Billing, budgets and profit

Invoice a project's time, milestones or fixed fee into your books, record advances, expenses and materials, and see its profit.

Project managers open a project's Finance tab. Everything made here goes into your books: invoices are your sales invoices, advances are payments received, expenses are your expenses, and materials leave your stock. Accounting sees them exactly as its own.

How the project is billed

Under Billing and budget, choose one way:

Fixed fee - one price for the project, invoiced in parts or in full.
Project hours - every billable hour at the project's rate.
Staff hours - billable hours at each person's rate. Set the usual rates on Settings > Users & roles, or a rate for this project in the list.
Task hours - billable hours at each task's rate (or the project's rate when a task has none).
Milestones - an amount for each milestone, invoiced when it is reached.
Not billed - internal work; its time is not billable.

Also choose the item on the invoices (a service from your items, which brings its tax and HSN / SAC), or just a tax rate.

Bill the client

The Bill the client card lists what can be billed now: approved billable time not billed yet, reached milestones, what is left of the fixed fee, and billable expenses and materials. Tick what to include, set the date, the days to pay and a note, and click Create invoice. The project needs a client (Edit details > Client).

Billed time, milestones, expenses and materials are marked billed and can't be billed twice. To undo, void the invoice in Accounting.

Advances

Click Advance received to record money the client paid upfront (cash or bank). When you create the next invoice, tick Settle it from the advances received and the invoice is paid from it.

Expenses and bills

Record expense - something you paid for the project (it goes into your books as an expense). Tick Bill this to the client to charge it on.
Add from your books - purchase bills and expenses already in Accounting (last 120 days) that aren't on a project yet. Tick them to add them to this project.

Materials from stock

Take from stock moves goods out of your stock (from a warehouse, when you use several) into the project at their cost. Tick Bill these to the client to charge them at the item's sale price on the next invoice. Return puts them back while they aren't billed.

Profit and budget

The top of the Finance tab shows:

Invoiced - what you've billed (before tax), and what is still due.
Costs - time at each person's cost an hour (Settings > Users & roles), expenses and bills, and materials at cost.
Profit and the margin.
Ready to bill - what could be invoiced now.

Set a budget in hours and / or cost. The bars show how much is used; the project's managers are told when it reaches the % you choose, and again when it goes over.

From a CRM deal

On a won deal in CRM, click Start a project. The project gets the deal's name and customer (and a template if you choose one), and the deal shows its projects. The customer's company page in CRM lists their projects too.

Project billing, budgets and profit are in the Professional plan and above.