The bill that has to be right, on time, every month, for every partner you have.

Joint interest billing is the process by which the operator of an oil or gas well bills each working interest owner for their proportional share of the costs of drilling, completing, and operating that well. The operator pays the costs up front, then allocates them among the partners according to their working interest percentages as set out in the joint operating agreement (JOA) and its attached COPAS accounting procedure. Each partner receives a monthly joint interest billing statement showing their share of each charge.

A JIB statement is the monthly invoice an operator sends a working interest owner. It typically shows each property the owner holds an interest in, the owner's working interest decimal, the joint account charges for the period broken out by category — intangible drilling, completion, lease operating expense, workovers, overhead — the owner's proportional share of each, any prior balance or cash call credits, and the net amount due. Statements commonly run several pages per owner because each property is itemized separately.

Traditionally, by mail: the accounting system prints the full run, staff separate it by owner, stuff and meter envelopes, and mail them. Increasingly operators deliver JIB statements electronically instead — emailing each partner their own statement and posting it to an owner portal the same day the run completes. Electronic delivery removes print and postage cost, removes transit time from the payment cycle, and creates a delivery record showing exactly what was sent to whom.

COPAS is the Council of Petroleum Accountants Societies. Its accounting procedures are commonly attached to or incorporated into the joint operating agreement, and they define how costs may be charged to the joint account — including standardized cost classifications and the fixed overhead rates an operator may charge per well by status, escalated annually. JIB statements are prepared to comply with the JOA and its COPAS accounting procedure, and joint interest audits test that compliance.

With DropJib, yes. The joint interest bill arrives with a way to pay it from inside the statement, so a partner can settle when they read it instead of routing a check through their own accounts payable weeks later. Payments come back tied to the owner, the period, and the property, with remittance detail attached.

You need a record that ties each statement to a recipient, a timestamp, and a delivery result. DropJib keeps that record for every run: which owner received which statement, when it was sent, whether it was opened, whether it was re-sent, and what changed since the prior period. Any statement from any prior period can be retrieved or re-sent without rebuilding the run.