Invoices & Vendors
Invoices track the real cost of your project -- the receipts from everyone you pay. Each invoice can be linked to multiple budget lines across your work items and household items, and each vendor can have any number of invoices attached.
Vendor records have moved out of the Budget subnav and into Settings > Vendors. That makes sense because a vendor's name, trade, and contact details are master data you set up once -- similar to areas, trades, and user accounts -- whereas invoices are financial transactions that belong with the rest of the budget. All existing links between invoices, budget lines, and vendors are preserved; only the menu location has changed.
Vendors (under Settings)
Vendor List
Navigate to Settings > Vendors in the sidebar to see all vendors. The list supports:
- Search -- Find vendors by name
- Sorting -- Sort by name or creation date
- Pagination -- Browse through large vendor lists
Creating a Vendor
Click New Vendor and provide the vendor's name and optionally assign a trade to indicate the vendor's specialty (e.g., Electrical, Plumbing). Trades are managed on the Manage page.
Vendor Detail
Click a vendor to see their detail page, which shows the vendor's information, assigned trade, and all their invoices. From the vendor edit page, you can navigate directly to any invoice detail by clicking on it.
Invoices
Invoice List
Navigate to Budget > Invoices in the sidebar to see all invoices across all vendors. (Invoices remain in the Budget section; only the vendor records themselves moved to Settings.) The list supports:
- Search -- Find invoices by number or vendor name
- Status Filter -- Filter by Quotation, Pending, Paid, or Claimed (disabled while "Open Items" mode is active)
- Sorting -- Sort by date, amount, or status
- Pagination -- Browse through large invoice lists
Show Only Open Items
Click the "Show only open items" toggle at the top of the invoice list to focus on work-in-progress invoices. This view shows:
- Pending invoices and invoices with pending deposits, sorted by earliest due date so your most urgent payables surface first
- Expandable deposit rows -- Each invoice that has pending deposits shows a child row for each one, so you can see at a glance which deposits are still outstanding
- Open totals in the header:
- Payable -- The total amount you still owe across all visible invoices and pending deposits
- Refunds due -- The total amount you are expecting back (when deposits exceed the final invoice amount)
The "Open Items" mode is mutually exclusive with the Status filter (Status filtering is disabled while Open Items mode is on) and persists in the URL as ?openOnly=true, so you can bookmark or share the focused view.
Creating an Invoice
Click New Invoice -- either from a vendor's detail page or from the top of the Budget > Invoices list. Provide:
- Invoice Number -- The vendor's invoice reference number
- Date -- The invoice date
- Amount -- The total invoice amount
Budget lines are linked to the invoice after creation from the invoice detail page (see Linking Budget Lines below).
Creating an Invoice from a Paperless document
If you have both Paperless-ngx and Auto-itemize configured, New Invoice becomes a faster, document-first flow. Instead of the blank form, it opens a document picker: choose the scanned PDF the vendor sent you, and Cornerstone reads the invoice straight off the page.
Picking a document takes you a multi-step review screen:
Step 1: Vendor & Status
- Vendor picker -- Pick the matching vendor (the picker pre-suggests one based on the document). If the vendor doesn't exist, you can create one inline by typing a new name and confirming.
- Invoice status -- Choose the initial status: Quotation, Pending, Paid, or Claimed. Defaults to Pending.
- Default budget source (optional) -- If set, all extracted line items are assigned to this source. You can still override the source for individual lines in step 2. This field is useful when you know the entire invoice comes from a single financing source.
Step 2: Metadata & Lines
- Pre-fills the invoice metadata (number, amount, date, due date, notes) from the document, each with a one-click suggestion to apply the extracted value.
- Lists the extracted line items, each ready to include, edit, categorise, fund, and assign to a work item or household item -- exactly like the Auto-itemize review page. Net line items are grossed up by VAT so the totals match the invoice. If you specified a default budget source in step 1, each line uses that source by default but can be overridden.
Click Create Invoice & Itemize to create the invoice and all its budget lines in one step. The new-invoice review screen and the existing-invoice Auto-itemize page share the same review interface, so the line-item editing, assignment, and funding-source behaviour is identical in both -- including the queued-on-save Create Budget Line flow: choosing to create a new work-item budget line drops an inline "Creating New" draft onto the row (with a Discard button) and materialises it when you save, rather than creating it up front. See Assign each line for the details.
A couple of small touches are specific to building an invoice from a Paperless document: the line confidence is applied automatically from the document's Paperless type (an Invoice type is treated as a firm cost, a Quotation as an estimate) and the confidence control is hidden once it has been set for you. The extraction also benefits from the human-authored metadata you keep in Paperless -- title, correspondent, document type, tags, and date -- so the suggested vendor and dates tend to land closer to correct.
If Paperless or Auto-itemize is not configured, New Invoice opens the plain form described above -- there is no document step. You can also fall back to manual entry from the picker at any time.
Invoice Statuses
Invoices have four statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quotation | A formal quote from the vendor -- not yet an actual cost |
| Pending | Invoice received but not yet paid |
| Paid | Invoice has been paid to the vendor |
| Claimed | Payment has been claimed from / reimbursed by the financing source |
Use the Quotation status for vendor quotes that you want to track alongside actual invoices. Quotation amounts are treated with a +/- 5% margin in budget projections, reflecting the typical variance from a formal quote.
