Billing Terms Overview

Billing terms determine how Vision generates invoices for a particular project. On the Billing Terms form, you enter general project and client information, and specify how Vision calculates labor, expenses, consultant expenses, fees, retainage, and units for each project.

You must set up billing terms for each project for which you want to generate an invoice. If you do not define billing terms, you cannot create invoices.

Billing Terms for Projects with Multiple Levels of Work Breakdown Structure

If your project is subdivided into multiple work breakdown structure levels, you must specify whether the phases, or phases and tasks, will have separate billing terms or will use the terms specified at a higher level (consolidated terms).

You must always establish higher level terms before establishing lower level terms. For example, you must define project-level terms before you can establish phase-level terms, and you must establish phase-level terms before you can establish task-level terms.

When a project is subdivided into phases or phases and tasks, you can:

  • Enter billing terms at the project level only, to apply to all the phase and task-level information. Select this option if you want all project detail to use the same billing terms.
  • Enter separate billing terms at the phase level, to apply to all phase-level information, and all task-level information, if tasks exist. Selet this option if you have phases only and want to define different terms for different phases, or if you have phases and tasks and you want to define different terms for different phases, but you want all tasks within a phase to use the same terms.
  • Enter separate billing terms at the task level, to apply to individual tasks. Select this option to define different billing terms for different tasks.

Billing Terms for Projects Not Yet Approved for Use in Processing

Billing Terms can be set up for projects that are not yet Approved for use in processing on the General tab of the Project Info Center. This allows project managers to establish billing terms before a project is approved by the accounting group. However, you cannot open these projects in Interactive or Batch Billing until they are approved for use in processing

Scheduled Billing Feature

Use the Scheduled Billing feature to invoice fee-based projects based on scheduled invoicing dates and percent completes or dollar amounts.

Billing (Upset) Limits

For each project, phase, or task, you can specify the billing limit terms, also called upset limit terms. An upset limit is a maximum amount above which Vision cannot bill. If a limit has been exceeded, billings still appear on the invoice. An adjustment line, which offsets the amount by which the current billings exceed the limit, appears in the Billing Limits section of the invoice.

Billing Terms Search and Replace

You can use search and replace functions when you enter billing terms. See Search and Replace in the online help for further details.

When you open a project on the Billing Terms form, you can select from a list of all available projects, both with and without billing terms defined.

Determining Which Projects have Billing Terms Defined

To determine which projects have billing terms defined, you can:

  • Check the Missing Billing Terms list, which lists all projects that do not have billing terms.
  • Check for the <New> label on the Billing Terms form which signifies that a project does not have billing terms established at the top level of the work breakdown structure. If you display a lower level component of the work breakdown structure (for example, a phase), <New> displays to the left of the project number if that component has no billing terms established.

Multicurrency

When you select a billing rate table for a project, Vision restricts the list of available rate tables to those with the same currency as the billing currency of the project for which you are establishing billing terms.

Invoice Templates

Vision includes a standard template for formatting invoices, called billInvDefault. The template includes information such as the company name and address, client name and address, project number and name, and task number and name. You can create your own templates with the Invoice Template Editor, which lets you customize the information on your invoices and control how the information is formatted.

Related Topics:

  • Default Billing Terms
    In Configuration > Billing > Default Terms, you can set up default billing terms to save time entering billing terms for your projects in the Billing application or in the Project Info Center.
  • Default Project Reporting Billing Terms
    In Configuration > Billing > Report Default Terms, you can set up default project reporting billing terms to determine how data is posted when you generate project reports at billing rates versus cost rates.
  • How Vision Determines Which Billing Terms to Use
    Vision uses the billing terms established at the most granular WBS level that exists for the project. If you have not entered terms for that level, or if you have chosen to consolidate printing at a higher level, Vision uses the terms entered for the next higher level, or the level to which the terms were consolidated.
  • Methods for Calculating Billing Amounts
    You can use Billing to calculate billing amounts using different methods. For example, you can use Upset Limits to set "not-to-exceed" amounts for labor or expenses.
  • Billing Term Changes and the Invoice Approval Process
    If you use the Billing Invoice Approvals feature and you make changes to the billing terms for projects that have approved, submitted, or rejected invoices in progress, the billing terms changes are not applied to these invoices.
  • General Billing Terms
    Define your general billing terms as the first step in establishing billing terms for your projects.
  • Labor Billing Terms
    Labor billing terms control the way that Vision calculates and displays labor charges on a project's invoices. This includes how regular and overtime hours are billed.
  • Expense Billing Terms
    Expense billing terms control the way that Vision calculates and displays expense charges on a project's invoices. Expense billing terms can differ from project to project.
  • Unit Billing Terms
    Unit billing terms let you to choose to bill or not to bill units on a project's invoices.
  • Fee Billing Terms
    Fee billing terms control the way that Vision calculates and bills clients for project-related fees. Some contracts allow you to bill clients for professional fees, in addition to or instead of, billing for labor and expenses.
  • Scheduled Billing
    Use the Scheduled Billing feature to invoice fee-based projects based on scheduled invoicing dates and percent completes or dollar amounts.
  • Add-on Fee Billing Terms
    Use add-on fees to apply an additional charge to an entire invoice section. You can apply additional fees as a percentage of labor, expenses, consultants, fees, units, and/or add-on fee billings, or as an amount that you specify. You can also use the add-on feature to apply a project retainer.
  • Phase or Task (Sub-Level) Billing Terms
    If your project has phases or phases and tasks, a Sub-Level Terms tab appears on the Billing Terms form. These settings determine how the phase or phase and task-level information is calculated, presented, and posted, and determine whether or not phase or task level terms can be defined for the project.
  • Miscellaneous Billing Terms
    The miscellaneous billing terms include a number of billing options, including tax, limit, and retainage options.
  • AR and BTD Billing Terms
    Use the AR & BTD tab of the Billing Terms form to specify the accounts receivable information and billed-to-date information that you want to include on invoices.
  • Billing Backup Report and Billing Terms
    The Billing Backup report provides the full transaction detail behind a given invoice.
  • Pre-Invoices Overview
    The Pre-Invoices feature allows you to produce a "request for payment" invoice that is not recorded in the general ledger.
Parent Topic: Billing Overview