FI Project Invoicing

The project invoicing process deals with creating invoices for projects, according to a number of different scenarios.

Project Billing Scenarios

]project-open[ can be used to invoice a wide variety of projects with different billing types. The following list includes some examples:

• Fixed Price Project:
  Customer and provider have agreed on a fixed price for a project before the project.
  
  
• Time & Material:
  The invoiced amount depends on the timesheet hours and other costs incurred during the project execution. Different types of services may be billed at different prices, and some services may not be billable at all like defect correction or warranty.
  
  
• Mixed Fixed Price & Time & Material:
  The project consists of a fixed price part, with additional services provided on a time & material base.
  
  
• Cost + Margin:
  This is a variant of the time & material billing type. In this case there is no fixed price list for the delivered services, but prices are determined by the provider's cost for the services.
  
  
• Service Contract (periodic invoicing) with Time & Material:
  Service contracts and maintenance services are frequently billed per month or quarter. Such services may include a number of free service hours, while services about that limit are billed extra.
  

Additional Variants and Option:

• Partial Invoicing:
  Only part of a project (a project phase, or a specific time interval) are billed to the customer. The system should be able to avoid double-billing of these services.
  
  
• Invoicing of Travel Costs and Other Expenses:
  Certain expenses of consultants may be billable to the customer, while other expenses may be included, depending on the agreement with the customers.
  
  
• Invoicing According to SLA (Service Level Agreement) Parameters:
  The billable amount may depend on parameters of an SLA.
  

Process Activities

• Determine the billable timesheet hours - all consultants need to have entered their hours before the billing process can start.
• Determine the billable expenses and other costs.
• Verify billing rates and the distinction between billable and non-billable services - Determine the type of services delivered together with the project manager and check if the services are classified correctly.
• Using the invoicing wizard in order to create invoices - The wizard automatically creates an invoice attachment with a detailed listing of invoiced hours.
  
• Customer approval process - the customer will verify the invoice and discuss the invoice with accounting and the project's PM.
  

Process Input

• Project contract (document in a file storage)
• Project structure (timesheet tasks & translation tasks)
• Completion percentage of project tasks
• Customer information (billing address, templates, language, ...)
• Customer price list (timesheet tasks & translation tasks)
• Travel Expenses
  
• Logged timesheet hours
• Already invoiced timesheet hours
• Previous invoices

Process Output

• Additional invoices (as input for accounts payable)
• Status update on logged timesheet hours
• Updated financial data of project & customer 

Process Support by ]po[

]project-open[ provides several sub-processes for "project invoicing" that each deal with one specific type of input data: 

• Timesheet invoicing - deals with the creation of invoices based on timesheet hours
• [Translation invoicing] - deals with the creation of invoices based on translation tasks
• [General & fixed price invoicing] - deals with the creation of 
• [Repeating invoicing] - invoicing of service contracts and other periodic services.

The following packages implement the "project invoicing" process:

•  Invoices - Provides the basic invoice object type
• Finance Core - Core finance package implementing the general cost object type and cost center.
• [Timesheet Invoicing] - Implements the timesheet price and timesheet invoice object types.
• [Translation Invoicing] - Implements the [translation price] and [translation invoice]

Process Indicators 

• Percentage of billable hours per consultant or customer
  
• Time spent per invoice or invoiced amount