Invoice more easily, invoice more

Drag ’n’ drop editing, payment schedules, invoicing in foreign currency, fixed price or time spent, customer discounts and much more.

The benefit of joining together time tracking, project management, and invoicing

The core of TimeLog Project is the business process from time tracking over project management to invoicing. This means that when a project is created, the employee has registered time, expenses, travel – or there are rates added to the project – it is quick and easy to create invoices from these registrations.

There are many benefits to automating this process:

• It is easier to invoice. Accounting could save time while gaining new opportunities for reconciliation and quality assurance.
• Project Managers can create and approve invoices.
• Documentation to customers is much better than before – and can achieve the level of detail that customers want.
• Management can follow the entire invoicing process.
• Reports show cost, expected value and realized value from all the dimensions TimeLog Project supports.
• The ability to separate revenue recognition and invoicing.

This gives the company a bigger overview of the invoicing and financials – but it also means that invoicing can be done more often, and more accurately.

At the same time, the precise documenting helps avoid many customer disagreements, and the company stands on strong footing in any disputes.

Automated invoicing – with the opportunity for deviation

In TimeLog Project, a large part of the invoicing can be automated by a variety of settings and rules. Generally, at the customer or project level, settings such as payment conditions, invoice templates, discounts, internal references,and tax calculations, can be configured, which is then used when creating new invoices for that client or project. You can deviate from these rules when creating new invoices, but by this partial automation, many errors are avoided, and billing can be implemented faster. This allows Accounting to focus more on quality assurance and fine-tuning.

Payment schedules and projects at a fixed price

The payment schedule is the link between the project schedule and the project’s invoicing. With payment schedules, you can plan when, how, and for how much a customer should be invoiced. Payment schedules can either be attached to a project at a fixed price, to a fixed price task, or when working on a time spent basis. The project manager can tick a rate in the invoicing schedule as ready for invoicing, and this then appears in the invoicing module.

Project or customer-specific billing

In TimeLog Project, invoicing can be done based on either the client or the project. In the TimeLog Project debtors’ list, you can see the billing potential by client and by project. Choose whether the client should be invoiced collectively, or by project.

Editing invoice lines and billing info

Every company does things in their own way, so there is a strong demand for flexibility when editing invoices. TimeLog project offers big flexibility for just this reason.

In TimeLog Project, you can edit the individual invoice line, move them around using drag and drop, enter totals, subtotals, and headings, and group invoice lines by projects, consultants, etc. Additionally, you can enter products or extra services, if at the last minute, you need to charge the customer extra.

Similarly, you can edit the general information on the invoice. The invoice's appearance and the possible specifications can be adjusted in System Administration. Multiple invoice templates can be created in different languages or for different business units.

Invoice in the customer’s currency

TimeLog Project’s billing module supports foreign currency, so you can invoice in the currency used by customers. The actual currency rates are retrieved automatically by the internet. At the core of TimeLog Project, all amounts are calculated to the systems internal currency, to allow easy comparison of revenue in different currencies.

Completion rate, estimated value, and work in progress

Using the TimeLog EVM expansion module, billing and revenue recognition are separated. The goal here is to handle the financial reporting of complex and larger fixed-price projects. Read more about TimeLog EVM here.

Invoicing process

The invoicing process can be configured in many ways in TimeLog Project. A typical invoicing cycle could be:

1. The project manager creates a project with a budget.
2. The project managers creates a payment plan with rates for the fixed-price portion of the project.
3. The project manager creates phases for time spent.
4. Employees register time, expenses and travel.
5. The project manager assesses ETC and adjusts the budget.
6. The project manager approves the rates for invoicing.
7. The project manager creates an invoice draft for the customer.
8. An accounting employee enters the invoice.
9. An accounting employee prints the invoice and specification, sends it to the customer, and transfers the amount to the financial system.
10. Management can follow the whole process and pull financial reports.

Integration

There are various integration and export opportunities from TimeLog Project for the different financial systems. These range from a simple export of XML or text files with billing information to be entered into the financial system, to the fully-automated integration, where the data is synchronized between the two systems. See integration opportunities to gain an overview of the different integration possibilities.