Bill projects based on task completion
You can set up a billing structure for your customer to bill them parts of the line items based on the completion percentage of the project or milestones. Milestone billing will create an invoice based on the hours assigned to tasks and the completion percentage of those tasks. Project percent billing will allow you to create a billable item for each line item on the project up to the total completion percentage of the project; these billable items can be added to an invoice with fixed price or time and materials items.
Partial Billing Using Invoice Split %
You can use the Invoice Split % to partially bill your projects without using a % Complete Service Billing Group. You would bill the item in a similar manner, but the main difference is that the Invoice Split % in this case is not automatically set based on your project tasks and can be edited.
To set up a line item for this type of billing, you will need at least one Service Billing Group that does not use any Special Billing Instructions. Navigate to Settings > Billing > Service Billing Groups.
Edit an existing, or create a new Service Billing Group, and choose 'None' for ‘Special Billing Instructions’.
You also need to make sure that you have a Service Product that can be on an order and is set to use Partial Invoicing. You can add or edit Service Products by navigating to Settings > Products > Service Products.
Important
Make sure the service product is set to use some form of Partial Billing. The product cannot be set to ‘No Partial Invoicing,’ or it will not be able to be invoiced.
The next step is to create an order with your service product. On the order creation product page, add or edit a service line item, and make sure the Service Billing Group is one that does not have any special billing, or leave the item Unassigned to a Service Billing Group.
Once you have completed an order, you will need to create a project to be associated with that order. This allows you to track the project completion and bill the line items accordingly. When you create a new project and select an order to associate with it, it creates a ‘skeleton’ project with milestones and tasks based on its service line items.
As your project progresses, depending on how you configured your project, the Percent Complete on each task will either update automatically, or you can manually change the percent.
To create a partial invoice using Invoice Split %, click on the + icon in your top menu, then select Add Partial Invoice. Use the search fields to find the items from your project. This will bring up all of the service items that can be invoiced partially.
Click on the Create Invoice action icon for your line item, and you will see an Invoice Split % field in the pop-up. Because your service line item is not tied to a % Complete Service Billing Group, this percent is not automatically set based on the associated task. You can edit this field as you see fit, then choose an invoice template and generate the invoice to be billed.
Updated 2/23/2023