Milestone billing without the spreadsheet
How to run $9.6M of SOWs with holdbacks and change orders on autopilot.
Fixed-fee project work is the revenue model spreadsheets survive longest in, because every engagement looks like an exception. Picture six live SOWs worth $9.6M, each with its own milestone schedule, a 5% holdback and change orders that move the totals mid-flight.
Three things that broke
- Percent-complete revenue recognised off a schedule nobody updated after a change order
- Holdbacks tracked in a separate tab and released from memory
- Invoices raised on the milestone date rather than on client acceptance
The schedule was right the day it was written and drifted every week after.
What replaced it
Milestones now carry their own state, not started, in progress, awaiting sign-off, paid, and the invoice is raised by acceptance, not by calendar. Change orders version the SOW rather than overwriting it, so the recognition schedule follows the work instead of the original plan.
Holdbacks accrue against each milestone and release on close, which turned a quarterly reconstruction into a balance that is simply correct.
Close the month on the first.
Free up to $1M ARR. Ninety seconds to your first invoice.