Invoice your billable hours and see project margin

Turn a month of logged hours on a project into an invoice from the project itself, then read what each phase invoiced against what it cost.

BillingIntermediate10 minutesDay 17 of 30

Topics:Invoicing and financeProjects and time trackingGetting started

Before you start

In Flowtly you bill logged time from the project itself. The Invoice button on a project opens a drawer that prepares the invoice lines for one month, from the hours logged on the project and the billing rate each person has there. You check the lines, open them in the invoice form and save.

The margin is read on the same project, under Project financials and its Phase margin sub-tab. It sets what each phase invoiced against its labour cost and direct cost, and adds a Whole project row. It works per phase, so it needs a project split into phases.

Permissions you need: Invoices manager to see the Invoice button, Projects manager to add billing rates, and Account manager or Profitability viewer to open Project financials. An administrator sees all of them.

What you will have at the end

The month's billable hours are on a saved invoice tied to the project, and you can read the project's margin by phase.

What you need

  • A project with a client, and hours logged on it in the month you want to bill.
  • A billing rate on the project for every person whose hours you bill.
  • The Invoices manager permission to invoice, and Account manager or Profitability viewer to read the margin.

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Step-by-step

Complete the flow

  1. 1

    Check that every person has a billing rate

    Open Projects in the side menu and open the project you want to bill. Click Members in the page header. The Rate column shows each person's current billing rate on this project. Click a rate to see its history. In that window, Add rate adds a new rate and Extend rate carries the latest one forward.

    Tips

    • A person with no rate shows No rate set in the history window. Add a rate before you bill their time.
    • Adding or extending a rate needs the Projects manager permission.
    • A person who is on the project through its parent project shows a dash here. Their rate is set on the parent project.
  2. 2

    Open the invoice drawer on the project

    In the project page header, click Invoice. The Create an invoice drawer opens on the right. Under Period, pick the Month you are billing. The drawer bills one calendar month at a time, from its first day to its last.

    Tips

    • The Invoice button shows only to people with the Invoices manager permission.
    • The invoice is prepared for the client set on the project, so link the project to its client first.
  3. 3

    Choose what goes on the invoice

    Under Scope, tick what to bill: Associated transactions, Assets, Work time log and Include sub-projects. Work time log is the box that brings in the logged hours. Include sub-projects adds the hours logged on the project's phases, and it starts ticked when the project has phases. Untick anything you do not want on this invoice.

    Tips

    • On a Fixed price project, Work time log starts unticked. Its price does not come from hours, so billing logged time on top would charge twice.
    • The Tags filter under Associated transactions narrows only those transactions. It does not change which hours are billed.
  4. 4

    Review the invoice lines

    The Invoice lines section previews the lines the invoice will open with. It is built from the same choices, so what you see is what the form receives. When the lines look right, click Create an invoice at the bottom of the drawer.

    Tips

    • Nothing to invoice for this period with the scope above means the month or the scope has no billable items. Check the Month and that Work time log is ticked.
    • If the preview says some items need attention, you can still continue. The next screen lists exactly which entries are blocking the lines.
  5. 5

    Clear blocked hours and save the invoice

    The invoice form opens with the lines filled in and the project's client selected. If some hours could not be priced, a notice titled Some logged hours have no rate or Some logged hours match more than one rate lists each entry by date, employee, project and hours. Tick Leave off on the entries to exclude and click Draft without the selected rows, or fix the rate and start again from the project. Check the header and the totals, then click Save.

    Tips

    • Each line keeps the project it came from. That link is what ties the invoice to the project.
    • To send the saved invoice to your client, follow the Create an outbound invoice tutorial from its email step.
  6. 6

    Read the project margin

    Back on the project, open the Project financials tab and choose Phase margin. Each phase has one row with Invoiced, Labour cost, Direct cost, Margin and Margin %. The last row, Whole project, also counts what was booked on the project itself, so it is not the sum of the phases. The date range above the table opens on the project's start date through today.

    Tips

    • If the tab says This project has no phases, add one on the Phases tab with Add project phase. Until then, Team costs over time shows the cost of the hours logged on the project.
    • A Margin % that reads nothing invoiced is not zero. Nothing was invoiced in the period, so there is no percentage to show.
    • Project financials needs the Account manager or Profitability viewer permission.

You’re finished!

Your logged hours are now on a saved invoice, and each line carries the project it came from.

Repeat this once a month for each billable project, and check Phase margin after each run to see which phases earn and which do not.

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