Scheduled Billing
Use the Scheduled Billing feature to invoice fee-based projects based on scheduled invoicing dates and percent completes or dollar amounts.
With the Scheduled Billing feature, invoices are automatically generated in Batch Billing and Interactive Billing. Invoice amounts are based on criteria that you set, such as the date the invoice should be created (for example, the end of month) and the amount you want to bill, based on the project's percent complete or on a fixed amount associated with a project milestone.
You can set up billing schedules at any level of the WBS structure.
If you use billing groups, all projects in a billing group follow the scheduled billing settings for the main project of the group.
Effects of Enabling the Feature
When the Scheduled Billing feature is enabled (from tab), the following fields and tabs display in Vision:
- A Scheduled Billing grid on the Fees tab of Billing Terms.
- A Bill Scheduled Invoices Thru field in the Billing Session Options dialog box in Interactive Billing and Batch Billing.
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Exclude Previously Billed and Scheduled Billing Date Range fields on the General tab of the Options dialog box for the Fee Remaining report ().
Effects of Disabling the Feature
You can turn the Scheduled Billing feature on or off at any time. If you turn it off after you have turned it on and entered scheduled billing information in Billing Terms, the scheduled billing information no longer applies. You can adjust the billing terms for those projects. If you turn the Scheduled Billing feature back on again, the scheduled billing information previously entered in Billing Terms is available again.
Multicompany
If you use the Multicompany feature, you must turn on and set up the Scheduled Billing feature for each company in your enterprise. All lower work-breakdown-structure levels (phase, task, and so on) of a project follow the scheduled billing settings for the main project to which they belong. For example, if a main project belongs to a company that has the Scheduled Billing feature enabled and several of the project's phases or tasks belong to a company that does not have the Scheduled Billing feature enabled, you can still set up scheduled billing for the phases or tasks because the main project belongs to a company that has the Scheduled Billing feature enabled.
Invoice Format
The invoice format of an invoice created using the Scheduled Billing feature is the same as the format of an invoice created manually. The Previous Fee Billing section includes all fee invoices previously sent to the client.
Phase Fee Billing
When a project's Fee Method is either Percent Complete by Phase as Fixed Amount or Percent Complete by Phase as Percent of Fee, any billing schedule must be tied to a phase in the Billing Phases grid.
The schedule displayed in the Scheduled Billing grid on the Fees tab relates only to the phase currently selected in the Billing Phases grid. You can have a separate billing schedule for each phase in the Billing Phases grid. If there are five billing phases on a project, there could be five billing schedules, one for each billing phase.
You cannot use scheduled billing if both of the following are true:
- You select Percent Complete by Phase as Fixed Amount in Fee Method.
- You select Allocate Billed Revenue on Fee Invoices Based on Category.
Recent Vision Conversions
If you are converting to Vision from another application that tracks milestones in a for bill scheduling purposes, you do not need to enter past milestones as part of history loading, Enter just the milestones to be billed in the future when re-creating billing schedules.
The billed-to-date value of a cumulative billing method is the same value as the previous fee billings (either entered in Billing Terms or calculated based on posted invoices).