Billable Items

Billable items provide a flexible and versatile set of billing options, allowing you to bill for services using ad-hoc billing cycles, or configure the system to group and invoice them immediately or on a given date or event in the future.

You can view a list of billable items at Billing > Billable Items.

Billing Options

You can set a billable item to one of five billing options:

Don't invoice for now — Keep it in the client's account as an unbilled item.
Invoice on Next Cron Run — Generate an invoice for it the next time your daily cron job runs.
Add to User's Next Invoice — Add it to the next automated recurring renewal invoice that the system generates for products and services.
Invoice as Normal for Due Date — Set a specific date on which the item is due. The system will invoice it X days in advance, like all other products and services.
Recur — Set the item to recur every X number of Days, Weeks, Months, or Years for a defined or unlimited number of times. If a number is defined, it represents the total number of invoices to be generated.
Invoice Count — Displays the current number of invoices associated with the billable item. This increments each time an invoice is generated.

Creating a Billable Item

To create a billable item:

Click Add New.
Enter a description for the item, which should appear on the generated invoice.
Enter the amount to bill (the system will apply taxes as normal when the invoice generates).
Choose an invoice action from the ones above. If recurring, also enter how frequently and how many times to recur. Entering 0 in the times box will result in it recurring indefinitely.
Finally, if you have selected the "Invoice as Normal for Due Date" or "Recur Every" invoice action then you may specify a (Next) Due Date value to determine when the system will generate the first invoice by this billable item.
Leave invoice count at zero and then click to Save.

Managing Billable Items

You can review billable items on the Billable Items tab in a specific client's profile area or collectively in the Billing > Billable Items area. When editing a billable item, there will be a list of all invoices that the system has generated for it below the item's detail. This allows you quick and easy access to the invoice(s) relating to that item. In most cases, it will be just one but for recurring items the list will show all.

Products vs. Billable Items

To ensure the best experience for your clients, it's important to know when a billable item or a product would be more appropriate. The differences are:

Only staff can add billable Items. Clients can add products via the public order form.
The client area doesn't display billable Items. The "My Services" page in the client area displays products.
Invoices for both Billable Items and Products will be visible to clients and staff.
Billable Items can generate one-time or recurring invoices with any frequency from daily upwards. Products can generate one-time or recurring invoices on specific billing cycles only (Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually, Annually, Biennially, or Triennially).
Typically, you should use billable Items for items unique to an individual client, and use products for items that many clients will buy.

Time Billing

A feature of billable items is the creation of time billing entries, a method of billing for time working on a project (without the added features or complexity of the Project Management Addon).

For example, if you wanted to record that you had completed one hour of consultation work at $50/hour, 2 hours of design work at $80/hour, and 1 hour of travel time at $25/hour, you could save time by entering this using the time billing UI.

Add Time Billing Entries Screen

To do this:

Navigate to Clients > View/Search Clients.
Select a client.
Click the Billable Items tab.
Click Add Time Billing Entries.

You can then complete the fields to enter details of the work that you performed. You can use the "Item" menus to automatically load in details of your products to save time entering them. The system won't link these to a product or service and they are purely a time-saver. You can enter custom items by leaving the dropdown as "None" and entering the description, hours, and rate manually.

Clicking Add Entries will then create these billable items. All items that you create from this page will have the Don't Invoice for now invoicing option.

When it's time to invoice the client for the work, you can select the billable items from the Billable Items tab and click Invoice Selected Items.

Documentation