Billing Cycle
A billing cycle is how often you send an invoice — per job, weekly, or monthly. Picking one that matches how the work actually finishes keeps unbilled work from quietly piling up between invoices.
What it means
Per-job billing suits work with an obvious finish line — a repair, an install, a one-off visit — where you can invoice the moment the job is done. Weekly billing suits ongoing or multi-visit work, where waiting for one single "done" moment would mean carrying weeks of unbilled labor first. Monthly billing suits a genuinely recurring arrangement, like a maintenance round or a retainer, where a client already expects one invoice covering the whole month rather than one per visit.
The mismatch that causes trouble is billing on autopilot rather than by design — sticking with per-job invoicing for work that never really has a clean finish line, so jobs quietly accumulate as unbilled work in progress instead of getting billed on any regular schedule at all.
A gardener doing weekly mowing rounds bills monthly — one invoice covering four visits — rather than trying to invoice each mow separately. A one-off gutter repair for a different client gets its own invoice the same day the job finishes, since there is nothing recurring to wait for.
Never actually choosing a billing cycle, and invoicing "whenever I get to it" instead — which is how a backlog of finished, unbilled jobs builds up without anyone deciding it should.
See also
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