The invoice is where the money leaks. You priced the job on a calculator, won it, did the work — and now you open QuickBooks and re-type the total by hand to send a bill. Half the time the number is a little off, the line items do not match the quote the customer signed, and you spend a Tuesday night chasing a payment on a total you cannot fully explain. Invoicing software for contractors is supposed to end that: the invoice should be the quote you already sent, not a fresh document you build from memory.
From accepted quote to invoice, no re-keying
In Mortar the invoice is generated from the quote the customer already signed. Same line items, same total, same job record. You do not re-type the address, you do not re-type the price, and you do not open a second app to bill. The customer accepted a number on their phone; that number is the invoice.
This matters because a re-typed total is a wrong total waiting to happen. When the quote and the invoice are two hand-entered copies of the same job, they drift — a line dropped here, a rounding there — and the customer is the one who notices. When the invoice reads from the signed quote, the bill matches what they agreed to, every time. Walk the full path in how to send a quote and get paid.
Card or bank draft (ACH) on your own Stripe
The invoice goes out as a link. The customer opens it and pays by card or bank draft (ACH) — their choice — right there, no login, no portal to set up. For a $400 service call, a card is fine. For a $12,000 install, bank draft (ACH) saves both of you the card fee. You offer both and let the customer pick the one that costs less.
The payments run on your own connected Stripe account. You connect Stripe once during setup; after that, every invoice you send charges through your account, not ours. Mortar is the software that builds the bill and books the payment — it is not a payments middleman layered on top.
Where the money lands (and whose processing fee it is)
When the customer pays, the money settles to your Stripe account and lands in your bank. Mortar never holds it, never routes it through a Mortar account, and never takes a cut of a payment. There is no float, no payout delay on our end, no "reserve" — the cash is between you, Stripe, and your bank.
The processing fee is Stripe’s, not ours
Card and bank draft (ACH) payments carry Stripe’s standard processing fee — that fee is Stripe’s, and it is the same rate you would pay taking cards through Stripe directly. Mortar does not add a per-payment charge on top. What you pay Mortar is the flat monthly plan, and that is the whole bill from us.
That is the honest differentiator. A lot of field service tools bundle a payments product where the vendor sits between you and your money and marks up the processing. Mortar does not sit in the flow. The full breakdown of what the software actually costs to run — including Stripe’s cut — is in the real cost of field service software.
Deposits at signature and cards on file
For bigger jobs you do not want to float the materials. Ask for a deposit when the customer signs the quote — a fixed amount or a percentage — and the deposit charges to the same Stripe account the moment they accept. You buy the parts with their money, not yours, and the balance invoices when the work is done.
For work that repeats, the customer’s card or bank draft can stay on file. That is the same rail recurring billing runs on: weekly, biweekly, or monthly charges on the saved payment method, so a maintenance plan or a mowing route bills itself without you sending an invoice each cycle. The mechanics are in how to bill recurring service customers.
The invoice feeds the P&L automatically
The moment a payment clears, it posts to your books. Bookkeeping in Mortar is cash-basis — revenue lands when the money does — so a paid invoice is a line on your profit-and-loss statement without you re-entering it in a separate ledger. The number on the quote, the invoice, and the P&L is the one total, read three ways, not three copies you reconcile by hand.
One number, from quote to books
The total is computed in one place and carried untouched from the signed quote to the invoice to the cash-basis P&L. When your books say a job brought in $4,200, the invoice was $4,200 and the quote was $4,200 — because nothing was re-keyed between them.
To reconcile against what actually cleared your bank, import your bank activity by OFX/QFX file. You get a real P&L off the same data that runs your pipeline — the shared-record architecture behind all of this is laid out in what a field service CRM should actually do.
What’s included in each plan
Invoicing and payments on your own Stripe are in every plan — they are part of the quote-to-cash core, not an add-on you pay extra for. Three flat plans, seats included, no per-technician fee:
- Solo — $39/month, 1 seat. The full quote-to-cash core — contacts, estimating with e-sign, invoicing, and card or bank draft (ACH) payments on your Stripe — plus a lead and job board. Everything above about sending an invoice and getting paid works on Solo.
- Core — $99/month, 5 seats. Adds Dispatch — scheduling and recurring/subscription billing (weekly, biweekly, monthly) — plus the website contact form you embed on your own site. This is the plan where cards on file bill themselves.
- Suite — $179/month, 15 seats. Adds cash-basis bookkeeping, marketing (lead attribution, campaigns, review requests, follow-ups), and white-labeled customer documents with no Mortar footer.
Your field tech never sees the money
Permissions are per person, and this is product-wide — not a plan upsell. A field tech sees the job, the address, and the schedule, but never the margin, the invoice, or the finances. The office runs the numbers; the crew runs the work.
Does Mortar take a cut of my payments?
No. Payments run on your own connected Stripe account and settle directly to your bank — card or bank draft (ACH). Mortar builds the invoice and books the payment; it never holds your money or adds a per-payment charge. Stripe’s standard processing fee applies, and that fee is Stripe’s, not ours.
Can I take bank draft (ACH) payments, not just cards?
Yes. The invoice link lets the customer pay by card or bank draft (ACH). On a large invoice, bank draft (ACH) usually costs less than a card, so you can steer big-ticket work to it and keep the card option for smaller jobs.
Do I have to re-enter the invoice total from my quote?
No. The invoice is generated from the signed quote — same line items, same total — so nothing is re-keyed. That is the point: the number the customer accepted is the number they are billed, and the same number posts to your cash-basis P&L when it clears.
Which plan includes invoicing and payments?
All of them. Invoicing and card or bank draft (ACH) payments on your own Stripe are in the quote-to-cash core on every plan, starting with Solo at $39/month. Recurring/subscription billing on a saved payment method starts on Core ($99/month).
Building Mortar — the all-in-one CRM for service businesses. One shared record, one number behind every job.