Linking an invoice or quote to a budget line
Hemma reads the invoice. It pulls out the contractor, the date, the amount, the line items. But it does not assume which budget line each item belongs to — that is your call. Linking is the small task that turns "an invoice arrived" into "the budget moved."
01Before you start
You need a budget. If you have not built one yet, see building a budget from scratch or importing a budget from Excel or CSV. Linking does not work against an empty tree.
You also need the invoice (or quote) to be processed and confirmed — anything still in Needs review has to be resolved first. See reviewing and correcting what the AI extracted.
02How to link
Open the invoice or quote from the Files page. Hemma drops you onto the linking screen automatically the first time, since linking is the next step after extraction. Each line item from the invoice gets its own card with three things on it:
- The line item itself: description, amount, and (if the invoice broke them down) net and VAT. If the AI misread the amount — a €0.00 line, or a figure that is plainly wrong — tap the pencil next to it to correct it. The new amount saves on its own, before you link.
- A budget line picker — searchable dropdown of every line in your tree, categories included. If a whole invoice belongs to one category, link it straight to the category.
- An amount field, prefilled with the line item's full amount.
Pick the budget line, leave the amount as-is, and move to the next item. When every line item is assigned, tap Confirm at the bottom.
03Hemma's suggestions
For most invoices, Hemma proposes a budget line for each item before you arrive — you will see a suggestion already filled in, with a confidence colour next to it. Green-ish for high confidence, amber for medium, red-ish for low.
The suggestions come from the same matching engine that runs on imports: it reads the line description, the contractor's trade, your budget tree, and similar past links. Accept the highs without thinking, glance at the mediums, and pick yourself for the lows.
You always have the final word. Confirming records your choice, not Hemma's.
04Why it matters
Linking is what makes the budget move. Until you link, an invoice is just a document — visible on Files and counted against the contractor, but not against any budget line. As soon as you confirm:
- The Invoiced column on the budget updates for the lines you picked.
- The signal colours on those lines recompute (see reading your budget status).
- The contractor's outstanding total drops if you also mark the invoice paid (see marking an invoice as paid).
- The To link filter on Files stops showing this invoice — you are caught up by one.
Quotes work the same way, except they feed the Quoted column instead of Invoiced. They also have a faster route, below.
05Confirming a whole quote at once
For quotes there is a second place to do this, and it is usually the quicker one: What was agreed, the screen that lists every quote you have received with Hemma's proposal already filled in.
The difference is the size of the gesture. On the document you assign line by line. On What was agreed you check a quote, correct anything that sits on the wrong budget line, and press Confirm quote once. Four quotes, four presses. A quote with a hundred lines on it is still one press when the proposal is right.
Confirming a quote there also does something the document screen cannot: it teaches Hemma how that contractor's work maps onto your budget. Their next invoice, including one that is only an advance, lands on the right lines without you being asked again.
Corrections still win. Hemma proposes, you decide, and nothing is recorded until you press.
06A document with no separate lines
Some documents arrive as a single number and a description, with no breakdown at all: one price for the roof, and nothing itemised under it. It happens to quotes and to invoices alike.
Open one and the assigning screen never appears. There is nothing to assign, so instead you get a short Linked budget lines panel near the bottom of the document, reading "No budget lines linked to this document." That sentence is accurate rather than a fault: the amount is still on the document, and nothing has gone missing. But that panel only reports; you cannot place the money from it.
The place to do that depends on the document:
- A quote goes to What was agreed. It is listed there like any other, it says plainly that there is nothing to link, and Confirm quote ticks it off.
- An invoice goes to What was spent, which lists it with a Done button for the same reason: there are no unassigned lines holding it up.
Either way the amount stays recorded against the contractor, and the document stops asking.
If the total itself is wrong, or the document really should have had a breakdown, fix that on the document first. Confirming says the mapping is right, so it is worth being right before you press.
07Splitting one line across multiple budget lines
If a single line item really does belong to two or more budget lines — "Plumbing rough-in + first fix" split between bathroom and kitchen — you do not have to pick one and lie. Add another row to the same item and divide the amount. See splitting one invoice across multiple budget lines for the full walkthrough.
08Editing later
Linking is not one-shot. After you confirm, the invoice is in its terminal state but you can re-open the linking from the invoice detail page at any time. Edit linking brings you back to the same screen with your previous picks loaded; change them and save. The budget moves accordingly.
09Common questions
Not sure which budget line a line belongs to. Put it under a general category — "Miscellaneous" is there for exactly this — and move it later. Links are never final: open the document again and pick a different line whenever you know better.
I linked something to the wrong budget line. Open the document and change it. The old link disappears and both budget lines update; nothing is lost by guessing first and correcting later.
Does linking change the invoice itself? No. Linking is metadata next to the invoice — the document file is untouched. Anyone you share the file with sees exactly what arrived.
Who can link? Anyone on the project. The linking trail is logged so anyone else on the project can see who confirmed what and when.
10What if it goes wrong
- The Confirm button is greyed out? Hemma says why right underneath it: either a line item has more linked than its own amount, or a line item that carries an amount still has no budget line picked. Walk the cards top to bottom — a card with nothing picked says "No budget line chosen yet" and shows its amount as still unassigned.
- A €0.00 line does not hold Confirm up. It reads "Nothing to link" in grey, because there is no money on it to put anywhere, and it is simply skipped. If the AI misread the amount and it should not be zero, tap the pencil next to it to correct it — once it carries an amount it needs a budget line like any other line.
- Only a small "Linked budget lines" panel saying nothing is linked, and no way to assign anything? That is what a document with no separate lines looks like, and it is expected. Place it from What was agreed (quotes) or What was spent (invoices), as described above.
- A linked invoice is missing from the budget? See my budget total looks wrong.
- The screen will not load? See a document is stuck in "Needs review" — you may have an extraction still pending.