Close a project's books

While a job runs, every profit figure is provisional — one late invoice can change it. Closing the project financially is the moment you declare the record complete: the final revenue, final recorded cost and final gross profit are locked as the job's result, and closed projects appear together on your dashboard as final results you can actually compare.

Marking a project as completed operationally and closing it financially are separate steps on purpose — the crew can be done weeks before the last invoice is.

From the project's analytics page, "Close financially" shows the final figures and asks you to confirm three things: the final revenue is right and nothing more will be agreed or charged; every direct cost is recorded with no receipts still coming; and labor is covered as far as this project records it. The forecast must also be current with nothing left marked as remaining to spend — an expected result and a final result can't disagree at the moment of closing.

If the project still has open signals — expenses waiting in review, costs without a category — closing over them requires your explicit acknowledgment. Nothing blocks you, but nothing slips through silently either.

A closed result only stays locked while the facts behind it hold. Record, edit or void a cost, change the contract, or revise the revenue basis, and the close reopens automatically — the dashboard stops showing a final result that's no longer true.

Collecting money does not reopen anything: a client paying an outstanding balance after the close is payment timing, and payment timing never changes what the job cost or earned.

You can also reopen a close yourself — for a correction you already know about. The project returns to its expected-outcome view, and once the correction is in you close it again. Every close and reopen is kept, so the history of the result is never rewritten.

When an accepted estimate created or filled the project, that estimate becomes the job's original plan: the revenue and internal cost you priced, and the gross profit and margin they imply. The project shows the plan beside the expected figures while the job runs, and beside the final result once it is closed financially — so you can see how close your pricing came.

The plan never moves. Budget edits, change orders, contract edits and later estimates change what the plan is compared against, never the plan itself. The contract change from the estimate has its own line because it counts change orders and direct contract edits alike. A project without an accepted estimate says it has no original plan instead of treating today's budget as one, and each planned figure appears only to people who may see that kind of figure.