Linking an invoice or quote to a budget line

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.
• A budget line picker — searchable dropdown of every leaf line in your tree.
• 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.

05Splitting 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.

06Editing 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.

07Common questions

The dropdown does not show my new budget line. The picker only lists leaf lines (lines with no children). If your new line is a category, add a child under it and link to that. The category will roll up automatically.

I see "Cannot link to a category" when I confirm. Same root cause: somewhere in your assignments, a budget line that has child lines is selected. Pick the leaf instead.

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.

08What if it goes wrong

• The Confirm button is greyed out? At least one line item has an amount that exceeds the line item total, or no budget line picked. Walk the cards top to bottom — the offending one is highlighted.
• 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.

09Related

• Splitting one invoice across multiple budget lines
• Reading your budget status
• Net, VAT, and total — what Hemma uses where
• My budget total looks wrong