WIP reporting tricks?

WIP reporting tricks?

As a small job shop we export invoices a lot, primarily to create build reports information for the shop. We either create different views of the data via Reports or in a spreadsheet.

I live by the ability to limit the export by date and create the export templates. But we need to get down to the WIP- Work in progress which involves filtering. It appears I can use the "Approve" function but it has some mis-steps .

To review the stati: Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, Sent Paid, Overdue, Void, Partially Paid and Unpaid

It should be for orders which are unshipped and still in process.

The tricky part is how to make the status apply with as little input as possible. Firstly it must be beyond the Draftt stage. Using "approve" can result in a  status switch if when payment applies, replacing the "Approve" status with one of the Payment stati. So that works for our WIP as long as we don't book a payment. Similiarly if I "Approve" a draft invoice then send it, it leaves "Approve" status and becomes "Sent". So if want to filter on "Approved" status it must be already sent and not modified with a payment or it loses that key "Approved" status. 

Nicely enough I see that "sending" a draft or new invoice automatically moves it into "Approve" status.

Any payment against the invoice changes status to one of the Paid stati, losing the "Approved"status. So how to keep payments away from the invoice? As a job shop we receive payments all throughout the life of an order because some customers have to follow their own protocol, which varies a bit from customer to customer.

Or- exporting a filtered custom view would be delectable.