Project Billing: 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. You specify Time and Material rules for project tasks, which are then billed for time and material.

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.