How to read a joint interest billing: the header, the 8/8ths column, overhead, and the five checks before you pay.
A joint interest billing is the operator’s monthly invoice to each working-interest owner. It is the well’s costs for the month, with your decimal applied. It is not a vendor bill, and it does not come with the receipts attached.
Every operator lays the page out differently. The words are industry shorthand. The number at the bottom is your share. The numbers above it are the only way to know whether that share is right.
A JIB booked as one amount has already thrown away the only information worth having.
Here is how to read one from the top of the page to the line you actually pay.
Operator, billing period, lease or well, AFE if the charge is capital, and the working interest the bill was calculated on.
The full charge before anyone’s share is taken out. This is the column you audit. Your column is just that number times a decimal.
The amount due. Credits, prior-period adjustments, and overhead sit in this same stack, and they do not all behave like a vendor invoice.
Most JIB arguments start with a bill that was calculated on the wrong well, the wrong month, or the wrong decimal. Read the header against your division order and the joint operating agreement before you look at the charges.
Match it to a well you actually own. Operators reuse names, and a bill for the offset well will look completely plausible.
The statement is usually for the prior month. A charge dated in a later month is often a prior-period adjustment, and it should be labeled as one.
The decimal on the bill has to match the deck. A bill at 0.125000 when you own 0.100000 is a wrong bill, no matter how reasonable the gross costs look.
Drilling, completion, and major work belong to an authorization for expenditure. Lease operating expense does not. The header tells you which pile you are looking at.
The gross column is 100 percent of the well. Your amount should equal that gross times the working interest in the header. If it does not, stop. The rest of the review is wasted until the decimal foots.
Then read the gross lines themselves. A pumper, water hauling, chemicals, power, repairs, insurance, and saltwater disposal are ordinary lease operating expense. Tangible equipment and intangible drilling costs are capital. Overhead is calculated by the operator. Those three do not belong in the same bucket when you book them.
Vendor charges can be traced to an invoice. Several lines on a normal JIB cannot.
A fixed rate from the accounting procedure in the joint operating agreement, usually a producing rate per well per month, a drilling rate, or a construction rate. There is no vendor invoice behind it. The support is the agreement, plus the well count and the days the rate applies to.
Company labor, a district truck, or a tool the operator already owns. The accounting procedure says whether that cost is billed direct or already covered inside overhead. Both, on the same well, is the thing to circle.
A correction to an earlier month, landed on this statement. It should say which month it belongs to. Booking it as this month’s LOE makes both months wrong.
COPAS expects audit adjustments, unusual charges, and intangible drilling costs to be identified on their own, not folded into a summary line called “other.”
Header interest equals your division order. Gross times that interest equals the amount due, line by line, not just in total.
Capital charges tie back to an AFE you signed. A project that has run past the estimate should be visible as its own balance, not hidden inside LOE.
The rate on the bill matches the accounting procedure, including any annual adjustment the agreement allows. A rate from memory is how overhead drifts.
Charges after your effective date out, except costs the agreement still leaves with you, do not belong on this bill.
A direct company-labor line and a producing-overhead line that already covers that labor. Ask which election in the accounting procedure allows both.
Each gross category becomes its own entry, coded to the well: lease operating expense, intangible drilling, tangible equipment, overhead, tax, and any credit. Your share is what hits the accounts if you are the non-operator. The operator’s books usually carry the gross and then cut the partners’ share back out to a receivable.
Either way, the source of the entry is the line on the statement, not the ACH amount that left the bank. The bank proves you paid. The JIB proves what you paid for.
Send last month’s statement. We extract every line, tie the decimal, and code it to the well — overhead, credits, and adjustments included — into the books you already keep.
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You only pay for what you use — no seat fees and no modules you don't need. Pricing is a monthly platform fee plus usage on documents processed, ACH payments, mailed checks, and the workflows you turn on. We size it to your actual monthly close so it scales with the work, not your headcount.
A smaller operator running 25 documents, 10 ACH payments, and 2 mailed checks a month would be priced on that exact volume. A larger operator at 100 documents, 50 ACH payments, and 10 checks pays predictably more. You always know what you're spending because it tracks the actual close.
Joltly connects directly to QuickBooks and Quorum On-Demand Accounting, and supports file-based export workflows for systems like PakEnergy and Integra. It manages accounts, items, vendors, partner mappings, JIB clearing, revenue liabilities, and netting accounts inside your existing setup.
Both sides of settlement. On expenses: invoice review, GL coding, approvals, JIB creation, ACH and check payments. On revenue: statement OCR, partner distributions, remittance emails, and netting between JIB receivables and revenue payouts — so your team replaces spreadsheet work and email follow-up during close.
Yes. Your wells, partners, revenue interests, GL mappings, approval flow, export formats, and partner-facing statements are configured per operator. Most customers go live on their existing chart of accounts and ERP setup — no rebuild required.
Faster than most teams expect. Your AP workflow can be live in less than a week — and you don't need to change your current accounting system. Revenue typically takes about two weeks. The only thing we need from you is a sample revenue statement so we can train the AI on your format.
We set up a Microsoft Teams channel or email channel for your team — whichever you prefer. You'll also get the founders' phone numbers for text messaging when you need a fast answer.
