BILLING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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GUARANTEED
GREAT IDEAS!
How to get the most out of
Clients & Profits reports
Eliminate the small problems.
Use the Accounts Receivable Aging report to keep track of which
clients pay on time and which ones don’t. Find out the problem.
It may be as simple as an incorrect address or contact. Try e-mailing
the invoice as a PDF file to eliminate the delivery time. A small
change in your billing process could get you paid a lot sooner.
Keep the cash flow flowing. Print your cash flow
reports often to help you better plan for future incoming and
outgoing cash needs. You can change the date range to whatever
works best for you.
Leave no cost unbilled. Use the Billing Hot Sheet
to find jobs with unbilled costs. Your billing workflow prints
at the top of this report to make sure you don’t miss a
billing step.
Take the whoops! out of WIP. Run the G/L Accrual
(Costs by dGL) report to show you which vendor costs are unbilled.
This report gives you a detailed look at unbilled outside costs,
which then become the basis for your WIP accrual entries.
Speedy approvals. To have an A/R invoice approved
internally before sending it to the client, e-mail a Billing Preview
of the unposted invoice as a PDF file to the person for approval.
The Billing Preview can be be used internally so that adjustments
can be made before the invoice is posted.
Utilize billing status codes. Since job lists,
job summaries, and work in progress reports show jobs by billing
status, your accounting staff can print their own pre-billing
reports without interfering with the production department’s
job tracking since it’s completely separate. The auto-bill
feature can use billing status codes to automatically create invoices
for all jobs with a billing status of ready to bill.
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Can I bill more than one job at a time?
Yes. With Auto-bill, you can bill all jobs with unbilled tasks within
a certain status code range that you determine. Once the A/R invoices
are added, you’re free to add amounts, delete amounts, or delete
entire invoices if necessary. When ready, many invoices can be posted
at one time as well.
Q. How do I pass along a credit from a vendor to a client?
Add a credit A/P invoice for a job in the amount you’d like to
credit the client account. The next time you bill that job, the credit
is included automatically in the amounts billed, unless the credit creates
a credit balance on a task. If a task has a credit balance, it is not
automatically billed. But you can choose to bill it.
Q. How do I credit a client without a credit A/P invoice?
If there’s no actual credit cost to bill, you can add an A/R invoice
with a negative amount. When posted, a credit A/R invoice reduces the
client’s outstanding balance.
Q. Can I show my client less details on an A/R invoice?
Yes. You have a number of different printing options for A/R invoices
(and estimates, too) besides printing individual task amounts. Roll
up some tasks into other tasks to care
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fully craft what a client sees
printed. The option to “show group totals only” suppresses
individual task amounts and prints one total for each group. To show
even less detail, choose the “grand total only” option,
which suppresses tasks and groups so the invoice prints with only a
single billed amount for the job.
Q. Can I bill more than one client for a single job?
Yes. Use one job ticket to track all outside costs, time, and expenses
associated with the work. At billing time, add as many A/R invoices
as you need to bill the job to whichever clients you like. When adding
the A/R invoice, the client associated with the job appears but can
be edited to any client in your database. This ability is useful in
co-op billing situations. Use estimate or progress/final billing types,
edit the percentage to bill, and let C&P do the math for you.
Q. Can I edit amounts on an unposted A/R invoice?
Yes. If you’ve billed a task and decide to remove it, highlight
the task and click the Remove Amount button. The task and all the billed
costs associated with it are removed from the billing. If you want to
edit individual billed costs, use the billing worksheet after editing
amounts on the A/R invoice. (See article “Inside the Billing Worksheet,”
page 3.)
Q. How can I submit an idea for a report I think should be in
C&P?
Submit your idea to our on-line wish list here.
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