Billing a Project or Task

The task module can accommodate a variety of billing options such as time & Materials billing or flat rate billing. Some tasks such as sales tasks, internal projects, or support calls are not invoiced at all. Normally, customers will only be invoiced for the tasks that contain billable time. Review the Billable Time section for more details on determining billable time.

Costs can be applied to a serialized item rather than billing a customer:  This option is useful when processing a worker order for equipment or vehicles that are being resold.  Review Tasks > Creating Tasks > Linking Tasks to a Serialized Item for instructions on this powerful tool for trade-in equipment, up-fitters, or other serialized items that are sold after the work order is processed.  

Complete the following steps to invoice a customer for a task:

  1. Click on the Billing tab of the task for billing details as shown below:

  2. The Invoice section of the Billing tab identifies the invoice or sales order that is attached to the task. The View button will be disabled and the Select button will be active if no invoice or sales order is associated with the task.

  3. Proceed to step 7 if the task is already attached to an invoice or sales order.

  4. Enable the Update document quantity from billable time option to calculate the quantities within the sales order or invoice.

  5. Click on the Select button on the Billings tab of a task to link an invoice to the task as shown above. The Link to Invoice dialog will open as shown below:
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  6. Select the first option to create a new sales order or invoice. Select the I want to link this task to an existing invoice option to append the item to an existing sales order. The second option allows the user to attach tasks to sales orders or processed invoices by changing the Status query. The recommended Status query is the Sales Order option since additional time can only be appended to sales orders. Click on an existing sales order and click the View Invoice button to open an existing invoice or order.

  7. Click on the OK button and the following dialog will open if a Service inventory item is attached:

  8. Click on the Yes button to create a new line on the sales order, Existing Line to add the time to an existing line with the same Service inventory item, or No to manually enter the service code line. The Existing Line button will be disabled if no existing line exists that contains the specific Service inventory code.
    The invoice will open after the wizard is completed if the View the invoice after linking option found on the invoice list page was enabled.
    The quantity of the service time that is inserted within the invoice is calculated using the Billable Time * the Hours per Unit.  Both of these values are found within the Billing tab of the task. The billing items must be manually inserted into the invoice or sales order if the Service Item found within the Advanced tab of the task is blank. Review the Creating Tasks > Attaching a Task to a Service Item section for more details about the service item.
    Tasks can also be attached directly from a sales order or when a proposal is used to create a sales order. Review the Creating Tasks > Creating a Task from a Proposal or Quote or Creating Tasks > Creating a Task from an Invoice sections respectively for more details.

  9. Click on the View button to view the attached sales order or invoice. Click on the Disassociate button to remove the sales order from the task. Disassociating an invoice from the task will NOT delete or remove the sales order.
     

  10. Review Compiling Billing Notes for instructions to compile the billing notes within the billing invoice.  

  11. Process the invoice from the invoice window. Review the Sales > Invoices > Processing a Sales Invoice section within the sales manual for more details on processing an invoice. Review the Sales > Invoices > Batch Processing section of the sales manual for details on processing a batch of sales orders.

Note that all materials are immediately placed on a sales order. Any invoice processing includes all the materials added to a tab. Review the Recording Parts or Materials section for details on adding parts to a sales order or invoice.

Review Customizing Task Views > Associated Tasks to show multiple associated tasks for an invoice or customer within a task.

Tasks with billable time can be applied to a job instead of being invoiced. Review the Using Tasks and Job Costing section for more details on tasks within a job.