Billing & Financials
Billing turns the work recorded on a project into a customer invoice, and the Financials tab shows what that work has earned and cost.
Before you bill
A project can be billed once it has:
- A Customer — without one, a warning is shown and Create Invoice stays disabled.
- A project code, which ties the invoice to the project's other documents.
- A Project Billing Item set in project settings — the service item used for project invoice lines, such as hours, that have no item of their own.
Bill Project
Select Bill Project from the project's actions menu. The dialog previews what the invoice will contain before you commit: Gross, any retainage withheld, and the Invoice total update live as you change the type or amounts. It opens set to the billing type that matches the project's own billing method, so the common case needs no extra choice.
| Billing Type | What it invoices |
|---|---|
| Time Entries | Time entries that are billable, approved and not yet billed, each priced at its hourly rate (or the project's rate). |
| Milestones | Achieved milestones not yet billed — each listed with a checkbox so you can leave any out of this invoice. |
| Fixed Amount | The amount you enter. |
| Progress Billing | A cumulative percent complete against the project's contract value — the total of its contracts that are past draft, or the project's Budget Amount when there are none; what has already been invoiced is subtracted for you. |
| Release Retainage | Offered once the project has retainage outstanding; bills back everything withheld so far. |
Create Invoice stays disabled while the chosen type and amounts add up to nothing billable, with a note explaining why — switch type, or check that time is approved, a milestone is achieved and ticked, or an amount is entered.
When the invoice is created, the time entries and milestones on it are marked Billed so they can't be billed twice. If that invoice is later cancelled or deleted, they return to unbilled and can be billed again.
Retainage
If the project carries a retainage percentage, that share is withheld from every invoice except a Release Retainage one, and the confirmation reports how much was held back so the invoice total doesn't look short by surprise. When the job is done, bill Release Retainage to invoice everything withheld, using the company's Project Retainage Item.
Change orders
An approved change order with a quoted amount raises a billable milestone, so change work is billed through Milestones rather than absorbed. See Change Orders.
The Financials tab
The Financials tab lists the real transactions linked to the project — invoices, bills, purchase orders, payments and expenses — with document number, date, customer or vendor, status, amount and balance. Select a row to open the underlying document. You can also create an invoice, a purchase order or an expense against the project from here.
Cards across the top summarise Revenue (with invoiced and paid figures), Expenses, Outstanding and Gross Profit.
The Actual Cost card breaks the job's cost into Planned, Incurred, Committed (ordered but not yet received) and Billed, with a budget-consumed bar once a planned amount exists — so you can see how much of the budget is spent or already on order before the bills arrive.