Setup Information Tab FAQs

This section contains FAQs about billing cycles, billing groups, and other billing information.

Can I Base the Retainage on Funded Value for One Task and Contract Value for Another?

You can base retainage on funded value for one task and contract value for another task if you have set up the project to accommodate billing at the second level or below.

Where Do the Post Billings Programs Post the Unbilled Portion When There Is Retainage?

The unbilled portion of the billing journal is posted to the account in the project account group that has a function code of Unbilled Genl. If the bill that is posted contains retainage, the amount of the retainage is posted to the account from the project account group that has a function code of Unbilled-retain. The posting process displays an error message if the project account group does not contain an account that has been assigned a function code of Unbilled-retain.

The billing programs post the amount of the bill to the account that has a function code of Billed A/R in the project account group.

Should I Allow Users to Edit Bills?

Allow users to edit bills as long as there is a policy in place to disallow changing transaction detail.  

Use the original source entry to make changes to any of the transaction detail. If changes are made to the transaction detail on the Manage Standard Bills screen, the billing history differs from the detail in the general ledger. There is no record of who made the change or why the change was made.

If you do not allow users to edit the bills on the Manage Standard Bills screen, no changes can be made to anything on the bill. This includes billing for over ceiling or retainage amounts.

When Should I Bill on a Cash Basis?

Bill your project on a cash basis when you have a requirement to pay for services before you can bill your customer or when you are using Form 1443 to bill and have been designated by your contracting officer as a large business.

Select the Bill Cost Incurred on Cash Basis field to enable cash basis billing. Only transactions originating from accounts payable are evaluated for cash basis billing. You must run the Update Cash Basis Information screen to evaluate transactions for inclusion on the bill before you run the Calculate Standard Bills screen.

You can select the accounts that are evaluated by the Update Cash Basis Bills process on the Manage Billing Accounts screen. You can enter accounts by project on the Cash Basis subtask of this screen but you must not enter the same account in both places.

What Is the Advantage of using Billing Cycles?

Billing cycles are useful when you have to produce bills at specific times each period. You can assign projects to specific billing cycles, and when you calculate bills for that billing cycle, only those bills are calculated and displayed on the Manage Standard Bills screen.

What Is the Advantage of using Billing Groups?

Billing groups are useful if you have many employees who are responsible for calculating groups of bills. Individual users can calculate, edit, print, and post bills by billing group.  

Use of billing groups helps to expedite the billing process when multiple employees are using the billing screens simultaneously.

You can create billing groups on the Manage Billing User Groups screen.

Where Is the Income State Information Used?

The Income State field is not used by Costpoint on any reports or in any processes.