Fergus for Builders: Job Costing and Progress Claims, With Fergus AI

Set up one Fergus job per contract, give each claim stage its own phase, bill from the quote by section or percentage, and read the Financial Summary before every claim. Record supplier invoices and labour against the right phase weekly. Purchase orders need the Professional plan, and the Fergus Assistant drafts and prepares but asks you to confirm before sending.

Two honest limits first. Fergus's help pages call this "Invoicing Progress Payments" and describe billing a quote by percentage, by remainder or by quote section. They do not mention retention, claim numbers or cost codes, so a contract that needs those should be tested on the free trial before you commit. And Fergus AI, the proactive version, is labelled as in beta on Fergus's own help page; the Fergus Assistant is the part you can use today. Everything below was read from Fergus's pages in October 2026, and the sums are illustrations.

Follow me on Instagram@sagnikteaches

Plan the six claim stages before you open Fergus

Fergus will bill whatever structure you give it, so the structure comes first. The running example is a rear extension and kitchen refit priced at $142,000 ex tax, with a planned direct cost of $116,440, which is a planned margin of $25,560 or 18.0%. The contract pays in six stages. Write the stages, the percentages and your expected cost per stage in one table before you create anything.

Connect on LinkedInSagnik Bhattacharya

Two things in that table are worth seeing before Fergus gets involved. The first stage looks like a 36.6% margin only because the cost lags the claim; it is cash, not profit. And the groundworks stage runs at 13.1%, the thinnest of the six, so a small overrun there hurts most. After the third claim you will have billed $71,000 against $57,700 of planned cost, which means the contract is financing you by $13,300 for as long as you keep claiming on time. That is the reason to treat claims as a weekly discipline and not as month-end paperwork. If you want to model what each claim does to your bank balance, the construction cash flow forecast tutorial builds one.

Subscribe on YouTube@sagnikteaches

Build the job so each stage has a quote section and a phase

Fergus gives you two structures that line up with a staged contract, and you want both pointing the same way. Divide the quote into sections named after the stages. Then add a job phase for each stage, because every phase has its own job card with its own schedule, time entries and materials, and the job number picks up a letter for each one (Job-1a, Job-1b and so on, as Fergus's help article shows).

1. Create the customer, site and job, then the quote. The Fergus Assistant can set up all three from one sentence, and if more than one record matches it asks for more detail before going ahead, but the stage structure is still yours to define.
2. Divide the quote into sections that match the table above and keep the margin visible at quote level, so you can see whether the section prices add up to your planned $142,000.
3. Leave the deposit setting off for a staged contract. Fergus's "Add Required Deposit" option (default 50%, changeable in Quote settings) raises a deposit invoice automatically when the customer accepts, but its help article says the feature is designed for single-phase jobs with one deposit and one final invoice. On a six-stage job, raise the 10% first stage as claim 1 instead, so every claim comes from the same quote-section route.
4. Accept and activate the quote so it becomes a live job, then use "Add Job Phase" in the bottom-left of the job card to add one phase per stage with a clear title.
5. Set labour rates once for the company. Fergus moved these to a company-wide list under Settings, Time Entries, Labour rates, where each named rate has a customer-facing name, a pay-rate multiplier (the cost of that time), a charge-out rate and a "cost when pricing" figure for quotes. Only people with the permission to edit pay and charge-out rates can see the tab. Fergus's help article says existing staff were migrated with placeholder names such as "Rate type A", so rename them before a customer sees one on an invoice.
6. Save the finished structure as a job template (Job Settings, Save as Template) so the next extension starts with the same phases. Note that a template's contents cannot be edited afterwards; to change one, save an updated job as a new template and retire the old one.

Phases do not force you onto the dearer plan. On both versions of Fergus's pricing page the comparison table ticks Job Phases for Essentials and Professional alike, while tasks, checklists, purchase orders and most of the reports (customer invoice, supplier document, staff, business and financial reporting) are ticked for Professional only. The ticks are images rather than text, and the trial covers the Essentials plan, so open a trial job and confirm that "Add Job Phase" appears before you plan around it.

Costs on the right phase: labour, invoices and purchase orders

A job cost report is only as good as where the costs landed. Fergus has three routes in, and each one has a habit that goes wrong.

Time. Staff log time against a job, and phase-level schedules mean app users see the specific phase in their day. Check once that every rate in the dropdown has a name your crew will recognise; a placeholder such as "Rate type A" invites the wrong pick.

