Invoices and billing runs

Billing › Invoices is your accounts receivable across every client, with outstanding, overdue and paid-to-date totals at the top.

Invoices

• Every invoice starts as a draft. Nothing reaches the client until you press Send, which also marks it Sent. The client then sees it in the portal and gets an email.
• An invoice needs at least one line: description, quantity and unit price. An invoice with no lines is refused.
• Totals come from the lines. To fix a wrong amount, fix the line. Do not raise a second invoice.
• Status is what the server recorded. Recording a payment moves an invoice to Part paid or Paid by itself. Change the status by hand only to correct a mistake.

Raise an invoice by hand

1. Create the invoice against the client and check the payment terms.
2. Add lines, or pull in unbilled time and received purchase-order items.
3. Choose the tax rate. Never type a tax amount by hand.
4. Read it as the client would: every line clear, every hour explained.
5. Press Send.

When a client queries an invoice, open a ticket for it so the conversation and the outcome are on record.

The monthly billing run

The billing run drafts one invoice per active client for a period. Each invoice collects, in this order:

1. the contract's monthly fee,
2. unbilled billable time that no retainer absorbed,
3. hours used beyond a prepaid retainer,
4. billable mileage,
5. purchase orders received but not yet billed.

The run only ever creates drafts. You review and send them.

Run it

1. Open Billing Runs and choose the period.
2. Use Preview to see what each client would be charged, without writing anything.
3. Start the run. Each client is drafted on its own, so one client's error does not stop the rest. The run keeps a record of what it did and any client it could not bill.
4. Review the drafts and send them.

To run it automatically, turn on automatic billing and choose the day of the month in the finance settings. It then runs at 06:00 on that day.

A run is safe to repeat. Everything it bills is marked as billed, so a second run over the same period picks up only work that arrived since. Fix a missing rate, run again, and only the missing items are added.

Recurring invoices

Operations › Recurring Invoices holds schedules for fixed charges that do not come from a contract, such as hosting. Each one has an amount, a frequency and a start date. The scheduler checks every hour for invoices that are due.

Keep generated invoices as drafts until you have checked a full cycle.

Statements

A client's statement lists every open invoice with its balance and age, grouped as current, 1 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90 and over 90 days. Open it from the client and send it by email from the same screen.

Proration

When a client changes plan part-way through a billing period, the proration tool works out the difference for the days left. A positive result is a charge to add. A negative result is a credit. It counts whole days.

For payments and reminders, see Payments and reminders.