Billing Review

Billing decisions are made in the Billing Review screen. You can bill on-screen, drilling down to details and checking previewed reports in other windows. Or you can print a Billing Review report and record your decisions on it for later execution.

Those project billing records get displayed in the billing review grid that matches your criteria. For instance, a project manager can restrict the billing records to only those projects that he manages. Additionally, the date filters can restrict what time and expenses to include in billing review. Web Suite allows you to process multiple bills at once.

Billing Review displays a warning if it detects unapproved time or expense entries for the time period that you are billing for.

The Billable Amount for time, Total Expenses, Discounts, Retainer (applied), Percent Complete, Project Journal, Contract Amount and other fields are commonly included in the customizable grid. The Net Bill Amount computes automatically from the work in progress for the project (that matches the date filter), or from a predefined billing record (recurring contract type or a billing schedule record).

Billing records are generated on the Billing Review grid if any of the following criteria are met:

You can change the net bill amount (generate a Write-Up/Write-Down), grant a discount, apply a retainer, exclude individual time and expenses (to be billed later), change WIP items to non-billable (show on detailed invoices but as No Charge), write-off a time or expense (not show it on detailed invoices), and value bill (change the value of individual time and expenses). As needed you can change the invoice date. In short, you can fine-tune a bill before generating a draft invoice or a final invoice.

When you create an invoice, you can create one at a time or batch billing a few or hundreds of billing records at once. Processing and printing invoices requires the proper security permissions.

In a multi-user scenario, while generating bills from Billing Review, sometimes the same entries might be billed twice. This might happen when many users simultaneously use Billing Review and select the same project with billable time and expense entries. Thus, the same entries bill is generated multiple times. In this case, users will be given a warning to prevent multi-generation of same invoice.

The fields at the top of the Billing Review screen set the criteria for the data being entered or reviewed. Depending on security permissions granted to users, they can edit, review, print, etc. the billing records.

The billing records can be viewed on the basis of Client, Project, Project Manager, Client Group, Project Group, Project Manager Group, Client Manager or Contract Type. Whatever is selected in View By field, governs what appears in the From and To filters. For instance, a project manager can restrict the projects displayed to only those he manages by selecting relevant options. You can select the item from the list by clicking $image\Filter_icon.gif$ .

The filters selected here determine which billing records will be brought forward for review and invoicing. Whatever is selected in View By field, governs what appears in the From and To filters. If the View By field shows Project Manager, the filter will show Project Manager From and To. You can review billing records for a range of project managers by placing the first project manager in the 'From' and the last in the 'To' field. To view data for one project manager, place the manager's name in both the From and To fields. The procedure is the same for View By Client, Project, etc. Lists are provided for you to choose from.

Click this link to narrow the list of options (for example, Clients, Projects, etc.) available in the From/To drop-down lists. The Filters (On/Off) check box must be selected to apply the filter criteria.

Additionally, the date filters can be set so that the billing records of a particular time period are invoiced. These fields limit the billing records to the time and expense entries that fall within the date range specified. If you want to bill a particular month's time and expenses, select the first day of the month in the From field and the last in the To field. Select any date within the period you want to display. You can select the date from the drop-down lists, or use the -- (Previous Day), ++ (Next Day) links to increment or decrement the date by one day or Today to select the current date. Alternatively, click $image\Calendar_icon.gif$ to view the calendar.

Clicked, the grid will be filled with billing records based on the selections made in the previous fields.

Billing Review Grid

Web Suite Billing Review grid is your guide to billing and invoicing. It is a series of rows and columns. Each row is a separate billing record for a project. The number of records displayed in the grid will depend on the selection made in the Rows list box.

Mark the check box against the record you want to select for processing. You can also process multiple bills in one go by marking the relevant check boxes.

Contract Type:

Displays the Contract type for the project associated with the billing record, for example, fixed, hourly, etc.

Contract Amount:

The Contract Amount fixed for the project associated with the billing record. When the service amount billed to the project passes the contract amount specified in the Project screen, you are prompted whether to mark the project status as Completed.

Project Name:

The project name associated with the billing record.

Manager:

The Project Manager assigned to the Project.

Client ID:

The client associated with the project whose billing record appears in the grid. When creating a joint invoice, the Client ID assigned to each of the projects must be the same.

Billed:

The total amount billed to date.

Paid:

The total amount paid to date against project invoices, excluding retainers.

Owed:

The account receivable balance for the project. It is calculated as Billed - Paid amount.

Fixed Fee:

Displays the amount charged as fixed fee for the project. It is added to the Net Bill amount.

Retainage:

This is a portion of the Net Bill amount that will be unpaid or retained by the client for a project. This amount is payable on a later date or when the project is completed.

Retainer (P):

The total project retainer available that can be applied or used for the selected project. You can apply any part of this project retainer to the selected project. Retainers must be entered in Payment screen in order for them to be available.

Retainer (C):

The total client retainer available that can be applied or used for the selected client's projects. You can apply client retainer amount to the selected project, if the project retainer is exhausted. Retainers must be entered in Payment screen for a client only in order for them to be available.