Supplier invoices. These go in through the Supplier Documents tab on the job card. Fergus's reconciliation view lets you compare an "invoice to come" with the invoice that arrives, auto-matches lines with identical names and prices, and marks anything left over as partially reconciled. Back costing keeps a job in its Supplier Reconciliation column until every supplier invoice is marked as Received.

Purchase orders. Raise them from the Costing menu or the Purchase Orders tab on a phase, using "Import from quote" to bring in the section you priced. Fergus's help article states that purchase orders are available only on the Professional plan. It does not say how committed cost, meaning ordered but not yet invoiced, shows on the job, so ask for that to be demonstrated.

A realistic mistake shows why the phase matters. A $3,900 steel invoice gets booked to groundworks instead of the frame. Groundworks then shows $22,400 of cost against a $21,300 claim, a loss of $1,100 or negative 5.2%, while the frame stage looks like a 25.9% margin at $26,300 of cost. The total is unchanged, so the claim and the overall margin are right, but you will conclude that groundworks is a disaster and price the next slab wrongly. A 30-minute Friday routine prevents it: open each active job's Cost Report (it lists phase, cost type, item, quantity, unit and total cost, unit and total price, markup and the dates), sort by entry date, and check this week's entries sit on the phase the work belongs to.

Raising a claim: percentage, quote section or remainder

Fergus's progress-payment steps are short. In the Invoicing section of the job card, choose "Create Invoice from Quote" and pick one of three options, then approve and send. Which one you pick depends on how your contract describes the payment.

After sending, mark the phase complete. Fergus's help article suggests exactly this pattern, using phases such as Rough-In and Fit-Off. For a charge-up job with no quote, the sequence differs: add the costs, create a quick invoice for the current phase, approve it, tick the phase as invoiced, then create a new phase so later invoices contain only the new costs.

The percentage option leaves one gap worth closing yourself. The invoice line says what proportion of the quote this claim represents, but the help pages I read do not describe a running total of earlier claims on the document. Put that in your cover wording. Fergus has job templates and favourites (reusable line items) but I found no separate claim-template feature, so keep a short claim note with your standard fields and paste it into the email or the invoice notes:

Claim 3 of 6: Frame and roof. Work complete to the stage described in the contract, photos attached. This claim: 25% of contract, $35,500. Claimed to date: 50%, $71,000. Balance to claim: 50%, $71,000. Payment due [date] as per the contract.

If you want an AI second opinion on the wording or the arithmetic before it goes out, can AI check a payment application covers what it can and cannot verify, and the stage-payment invoice template tutorial has wording to start from.

Reading the Financial Summary before the claim goes out

Each job card has a Financial Summary, and Fergus's own advice is to check it throughout the job, not only at the end. It opens with an Overall Position (green when on track, red when limits are exceeded), a bar comparing costs to date with the initial quoted amounts, and a billable bar showing invoiced amounts against the balance still to bill. Below that sit sections for Overview (billable amount, invoiced, uninvoiced and uninvoicable costs, Potential Profit), Profit Margins, Spent Costs, Labour Hours, and a Job Phase Breakdown. You can download the lot as a CSV. The Profit Margins section only appears once the first invoice has gone out, which on a staged job means after claim 1, and it shows three figures side by side: the Billable/Priced Margin you quoted, the Current Margin to Date, and Margin Breathing Room, the buffer left above the quoted margin.

Two cautions from the same help article. "Potential Profit" is described as a running estimate, not final profit, because the true figure is only known when all costs are in and the job is fully invoiced. And on jobs without a quote, projected profit can read negative until invoicing starts.

Here is the check I would run at claim 3 on the running example. Costs recorded so far are $59,900 against $57,700 planned, so the job is $2,200 over plan to date. Against the $71,000 billed, that is a margin of $11,100, or 15.6%, compared with the 18% you quoted. That is a gap, not a crisis. Now add $4,800 of timber invoices that have arrived in the office but not been entered. The cost is $64,700, the margin is $6,300, and the real figure is 8.9%. The Summary was telling the truth about what it had been given. The claim still goes out on time, because the stage is complete, but the next two things to do are different: finish entering invoices, and find where the $2,200 came from, because an extra the client asked for should become a variation.

Fergus's back-costing board supports the same habit at job level. When all labour is marked complete the job appears in a Back Costing column under Costing Confirmation, jobs with unreconciled supplier invoices sit in Supplier Reconciliation, jobs with costs added after invoicing are highlighted red, and "Mark as Ready to Invoice" moves a confirmed job to the Invoicing column. Use it at completion; use the Financial Summary at every claim.

