgrade preview of this surface, not the full pipeline.

Build the invoice template

An invoice template is an ordinary template with its field value types chosen deliberately, because the type is what decides which dashboard views the case can later appear in. Give the invoice number the ID type so it becomes the case identifier (unique within the workspace, the join key that routes future files to the right case). Make the amount a number typed as currency so it can roll into Analytics, the due date a date so it feeds the Calendar, and the job-site address an address so the case plots on the Map. The deeper mechanics of types and keys live in cases & data; the short version is that every field writes its value under a stable internal key, so relabeling a column later never disturbs data already saved.

If your invoices carry repeating line items inside a single document, that is a batch field (the repeating-rows field), one key holding an array of rows on the one case. A computed output can then sum those rows into a total within the same case, and that total becomes a number column that flows into Analytics. As always, a field references data only within its own case: there are no cross-case lookups.

Let each fill mold a case

On the Pro pipeline a template does not just paint a PDF and forget. Every field it fills writes into a case, the durable record that gathers the Files that arrived (Received) and that you produced (Generated), the Case data extracted or entered, the Activity history, and the Outputs assembled. Most invoice cases are created for you the instant a file ingests, from Gmail, Drive, or a manual upload: extraction reads the invoice number, an unclaimed identifier starts a new case, and a number that already exists merges the file into the case it belongs to.

Run autofill on an invoice and confirm the values in the review modal. The full run mechanics are in running autofill; what matters here is that the captured values land in case data grouped by where they came from, Extracted for what the AI read off the document, User Input for anything you typed, with a history popover and an "edited" marker on any value you correct by hand.

Work the volume in the dashboard

The dashboard opens on the inbox: one row per case, one column per field that writes case data. From the same data, the view switcher offers three more lenses, and this is your invoice value types paying off across many cases at once.

The Map plots every case with an address, so you read your invoices by job site. The Calendar lays the due dates across days, turning "what is coming due" into a glance. Analytics rolls the currency and number columns into the workspace's charts and totals. Inside a case, the detail panel sections (Files, Case data, Activity, Outputs) give you the per-invoice story, and the Activity history records every note, submission, and generation in order.

Close out the paid ones

There is no automatic engine that moves a case when a field changes; mailbox moves are user-driven. When an invoice is paid and closed, move it to the Archived mailbox: drag its row onto Archived in the sidebar, or use the detail panel's ⋯ overflow Move to mailbox. Archived cases have no retention, so they stay forever (unlike Trash, which a daily job clears after 30 days). To clear several at once, hit Select in the toolbar, tick the paid invoices, and use Move to... in the batch bar. Archiving keeps the working inbox tight while preserving the record.

Handle one outlier without editing the template

Sooner or later a single vendor sends an invoice laid out unlike every other: the amount sits in a footer total, or the due date reads "Net 30 from receipt" instead of a printed date. You do not touch the template for one document. Instead, steer that single run with a Special AI Instruction, the run-only textarea in the autofill review modal. It applies to that one run and is never saved, the correct tool for a one-off outlier (it is Layer 5 of the instruction layers, distinct from any template-level rule).

With invoices flowing into cases, sorted across Map, Calendar, and Analytics, and the paid ones archived, the operation runs itself. The last piece is producing a document out of all this captured data.

Next: building the transmittal.