Unbilled Services
Your unbilled services amount is the revenue that your firm has earned job-to-date, less the amount that has been billed job-to-date. When you run Revenue Generation for projects whose revenue method is any method other than Method B (job-to-date billings), Vision tracks the difference between revenue amounts and billing amounts.
The difference (unbilled services) is calculated using the following equation:
Unbilled Services = Job-To-Date Earned Revenue - Job-To-Date Total Billings
To review unbilled services (job-to-date), run the Office Earnings Report for all projects, whether or not they had activity in the current accounting period. Be sure to include the Unbilled column and Print Job-to-Date options when building the report.
The Total Unbilled amount matches the balance in the Unbilled Services account on the Balance Sheet (account 121.00 in the standard Vision Chart of Accounts). This account holds job-to-date unbilled revenue for all projects. Firms also refer to this as work-in-progress or unearned income.
- On projects with time and materials or labor-based contracts, the unbilled services amount often represents the normal lag time from incurring the labor expense to posting invoices.
- On projects with contracts that allow billing when you have reached a project milestone, including certain lump sum contracts that are billed by phase, invoiced amounts do not represent actual effort on the job. The unbilled services amount may be unusually high, representing as they do several weeks' work that you cannot bill until reaching the milestone.
- On projects with contracts that allow for accelerated billing in the early phases of work (that is, prebilling ahead of the work effort) the unbilled services amount may be a negative amount, indicating that prebilling has occurred.