Variations are new jobs, phases are stages

Builders get this wrong in the first month, so decide it once. Fergus's help article on phases versus variations draws the line: a variation creates a new job linked to the original, with its own job number, and it is the route when you need another quote because each job can only have one accepted quote. A phase keeps the same job number with a letter and is for stages of work you want to track and invoice separately.

The Financial Summary has a toggle for which variations are included, so you can see the margin with and without them. Use it when a client disputes the final figure. For pricing the variation itself, how small builders use AI on variations and change orders has worked prompts.

Fergus Assistant and Fergus AI on claims day

Fergus describes three AI pieces. The Fergus Assistant works on the web app and in Fergus Go: it finds job and customer details, prepares quotes and invoices, drafts customer messages and reports on numbers, and Fergus says it asks for confirmation before supported customer-facing actions such as sending an invoice. It follows each user's permissions. Fergus's help centre says the tools are included in your current subscription at no extra cost "for now". Fergus AI is the proactive layer, still in beta (more on it after the prompts). And the Fergus MCP Server connects Claude or ChatGPT to your account (covered below and in the FAQ).

Prompts 1, 2 and 4 are adapted from Fergus's own example use cases and prompt 3 is mine. Put the job number in rather than a customer's name, and always read the preview.

1. Before payroll, whose time is missing this week? And which finished jobs or phases
   haven't been invoiced?

2. The frame and roof phase on job [number] is complete. What's left to bill on that job?
   Prepare the invoice from the quote sections and show me before anything sends.

3. Draft the email to go with that invoice: what has been completed, what this claim covers,
   claimed to date and balance to claim, and the due date. Plain, friendly, no jargon.

4. Here's the supplier quote for the underfloor heating on job [variation number]. Bring the
   lines into a draft quote, add 16 hours of labour and show me the margin.

Prompt 1 earns its place on a Friday, because unbilled finished work is the commonest leak on a staged job. Prompt 2 is the one to supervise. Say the preview shows a 25% invoice with the right job number, but the percentage option has been picked when your contract lists stage values, so the invoice reads "25% of the original quoted price" with no breakdown. The fix is to say "use the quote sections option" in the prompt. A subtler failure is a second job at a similar address, so read the job number and phase in the preview before approving.

Prompt 4 prices a variation, and it needs two checks. First, where the draft lands: it belongs on the linked variation job, because the original job already has its one accepted quote, so if it appears on the original job, stop and move it before anyone sends it. Second, the margin. Say the supplier's lines total $4,100, your labour rate's "cost when pricing" is $45 an hour and you mean to charge the $6,800 from the variations table above. The cost is $4,100 plus 16 hours at $45, or $4,820, so the margin should read $1,980, or 29.1%. If the draft shows $1,580 (23.2%), it has costed the hours at the $70 charge-out rate, which usually means the rate's "cost when pricing" field holds the charge-out figure. Fix the rate before you trust the next quote.

Fergus AI is the part of the title that is not generally available yet. Fergus's "What is AI at Fergus?" article lists it as coming soon and in beta, says it can surface work that needs your attention, prepare emails, follow-ups and job notes, prepare and review quotes and invoices, and show business information in reports or graphs, and adds that it lines up the next step for you to review while you keep the final say. To take part, you contact Fergus Support. If you get in, give it one claims-day test: on a Friday, does its list of work needing attention include a finished phase that has not been invoiced, before you have typed prompt 1? If it does, it is doing the Friday sweep for you. If it does not, keep running the prompt and judge the beta again in a month.

The Fergus MCP Server is a different kind of step. Fergus's article describes it as giving an AI assistant a login to your account, with read and write access to jobs, quotes, customers and notes, and read-only access to invoices, time entries and price books. It needs a Full User with Master User permission and sees the same data as a Master Admin, which includes financials. That is useful for a question like "list my open quotes older than 30 days", and risky enough that I would limit it to one trusted person and check every answer against Fergus itself. For a broader view of where AI sits on a small builder's office stack, the ServiceM8, Tradify or Fergus comparison by business size is a good next read.

Plans, price and the region check

Fergus bills per user per month with no yearly plans. The regional page I read first listed Essentials from $31 and Professional from $44 per user a month, with a 14-day free trial that its FAQ describes as covering Essentials. The global page showed Basic from $53 and Professional from $75 for what reads as the same two tiers, and a limited-offer banner was live on both. Neither page names its currency next to the dollar sign. Treat the price as "from", open the page for your own region, and ask what you will pay after any offer ends.

