Automated Invoicing
From signed contract to sent invoice
Automated invoicing in LedgerUp starts at the signed contract, not at a billing form. Ari parses the executed agreement, generates each invoice from the terms it actually contains, reconciles the amounts against usage and CRM data before anything is sent, routes exceptions for review, and syncs the result to your ERP.
What automated invoicing means here
Automated invoicing is the generation, validation, and delivery of invoices directly from contract terms and verified usage — without someone re-keying amounts from a contract into a billing system. The distinction that matters: a billing engine produces charges from what it was configured to charge. Automated invoicing in a revenue subledger produces charges from what the customer actually signed and actually used, and flags the difference when they disagree.
How the invoicing workflow runs
Every step happens automatically; only exceptions stop for a human.
Contract terms are extracted at signature
When a deal closes in your CRM or a contract is executed in DocuSign or PandaDoc, Ari parses the agreement — rate card, tiers, minimums, caps, ramps, billing schedule, payment terms, PO requirements, and any negotiated one-offs.
The billing schedule is built
Terms become a schedule: what bills when, in advance or in arrears, on what cadence, with which start and renewal dates. Ramps and mid-term amendments are applied on the periods they actually affect.
Each invoice is drafted from the terms
At each billing date the invoice is drafted from the contract, with usage-based lines rated against the rate card and fixed lines pulled from the schedule — not from last period's invoice copied forward.
The draft is reconciled before it's sent
Ari cross-checks the draft against metered usage, the CRM record, and the prior period. Unbilled usage, missed overages, amounts that don't tie to a contract term, and unexpected period-over-period swings are caught here, while the invoice is still a draft.
Exceptions route for approval
Clean invoices go out. Anything that fails a check — a credit, a manual override, a variance past your threshold — goes to the right person in Slack with the contract, the usage, and the discrepancy attached, so the decision takes seconds instead of an investigation.
The invoice is delivered the way that customer requires
Email, your billing provider, or submission into the customer's AP portal — Coupa, Ariba, Bill.com, Tipalti — with the PO number and backup the portal demands, so it isn't rejected on receipt.
The ledger and ERP are updated
The issued invoice, its line-level trace back to contract and usage, and the resulting AR and deferred revenue entries sync to NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, or Xero.
What gets checked before an invoice goes out
The validations that run on every draft. Each one that fails becomes an exception with the evidence attached rather than a silently-sent invoice.
Usage-to-contract match
Every usage-based line is re-rated from raw usage against the contract's rate card, tiers, minimums, and caps — catching both under-billing and over-billing.
Unbilled usage sweep
Usage in the period that produced no invoice line at all, the most common and most expensive form of revenue leakage.
Contract term coverage
Every line traces to a term in the signed agreement, and every term that should have billed this period did.
Period-over-period variance
Swings past your configured threshold are surfaced for review — the check that catches a metering bug before the customer does.
Customer and billing detail
Bill-to entity, remit-to, tax detail, currency, and payment terms match the contract and the CRM record.
PO and portal requirements
A valid, unexhausted PO number where the customer requires one, plus whatever backup their AP portal rejects invoices without.
Duplicate detection
No invoice already exists for the same customer, period, and terms — including drafts created through the API on a retry.
Credits and adjustments
One-off credits and manual overrides carry an approver and a reason, so they land in the audit trail instead of only in someone's inbox.
docs.ledgerup.ai
Open the invoicing setup guide
Step-by-step configuration — connecting your CRM and billing provider, mapping contract terms, setting variance thresholds, and configuring approval routing — is on the docs site.
Go to docs.ledgerup.aiAutomated Invoicing FAQ
What is automated invoicing?
Automated invoicing is the generation, validation, and delivery of invoices directly from contract terms and verified usage data, without a person re-keying amounts from a contract into a billing system. In LedgerUp it runs from the signed agreement: terms are parsed at signature, invoices are drafted from those terms, reconciled against actual usage and CRM data before sending, and only exceptions stop for a human.
How is this different from what my billing engine already does?
A billing engine charges what it was configured to charge. It has no view of the signed contract, so if the configuration drifts from the agreement — a negotiated rate that was never entered, an overage tier nobody set up, a ramp that didn't get applied — it bills the wrong amount confidently. LedgerUp reconciles the draft invoice against the contract and the raw usage before it's sent, which is what catches that gap.
Can automated invoicing handle usage-based and hybrid contracts?
Yes. Usage-based lines are rated from raw metered usage against the contract's rate card, tiers, minimums, and caps each period, and combined with fixed subscription lines, ramps, and milestone billing on the same invoice. Hybrid contracts are the normal case, not an edge case.
Do invoices go out without anyone reviewing them?
Only the ones that pass every check. Drafts that fail a validation — unbilled usage, a line that doesn't tie to a contract term, a period-over-period variance past your threshold, a missing PO — route to the right person in Slack with the contract, the usage, and the discrepancy attached. You set the thresholds, so you decide how much goes out untouched.
Does LedgerUp replace my billing system or ERP?
Neither. LedgerUp sits between them as the reconciled layer — reading contracts from your CRM and e-signature tools, usage from your product or billing engine, and writing issued invoices and journal entries to NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, or Xero. There is no migration and no rip-and-replace.
Can invoices be submitted to customer AP portals automatically?
Yes. Ari submits invoices into Coupa, Ariba, Bill.com, and Tipalti with the PO number and supporting documentation each portal requires, and tracks submission status — so enterprise invoices don't sit unpaid because they were silently rejected on receipt.