Year-End Invoicing Checklist for Contractors

November and December go fast. Holidays, weather, and customers who disappear until January all slow down payments. If you start cleaning up your invoicing now, you go into the new year with money in the bank and records your accountant can actually use.

1. Collect what is still open

Pull a list of every invoice that is sent but not paid. Sort it oldest first. Anything past due gets a polite, direct follow-up this week: the amount, the job, and the payment link. Customers are more likely to pay before the holidays than after, when the bills from December arrive.

2. Bill the jobs you have not invoiced yet

Most contractors have at least one finished job that never got a bill — a small repair, a change order nobody wrote up, a return trip. Walk through your calendar for the last three months and match every job to an invoice. Unbilled work is the easiest money you will find all year.

3. Close out drafts

Old drafts make your records confusing. Send the ones that are real, and delete the ones that never turned into work. A clean list means your totals for the year are true.

4. Get your records in order

• Paid invoices. What you collected, by month. This is your income for the year.
• Sales tax collected. Kept separate from income, because it belongs to the state.
• Material costs. What you paid suppliers for the jobs you billed.
• Payments to subcontractors. Who you paid and how much, so 1099s are easy in January.

5. Collect W-9s now, not in January

If you paid subcontractors this year, get a W-9 from each one before the year ends. Chasing a sub for a tax ID in late January, when the forms are due, is a headache you can skip. For payments made in 2026, the federal 1099-NEC threshold is $2,000 per payee for the year.

6. Set up January before it arrives

Decide your payment terms, deposit rules, and rates for next year now. If you are raising prices, tell repeat customers before their next job, not on the invoice.

EZ Invoices shows every sent, overdue, and draft invoice in one list, so step one takes minutes. On the Business plan, Reports shows paid income, materials, and sales tax for the year, and the Tax Center keeps your subs' W-9s and payments in one place. This is general information, not tax advice — check with your accountant.