1. Projects
  2. Project Management
  3. Project Billing

Project Billing

NetSuite provides flexible billing options for project billing. You can bill projects based on completing project work, achieving project milestones, or according to a schedule of dates. The project billing type determines which method of billing to use. The project billing schedule provides the details for when and how to bill the customer over a range of time. For information about the three types of project billing schedules, read Project Billing Schedule Types.

You must enable Project Management and Advanced Billing to bill projects.

You can create a billing schedule specific to the project or select an existing billing schedule. After a billing schedule is set on the project record, the billing schedule is associated with the sales order when you source items from the project. The rules that determine when the order is ready to bill depend on the billing schedule type.

Note:

You can use a standard billing schedule to bill a project, if that meets your business needs. When you create a project, select Fixed Bid, Interval as the billing type but do not select a billing schedule. Then on the sales order, edit the project line and assign a standard billing schedule (one that is not Fixed Bid, Interval, Fixed Bid, Milestone, or Time and Materials). The billing schedule assigned on the sales order overrides the billing schedule on the project, if entered.

When an order includes work that has been completed and is ready for billing, that order automatically shows in the bulk billing queue or shows the Next Bill button on the sales order form. Use the Bill Sales Order page as the primary place to invoice for project work associated with an order, including project billable time that is billed on a time and materials basis. Project time must be entered and approved to be billable.

BillSalesOrds

The best practice is to create sales orders for your projects and then bill the sales orders individually or in bulk on the Bill Sales Order page. A sales order does not contain the Next Bill button when it is connected with an inactive project.

Using the Invoice Billable Customers page is not recommended to bill time for Time and Materials projects that have associated sales orders because the invoice is not linked to the originating order. The Invoice Billable Customers page is ideal to process time that is not associated with an order.

When creating invoices, all approved, billable time entered against the project is automatically selected to be included on the invoice. The Billable Time subtab also displays approved billable time not related to a sales order, such as time entered against a case. Select any non-sales order time that you want to include on the invoice. Project totals do not include non-sales order items billed to the customer.

To bulk bill projects, go to Transactions > Sales > Bill Sales Orders. For details about the bulk billing process, read Billing Customers Using Billing Schedules.

For details about project billing using all billing schedule types, read Project Billing Schedule Types.

The billing schedule for a project can be viewed on the sales order by clicking the Schedule subtab under the History subtab.

Invoice Schedule Recalculation

Modifications made to projects, project tasks, and time entries can affect sales order invoice schedules if the project is assigned a billing schedule type. When such changes are entered, they trigger a project plan recalculation, as well as an invoice schedule recalculation.

For example, you may have a weekly billing schedule associated with a sales order for a project with a duration of 2 weeks. The invoice schedule lists two expected bill dates. If a project task record is changed in a way that the project duration becomes 4 weeks, then the invoice schedule on the sales order is also updated. The updated schedule will include four expected bill dates.

Note:

The following changes do not trigger project plan or invoice schedule recalculation:

Changes made to work calendars

Changes made to billing schedules

Project Billing Schedule Types

To set up billing for a project, select a billing type and billing schedule on the Financial subtab of the project record. The billing type and the billing frequency of the associated schedule determine how Advanced Billing executes project billing.

Billing types include:

To enter financial information for a project record:

  1. Go to Lists > Relationships > Projects. Click Edit next to the project you want to enter financial information for.

  2. Click the Financial subtab on your new project record.

  3. Select a billing type for this project.

  4. Select a billing schedule for this project or select New to create a new schedule.

    For details about creating a billing schedule, read Creating Billing Schedules and Creating Billing Schedules From an Estimate or Sales Order.

  5. If you select a Fixed Bid type schedule, enter the following:

    1. In the Billing Item field, select the service item that will appear on transactions billed to the customer.

    2. In the Project Price field, enter the project price. This is the price billed to the customer on transactions. It is also used to calculate gross profit margin for the project.

  6. If you use the Multi-Currency feature, select a currency for this project.

    The Exchange Rate field shows the appropriate exchange rate.

  7. If you use the Revenue Recognition feature, in the Rev Rec Forecast Template field, select a revenue recognition template created for a project. It is used only to forecast the expected revenue to be recognized for the project according to the schedule.

  8. If you use Job Costing, in the Project Expense Type field, select an expense type for this project. Check the Apply to all time entries box to apply this project expense type to all time transactions overriding any project expense types from service items. For more information, see Job Costing and Project Budgeting.

  9. You can now click Save to save your project record.

Related Topics

General Notices