Billing Rules: Time and Material Billing

For a billing rule defined on the Billing Rules (PM207000) form, you specify the sequence of steps in the left pane and the settings of each step in the right pane, including the billing type, which can be Time and Material or Progress Billing.

The following sections list the settings that you can specify for a billing rule step of the Time and Material type, and describes the process of billing a project for progress by using a simple one-step billing rule.

Configuration of a Billing Rule Step

For a billing rule step of the Time and Material type, you can define the following settings:

• The account group that is used as a filter to select the transactions for billing by the Time and Material billing steps. When the billing procedure is run, the system selects all the transactions that are due for billing and have this account group. Normally, you use for billing the same account group or groups that you use for accumulating the unrecognized revenue.
• A formula to define the description of the invoice and a formula to define the description of each invoice line, to make the system compose these descriptions dynamically during the billing process.
• A formula to calculate the amount of the invoice lines created by the Time and Material billing steps, and another formula to calculate the quantity of these invoice lines. In these formulas, you can use fields and attributes from such entities as the project, project budget, project task, project transaction, customer, vendor, employee, inventory item, and account group. You can also use different sources of the project rates: those from rate tables, which can be configured on the Rate Tables (PM206000) form; and those from sales price lists, which are defined on the Sales Prices (AR202000) form.
• The source of the sales account and the source of the destination branch for each invoice line.

  The billing process uses the originating branch from the project settings on the Projects (PM301000) form and the destination branches from the sources according to the billing rules. When an accounts receivable invoice is released, the accounts receivable account is updated under the originating branch of the invoice, while the revenue amounts are recorded to the destination branches of the invoice lines.

• The invoice group, which can be used during billing to make the system create separate invoices (either pro forma invoices or accounts receivable invoices, depending on the billing workflow of the project) for particular steps with the same invoice group during the project billing.
• Non-billable transactions that do not contribute to the amount billed to the customer and that you may decide to include in the invoice.
• Grouping criteria by date, employee, vendor, and inventory item for the invoice lines created by the Time and Material billing steps.

The Time and Material Billing Process

The time and material billing workflow is provided for project tasks that need to be billed based on project transactions. Time and material billing can be performed only for project tasks of a project that is pending billing—that is, if the project has at least one unbilled transaction that is ready to be billed on the invoice date. The Time and Material billing steps can be run once the project transactions that match the selection criteria have been processed. Optionally, the allocation process can be executed for these transactions before billing.

To bill a project task for time and material, you need to create a billing rule on the Billing Rules (PM207000) form and configure a step or multiple steps of the Time and Material type in this rule. Multiple Time and Material steps are used in a billing rule for different account groups of transactions that should be used to determine the invoiced amounts by using different formulas. You assign the configured billing rule to project tasks on the Tasks tab of the Projects (PM301000) form.

When you run the project billing by clicking the Run Project Billing button on the form toolbar of the Projects form, the system prepares a pro forma invoice or an accounts receivable invoice, depending on the project workflow, which is defined by the state of the Create Pro Forma Invoice on Billing check box on the Summary tab of the Projects form.

The system creates an invoice based on the unbilled project transactions with amounts calculated by using the billing rules of the project tasks. In the billing, the system includes the transactions with a date that is earlier than the billing date and does not include the transactions with a date that is later than the billing date. If a project task is billed with a billing rule that includes only Time and Material billing steps, during the billing process, the system ignores any pending invoice amount of the revenue budget lines.

The transactions with the same date as the invoice date are billed if Include Trans. created on billing date is selected as the Billing Cut-off Date on the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form; if Exclude Trans. created on billing date is selected, the system skips the transactions with the same date as the invoice date.

If the project billing is performed by using the pro forma invoice workflow, the invoice lines that are produced by the Time and Material billing steps are displayed on the Time and Material tab of the Pro Forma Invoices (PM307000) form.