Learn Mokapen

Milestones Guide

A milestone is an instalment of the document: a slice of the amount, with a due date and a status. You use it when the customer does not pay everything at once — a deposit on signature, progress payments, the balance on delivery — and you want to see, document by document and on a single board, what is still to collect and what is already closed.

The block is called Milestones and it sits on the quote, the order and the invoice. It works the same way on all three. It is not a second price list and it does not record the money received: it is the schedule you agreed.

Where it sits in the daily work

The items on the document say what you sell and how much it is worth in total. Milestones say when that figure is split. A quote of €12,000 can stay a single line «Website project» and, underneath, three milestones: 30% on confirmation, 40% on draft delivery, 30% at go-live.

The schedule lives on the document, so you see it when you open that card. If instead, in the morning, you want to know «which instalments fall due this week, across every quote», open the Milestones board from the Quotes, Orders or Invoices page. Each card is one instalment, not the whole document. A click on the card reopens the quote, order or invoice it belongs to.

When the customer accepts and you turn the quote into an order, the milestones move onto the order together with the lines. On the invoice you write them again: order → invoice does not copy them by itself. Invoice Payments are a different thing: that is where you record the money that actually came in.

Use cases

• Consulting by progress: a €10,000 quote in percent. Row 1 at 30% with the due date on signature and the note «Deposit». Row 2 at 40% «Draft delivery». Row 3 at 30% «Balance». The remaining figure at the bottom should reach 0%: you have covered the whole document.
• Supply with fixed amounts: an €8,400 order, Amount mode. €2,500 on the order, €3,400 when the goods are ready, €2,500 on installation. Useful when the contract speaks in figures rather than percents, or when one instalment is a round deposit that does not land exactly on 30%.
• Retainer or instalment plan: twelve rows of the same amount, one due date on the 1st of each month, note «Instalment 1» … «Instalment 12». On the board you see them arrive in the Due soon column as they get closer.
• Chasing what is due: you do not open the documents one by one. From the Quotes page (or Orders, or Invoices) press Milestones. The Expired column is what should already have been collected and is not marked done yet. The Due soon column is the week ahead.
• From quote to order: you prepare the schedule already on the offer, so the customer sees the dates during the deal. On acceptance the order is born with the same instalments, the same dates and the same notes. On the order you only update the status, from Planned to Done, when the instalment is closed.

The Milestones block on the card

Open the quote, the order or the invoice. At the bottom of the card you find the Milestones block, with the row count. If it is empty you read «There are no milestones». The Add button inserts a row.

Each row has four columns and a note underneath:

• # — the row number (1, 2, 3). It is not a free title: the name of the instalment goes in the Note field («Deposit on signature», «Site progress», «Balance»). The note goes up to 255 characters, with the counter on the right.
• Percent or Amount — what this instalment is worth. The choice is one for the whole document, with the two buttons at the top of the block. You cannot mix, on the same card, one row in percent and one in euros.
• Due date — the day that instalment is expected. You can leave it empty: the instalment stays on the schedule, but on the board it lands among the planned ones, not among the due ones.
• Status — only two values: Planned and Done. «Due soon» and «Expired» are not chosen here: the board calculates them from the date.

The trash icon on the right deletes the row. At the bottom right, Remaining tells you how much of the document is not yet assigned to an instalment: in percent if you work in percent, in money if you work by amount.

The total of the instalments cannot go past the document. If in percent you go over 100%, the field stops at the maximum still available. If by amount you go over the document total, it stops the same way. You can leave a remainder: a schedule at 70% is valid, the other 30% simply has no due date yet.

An empty row — no value, no date and no note — is not saved. The others are, together with the document, when you save the card.

Percent or amount

You almost always start from Percent. Write 30, 40, 30 and the schedule stays right even if, during the deal, the quote total moves: the percents stay, the euro equivalent is recalculated on the new total. That is the case for consulting and for any offer whose price can still change.

Switch to Amount when the contract speaks in round figures, or when an instalment is not a clean percent of the total. On the Amount button Mokapen shows the euros already calculated from the percents and the document total. If you save in this mode, from that moment the document remembers the amounts, not the percents.

The reverse works the same way: from amount to percent, the percent is the amount divided by the document total. Do it when the total is already final. If the total is still zero, fill in the items first: without a document amount, Amount mode has no ceiling to lean on.

The mode belongs to the document, not to the single row. A quote in percent and an order in amount can live side by side: they are two different cards. When you copy the quote onto the order, the mode travels with the rows.

Due date and status

On the card you decide two things: the date, and whether the instalment is still Planned or already Done. The board does the rest, every time you open it, without a third status to set.

