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Final Retainage & Stopping a Project

When a project reaches its final retainage billing, you flip one checkbox on the cycle. Once that cycle reaches "Submitted," the system permanently flags the project as billing-complete and never creates another cycle for it.

This page covers how to do that and how to recover if you flagged it by mistake.

Marking a cycle as the final retainage billing​

When the Accountant is preparing what they know is the last billing for this project (typically the final retainage release), do this on that month's Billing Cycle:

  1. Open the Billing Cycle item.
  2. Find the Final Retainage Billing? field. (It's a Yes/No, default No.)
  3. Flip it to Yes.
  4. Continue with the normal workflow — send the draft, wait for PM review, submit.

That's it. The flag tells the system "when this one hits Submitted, we're done."

You can flip it any time before Submitted

You don't have to flip it on day 1. As long as it's set to Yes before Status changes to Submitted, the stop logic will fire. If you forget and Status is already Submitted, see I forgot to flip the flag below.

What happens when the final retainage cycle reaches "Submitted"​

The moment the Accountant flips Status to Submitted on a cycle with Final Retainage Billing? = Yes:

  1. Submitted Timestamp is stamped (same as any cycle).
  2. The Linked Project's Billing Cycles Complete field is flipped to Yes.
  3. A closing comment is posted on the Linked Project: "Final retainage billing submitted on [date]. No further billing cycles will be auto-created for this project."
  4. The same closing comment is posted on the Billing Cycle itself for the cycle-level audit trail.
  5. From now on, the 1st-of-month cycle creator skips this project entirely.

What stops, and what doesn't​

After Billing Cycles Complete = Yes:

Still happens?
Auto-creating a new cycle on the 1st of the month❌ No
The monthly digest email✅ Yes (for any cycles created before the stop)
Status-change prompts on existing cycles✅ Yes — if you manually edit Status on an old cycle, the comments and tasks still fire
The Project showing on the Active Billing Cycles view❌ No (its cycles are all in Submitted/Skipped status)

I forgot to flip the flag and the cycle is already Submitted​

No problem. To stop further cycles for the project without re-creating the cycle:

  1. Open the Project record (not the Billing Cycle).
  2. Find the Billing Cycles Complete field.
  3. Flip it to Yes manually.

That has the same effect as the automated stop — the next 1st-of-month run will skip this project.

(If you want the audit comments to appear too, you can flip the Final Retainage Billing? flag on the submitted cycle and then bump Status from Submitted → PM Reviewed → Submitted again, which will fire the closing comments. But that's cosmetic — the stop itself is achieved just by flipping the Project flag.)

I flipped the flag by mistake — how do I undo?​

If a project was wrongly flagged as billing-complete and you need it to start receiving monthly cycles again:

  1. Open the Project record.
  2. Find Billing Cycles Complete and flip it back to No.

The next 1st-of-month run will pick the project back up and create a new cycle.

If the wrongly-flagged cycle is still in your way:

  • Open the cycle.
  • Flip Final Retainage Billing? back to No.
  • Optionally, change its Status to Skipped if you don't want it counted in reporting.

Skipping a single month without ending billing forever​

Sometimes you want to skip a single month's billing (e.g., the project was paused) without ending billing for the project entirely. To do that:

  1. Open the month's Billing Cycle.
  2. Change Status to Skipped.

That cycle drops off the Active Billing Cycles view and won't trigger further prompts. The next month, a new cycle will be created normally on the 1st.

Don't flip the Project's Billing Cycles Complete flag just to skip a month

Flipping Billing Cycles Complete = Yes stops all future cycles, not just this one. Use the cycle-level "Skipped" status for one-off skips.