MST: The Main Service Tax of the invoice that is not considered part of the contract amount. It equates to: (Service Amount + Service Tax Amount) x (Main Service Tax Percentage). If a project has a Main Service Tax percentage (carried forward from Global Settings or defined in Project screen), Web Suite computes the tax on the total labor when in Billing Review. You can set the ceiling on the MST amount in Global Settings by which Web Suite checks that the total tax amount does not go beyond the limit specified.

Project Status:

Displays the project status —active, main, hold, inactive, etc.

Joint invoice identifier. Enter the same letter or number to join projects for joint invoicing. Project phases and separate projects with the same client can be joined together on a single invoice. This is where you specify the projects for which you want to create a Joint Invoice. Prior to processing invoices, indicate which projects you want to join together. For example, enter the letter "a" in the J column next to three different projects of the same client. Next, mark each of these projects to be processed by checking the Bill column. Projects can be set by default to joint invoicing in Project screen. Joint invoices can be defaulted for all projects of a client by marking the Default to Joint Invoice option in Client screen.

The billable time (in hours) logged to the project. This is a sum of the B-Hours recorded to the project that fall within the date range specified and are billable, unbilled and approved.

Sum of time entry bill amounts for the date range that are billable, unbilled and approved for invoicing. The amount includes taxes applied (Tax 1/2/3) when the entries were originally recorded. The Main Service Tax amount is not part of this value.

The billable expense logged to the project. This is a sum of the expense Charge Amount recorded to the project that falls within the date range specified and are billable, unbilled and approved. The amount includes the expense Tax 1, 2 and 3 amounts but not the Main Expense Tax. This field is a sum of the Exp Amt and Exp Tax Amt.

Discount applied to the invoice prior to processing. The Net Bill amount is reduced by the discount amount. The discount reduces the final invoice amount after taxes have been added. The discount will not reduce the tax amounts of neither service nor expense.

Retainer applied to the invoice prior to processing. Retainer is the advance payment given by the client and can be applied to invoices of that client. The Net Bill amount is reduced by whatever amount is entered here. Retainer reduces the final invoice amount after taxes.

This is the amount due of the invoice, to be billed to the client. It is automatically computed or can be manually entered above.

Mark the check box against the billing record you want to select for processing.

The project's percentage of completion. It is brought forward from the '% Complete' field in the Project screen. It is stored in the invoice record when processed and can be displayed on invoices. It is editable and decimal values can be entered as well. Calculation of the net bill for a selected project will be based on the revised percent complete value entered in this field. The Net Bill will get automatically filled based on the percentage of project completion. This will happen only when there is no Billing Schedule associated with the project nor is its contract type recurring. If a retainer is to be applied to the project (manually or automatically), it will be applied after the Net Bill has been revised according to the % Complete value of the project.

You can only enter a value in this field for projects with a specified contract amount.

Opens the Time Entry Details screen. You can view and edit time data related to the selected records in the grid.

Opens the Expense Entry Details screen. You can view and edit expense data related to the selected records in the grid.

Click to view or add a journal note. It opens the Project Journal screen. You can type as much text as desired into the Journal Note area, insert date-time stamp or link files to it.

Opens the Write-Up/Write-Down screen for the project selected in the Billing Review grid. You can write up (increase) or write down (decrease) the value of time entries according to your requirement.

Turns on/off all filters set in the filters screen. Check this option to apply filters to the drop-downs.

Opens the Billing Review Report. In View By: Project mode, the Project Billing Review report is generated while in View By: Client mode, the Client Billing Review report is generated. For other View By modes, a general Billing Review report is generated. You can preview, export or print the report from here.

Click this button to open a list of projects with or without current activity. This feature is used to include phases which don't have approved time and expenses. Select the ones to include on the invoice by selecting the boxes. Click Done for it to take effect. For example, for a project, phase 1 is complete, phase 2 is billed 40% and phase 3 is billed 20%. Even though phase 1 did not incur any new charges, you can include it on the invoice to show a complete job summary.

After selecting the billing record you want to process draft invoice for in the grid, click this button to generate the draft invoice. After this button is clicked, the billing record will be removed from the grid. If you accidentally generated a draft invoice for the wrong project, you can undo the effect in Invoice Review by reversing the draft invoice. Draft invoice numbers will be stored in <####> format. For instance, if the last invoice number generated was 1234 then the draft invoice number will be stored and displayed as <1234>. The angular brackets will differentiate draft invoice number as temporarily used and if some other person is also generating normal invoices that person will get the next number 1235 and that way there will be no holes in normal invoice numbers generation.

After reviewing or modifying the billing information, you can generate the invoices. Click the button to process and generate the invoices. The invoices are not printed in this step. They can be printed from Invoice Review after they are processed here. In case of any write-up/down, calculations are performed accordingly during the processing of the invoice. After this button is clicked, the billing record will be removed from the grid. If you accidentally generated an invoice for the wrong project, you can undo the effect in the Invoice Review screen by reversing the invoice there.

Close:
Closes the Billing Review screen and takes you to the home page of Web Suite.