• Done — you marked the instalment as closed. It stays in the Done column even if the date is in the past. That is the right way to say «do not chase this instalment any more».
• Expired — it is still planned and the due date is before today. You do not pick it from the menu: it lands there on its own.
• Due soon — it is still planned and the due date falls within the next 7 days, today included.
• Planned — no date, or a date more than 7 days away.

Example. Today is 20 October. A planned instalment on 18 October is Expired. One on 25 October is Due soon. One on 15 November is Planned. The same 18 October instalment, if you set it to Done, leaves Expired and goes to Done: the date stays, the status wins over the date.

The Milestones board

On the Quotes, Orders and Invoices pages — both in the list and on the board — at the top there is the Milestones button, with the flag icon. It opens a board with four columns: Planned, Due soon, Expired, Done. They are three separate boards: the quotes one does not mix orders, and the invoices one does not mix quotes.

Each card shows the instalment number, the document code and title, the percent or the amount, the due date (in red if it is expired, in orange if it is due soon), the customer and the note. The click opens the document card, where you adjust value, date and note properly.

You can also drag the card from one column to another. Dragging is not only a label change: it rewrites the status and, in three cases out of four, the date as well. Worth knowing before you move a card in a meeting.

• To Done — the status becomes Done. The due date you wrote stays as it is.
• To Expired — the status goes back to Planned and the due date becomes yesterday. Use it only if you really want to force the instalment among the expired ones.
• To Due soon — the status goes back to Planned and the due date becomes 3 days from now.
• To Planned — the status goes back to Planned and the due date is cleared. The instalment no longer has a date.

If the right date is the one agreed with the customer, do not drag the card to «put it back»: open the document and change the status to Done, or correct the due date by hand. Dragging is handy to close an instalment (towards Done, the date is not touched) and should be used carefully on the other three columns.

From quote to order, and then to the invoice

When you create the order from the quote, Mokapen copies the milestones: number, percent or amount, due date, status and note. You find them already filled in on the new order card, in the same mode (percent or amount) as the quote. From there you update them without rewriting: you mark the deposit instalment Done the day it arrives, and you move a due date if the job slips.

The invoice does not receive the order milestones automatically. If you want the same schedule there too, open the invoice and build the rows again. That makes sense when the invoice covers the whole order. It makes less sense when you invoice a single instalment: in that case the useful milestone is one, with the amount and due date of that issue, and the others stay on the order.

The Done status does not create a payment and does not issue the invoice. It is a mark on the schedule. The real collection is recorded in the invoice Payments; the fiscal document is created with the invoice flow, not by dragging a card.

What they are not

They are not the milestones on a project Gantt. Those measure the phases of the work (kickoff, delivery, acceptance). These measure the instalments of a sales document. A project can have the first and an order the second, without the two staying in sync.

They are not the invoice Payments. A milestone set to Done means «this instalment of the schedule is closed for us». A payment means «this money came in». You can have a schedule fully marked done and the payments still to record, or the opposite.

They are not an item row and they do not replace the economic terms on the PDF. The text «30% on order, balance at 30 days» that you want the customer to read stays in the document terms. Milestones are the internal tool so you do not forget those dates.

Frequently asked questions

Can I name an instalment, for example «Deposit»?

Yes, in the Note field. The # column is only the row number. On the board you read the note under the document title.

Do I have to reach 100%?

No. Remaining can stay. You cannot go past 100% or past the document amount: the field stops at the maximum still free.

I changed the quote total. Do the instalments update?

If the document is in Percent, the percents stay and the euro equivalent follows the new total. If it is in Amount, the figures you wrote stay: a lower total can push you over, and the field brings you back inside the new ceiling as soon as you touch that row.

Why does an instalment with no date not show up among the due ones?

Because «due soon» and «expired» exist only when there is a date. With no date the instalment is Planned. Set the due date on the card if you want to see it arrive on the board.

I dragged a card to Planned and the date disappeared.

That is what the column does: going back there clears the due date. Reopen the document and put the date back. To close an instalment without touching the agreed day, drag it to Done or set Done from the status on the card.

The instalment is in the past but I already closed it. Why is it not in Expired?

Because the status is Done. Done comes before the date: the card stays in the Done column even if the day has passed. That is what you want, if the instalment should no longer be chased.

I create the order from the quote. Do I have to copy the instalments again?

No. Percent or amount, dates, status and notes move onto the order. Check them again only if you changed the total in the passage and you were working with fixed amounts.

And when I create the invoice from the order?

Milestones are not copied. If you need them on the invoice too, add them there. Payments recorded on the invoice stay independent of this schedule.

Do milestones end up on the PDF I send to the customer?

No. They stay on the card and on the board. If the customer must read the dates, write them in the document terms.

Do I see quote, order and invoice milestones together?

No. The Milestones button on the Quotes page shows only quote instalments. The same for Orders and for Invoices. Three schedules, three boards.