Getting paid and paying others: claims, bills, cash and Xero.
Money in Base moves through a small number of records, and once you know what each one means the rest of the product follows. This page is the model. The pages after it are the how-tos.
1. A progress claim has two numbers, and they are meant to differ. The work value is what the claim represents: the value of work done this period, ex GST, before retention. The total is what the client is asked to pay: work value, less the retention held on this claim, plus GST. Base's profit and loss and work-in-progress figures count the work value as revenue. The Claims & Invoices page and the client's portal show the total. If you ever see the two side by side and wonder why they differ, that is why.
2. Costs are ex GST, and a machine cannot spend your money. Every cost on a job is recorded ex GST. A bill a person types in counts against the job straight away. A bill a machine read — pulled from Xero, read off an emailed invoice, added from a scanned receipt — arrives awaiting review on the job's Job Costs page. It counts toward nothing and reaches no payment run until a person approves it. If a job's actuals look low, look at the review queue before assuming something is broken.
3. Xero is downstream. Base decides the number; Xero receives it. A claim goes to Xero as a sales invoice built from the claim's own lines, with retention taken off as a negative line, on the accounts you have chosen. Payment status, part payments, voided invoices, bills raised directly in Xero and new contacts come back from Xero on their own.
4. The assistant proposes; you decide. Base's assistant will propose what to certify on a subcontractor's claim, draft a claim for finished work, match a bill to its order and assemble a payment run. On its own it never approves a cost, certifies a claim, approves a payment run, marks anything paid or issues a credit note. Those decisions land on Money → Decide, and the button is yours.
| I want to… | Page | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| See where the business is at, in plain words — free after obligations, runway, profit, decisions | Money | Money |
| See every order across every job, what is late, held bills and bills with no order | Procurement | Procurement |
| Raise, send and track a progress claim | Claims & Invoices, or the job's Invoicing tab | Claims and invoices |
| See what a job was meant to cost, has committed, and has cost | The job's Job Costs page | Job costs and supplier bills |
| Get a supplier bill or receipt onto a job | Job Costs, or Receipts | Job costs and supplier bills, Receipts |
| Deal with a subcontractor's payment claim | The job's Job Costs page, Subcontractor Claims tab | Subcontractor claims |
| Pay approved bills and certified claims from the bank | Payments | Payment runs |
| See what has synced with Xero and what counts in reports | Xero | Xero |
| See who owes you, what you owe, and whether jobs make money | Reports, Cashflow | Reports and cashflow |
| Turn inbox receipts into job costs or a tax record | Receipts | Receipts |
| Set the money rules — terms, bank, GST, targets, what issues or approves itself | Settings → Finance | Finance settings |
| Decide where each cost code posts in Xero, and approve chart changes | Settings → Chart of Accounts | Chart of accounts |
| Keep the trade codes every cost rolls up by | Settings → Cost Codes | Cost codes |
| Understand what the assistant does with money on its own | — | Automations and the assistant |
Tutorials walk four scenarios end to end: a claim from raised to paid, a supplier bill from arrival to paid, a subcontractor claim under the Security of Payment Act, and a month-end review.
Do these once, in this order. Each takes a few minutes. All of them need an organisation admin.