Refresh Billing Extensions Overview

Billing and cost rates for project reporting are defined at the time of posting. When you post a transaction, Vision looks at the applicable billing terms to determine billing rates for project reporting purposes.

Refresh Billing Extensions allows you to update these billing rates at a later date to be included on reports, either using billing terms (perhaps terms have been updated since the transaction was originally updated) or project reporting default terms.

Depending on how your firm has configured reporting, Refresh Billing Extensions may look to billing terms or reporting default terms to determine billing rates for reporting purposes. Read the following sections to understand the difference between each approach.

Use Reporting Default Terms for All Projects

If your firm selected Enable reporting at billing rates on the General tab of the Accounting System Settings, and also selected the option to Use > reporting default terms for all projects, then Vision uses reporting default terms instead of billing terms for Refresh Billing Extensions.

For the purposes of Refresh Billing extensions, your firm can configure Vision this way to allow reports to be based on consistent information across all projects. Billing terms often vary from project to project due to special circumstances that relate to bill collection, but not to reporting. For this reason it is more effective to use one set of reporting terms for all projects from which you generate reports.

When you select this option you can refresh billing extensions if you change reporting default terms. For example, suppose at the start of a new year changes are required to reporting default terms. Suppose that Employee A in your firm posts transactions before those changes are made. You must make the changes in reporting default terms, then run refresh billing extensions for the period in which Employee A posted those transactions.

Use Individual Project Billing Terms

If your firm uses billing terms for refresh billing extensions, you should refresh billing extensions:

  • When you create or change the billing terms for any project on the Billing Terms form
  • If you posted items in the current period that now reflect a zero billing rate on project reports, due to inaccurate or absent billing terms

Important Notes

You can refresh billing extensions for all of your projects or for selected projects.

If the Enable effective dates for labor billing rates option is selected in Billing Setup, the Refresh Billing Extension utility updates project reports using the appropriate rates, based on effective dates entered in billing labor rate tables.

Multicurrency

If your company has enabled the Multicurrency feature, Vision determines which currency to use (project currency or billing currency) for calculating billing extensions based on whether the Report amounts in billing currency, rather than project currency option is selected on the General tab of the Account System Settings form.