Converting a Quotation to a Final Invoice
When a quotation becomes a finalized invoice from the vendor, you can convert it to capture the final amounts and details. On the quotation's invoice detail page, click Convert to final invoice to open a dialog where you:
- Enter final invoice details -- final amount, invoice date, invoice number, due date, and notes (the quoted amount is automatically added as a note)
- Optionally select a Paperless document -- the document becomes the invoice attachment. If Paperless and an LLM are configured, Prefill from document auto-extracts the final details
- Review and edit itemized lines -- proposed amounts are scaled pro rata to the final amount. You can adjust them or keep the existing itemization; any unallocated amount goes to Discretionary
- See deposits and final payment -- deposits remain unchanged and are shown separately from the final balance
- Choose payment status -- mark the invoice as pending or already paid
Conversion is blocked if deposits exceed the final amount (add a refund or increase the amount) or if the itemized total exceeds it. Nothing is saved until you confirm the dialog.
Invoice Detail
Click an invoice to see its full detail page with the invoice amount, current status, the Deposits section (for tracking staged payments), and the Linked Budget Lines section.
If you have Paperless-ngx configured, you can also link documents (invoice PDFs, receipts, supporting files) directly to invoices from the detail page. See Linking Documents for details.
Staged Payments (Deposits)
Many invoices are paid in stages -- a deposit on signing, progress payments at milestones, and a final balance. Cornerstone supports this with invoice deposits: each deposit is a partial payment with its own due date, status, and description. The remaining (final) payment uses the parent invoice's status. Budget rollups respect deposit status so actualCostPaid reflects real cash flow.
See Invoice Deposits for the full guide.
Linking Budget Lines to an Invoice
A single invoice often covers multiple cost items -- for example, one contractor invoice might include materials, labor, and equipment hire across different budget categories. Cornerstone supports linking multiple budget lines from work items and household items to a single invoice, each with an itemized amount.
How to Link from the Invoice Page
On the invoice detail page, the Linked Budget Lines section lets you add budget line links using a two-step picker:
- Select an item -- Choose a work item or household item from the picker
- Select a budget line -- Pick which budget line on that item to link
Once linked, enter the itemized amount for each budget line -- the portion of the invoice total that applies to that specific line. All itemized amounts are shown alongside a computed Remaining row that displays the unallocated portion of the invoice total.
The Remaining row helps you ensure the full invoice amount is allocated. If the remaining amount is zero, the invoice is fully distributed across budget lines.
If the invoice has a Paperless document linked and you have configured an LLM provider, an Auto-itemize action appears on the linked-document card in the Documents section. Cornerstone reads the OCR text from the PDF and proposes one budget line per row on a dedicated review page with the PDF shown alongside -- you only review and assign them. See Auto-itemize Invoices for the full guide.
Unassigned Budget Lines
Budget lines can exist on an invoice without yet being linked to a work item or household item -- they are called Unassigned and show up with a muted pill in the "Linked Item" column. This happens when you add a budget line directly on the invoice and leave the parent picker empty to decide later. (Auto-itemize, by contrast, lets you assign each extracted line to its target right on the review page before you save.)
Each Unassigned row has an inline Assign… button. Clicking it opens a picker with two tabs -- Work Item and Household Item -- where you choose the target and save. Unassigned lines still count toward your financing-source and category totals, but they do not appear on any single work item's Budget tab until they are assigned. If you assign a line to the wrong item, you can change it later -- invoice-linked lines can be edited and moved to a different parent item.
How to Link from an Item Detail Page
You can also link budget lines to invoices directly from the work item or household item detail page. On the Budget tab, each budget line that is not yet linked to an invoice shows a link action that lets you select an existing invoice.
This bidirectional linking means you can work from whichever direction makes sense -- start with the invoice and find the budget lines, or start with a budget line and attach it to an invoice.
Invoice Groups on Item Detail Pages
When multiple budget lines on a work item or household item share the same invoice, they are visually grouped into an Invoice Group. The group is collapsible and shows:
- The invoice total amount
- Each budget line's planned amount and itemized amount (the portion allocated from that invoice)
- The invoice status and date
This grouped view helps you see at a glance how a single invoice is distributed across the item's budget lines.
Rules and Constraints
- A budget line can be linked to at most one invoice -- each budget line is exclusive to a single invoice
- An invoice can be linked to many budget lines across different work items and household items
- Itemized amounts are independent of the planned amount on the budget line -- they represent the actual cost attribution from the invoice
Invoice Amount Validation
When you edit the total amount of an invoice, Cornerstone enforces two invariants to prevent budget integrity violations:
- Itemized amount floor -- When lowering an invoice total, the itemized amounts across all linked budget lines must stay ≤ the new amount. For example, if you have allocated 1000 EUR across budget lines and the invoice total is 1200 EUR, you can lower it to 1000 EUR but not below. Edits that raise the amount (or leave it unchanged) are never blocked.
- Net deposit floor -- The net of deposits minus refunds must not exceed the invoice amount. This is checked when you add or increase a deposit, lower or delete a refund, or lower the invoice amount. Raising the amount is never blocked.
These guards ensure your budget stays mathematically consistent.
Cornerstone rejects calendar-impossible invoice dates (e.g., 2026-02-31). Dates must be valid ISO 8601 dates.