So the plan question for a four-person building firm is narrower than it looks: are purchase orders, tasks, checklists and the supplier-document and financial reports worth $52 a month more than Essentials ($176 against $124, before add-ons)? Phases and the job card's Cost Report come with both. A firm that orders materials by phone and checks supplier invoices by hand can run staged claims on Essentials. A firm that orders against each quote section, or has had a supplier invoice arrive with no order behind it more than once a month last quarter, will usually find Professional's purchase orders worth the difference. The Assistant costs nothing extra on either plan today, so it does not change the sum.

A dry run on a finished job, and six questions for Fergus

Before you move live work in, rebuild one finished job on the trial. Pick one where you know the real outcome from your accounts. Create the quote with the stage sections, add the phases, enter the actual supplier invoices and time, then raise every claim in order. Judge it on four things: the claims add up to the contract value exactly, the Financial Summary's margin lands within a point or two of your accountant's figure, each phase's cost matches the invoices you booked to it, and it took you under half a day. If it misses, find out whether the cause is your data or the software.

Then put these questions to Fergus, because the help pages I read are silent on them:

• Can a claim document show earlier claims, this claim and the balance on one page?
• How are retention, held back and released, recorded and billed?
• Can claims be numbered automatically per job?
• Can costs carry codes that map to my accountant's chart of accounts?
• How does a purchase order show as committed cost before the supplier invoice arrives?
• When I invoice by quote section, does a half-complete section have a way to bill part of it?

If the answers fit your contracts, Fergus is a sensible, low-cost way to get job costing and staged billing under control. If two or more are a no, compare it against Tradify's stage payments or a construction-specific package before you move your data.

Fergus questions builders ask before switching

Does Fergus charge extra for the Assistant?

Fergus's Assistant FAQ says the tools are included in your current monthly subscription at no extra cost for now, and that Fergus will say clearly before any new pricing applies. The same help centre describes Fergus AI, the more proactive version, as in beta with access through Fergus Support. Check both on the day you sign up.

Can Fergus handle retention on progress claims?

The help pages I read do not mention retention, claim numbers or cost codes. They describe billing a quote by percentage, by remainder or by quote section. If your contracts hold back retention or need numbered claims, test that exact case on the free trial and ask Fergus to show it before you commit.

Can Claude or ChatGPT read my Fergus jobs?

Fergus publishes an MCP server that connects Claude or ChatGPT to your account. It reads and writes jobs, quotes and customers, and reads invoices, time entries and price books. It needs a Full User with Master User permission and sees what a Master Admin sees, financials included, so connect it deliberately and check every figure it reports.

Is job costing only on the Professional plan?

No. Fergus says the Cost Report is available on every job card, and its plan table ticks job phases on both plans. Tasks, checklists, purchase orders and most reports (customer invoice, supplier document, staff, business and financial reporting) are ticked for Professional only, and a help article confirms purchase orders are Professional only. The ticks are images, so confirm on the trial, which covers Essentials.

Further reads

• Tradify vs Fergus for Plumbers and Electricians: AI Features Compared — Fergus and Tradify AI features set side by side.
• JobTread Pricing for a Five-Person Builder: What You Pay and What AI Adds — See a builder-specific alternative and what its AI costs.
• Roofing Accounting Software: Deposits, Progress Invoices, Job Costing, AI — Deposits, progress invoices and job costing in an accounting package.
• AI Driven Accounting Software for Contractors: What Job Costing Needs — What job costing needs from your accounts software.
• JobTread vs Buildertrend for a Small Builder: Price, AI and Fit — JobTread publishes $199 plus $20 per extra user; Buildertrend sells by quote. Compare price, AI and fit with a scorecard and a two-hour test.
• Property Maintenance Software: Jobber, ServiceM8 and Fergus Compared — Which job software suits a property maintenance firm? Tenants, managers and recurring visits compared, with a triage prompt for tenant texts.
• Tradie Apps: Quote, Schedule and Invoice Tools Compared, With AI Features — Tradify, ServiceM8, Fergus and Jobber scored on the AI each one documents for quotes, schedules and invoices, with list prices and a trial script.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Fergus pricing pages (a regional page and the global page), and Fergus help centre articles on invoicing progress payments, job phases, phases versus variations, Cost Report, Financial Summary, back costing, reconciling supplier documents, purchase orders, deposits for quotes, labour rates, job templates, Fergus Assistant FAQs, getting started and use cases, What is AI at Fergus, and the Fergus MCP Server, all read in October 2026.