When it comes to creating your invoices, Productive offers three flexible invoicing methods you can employ. When you're ready to send an invoice to your client, you can bill for:
Uninvoiced Time and Expenses
Remaining Amount (This will be called the "Total Amount" if no previous invoices have been issued)
A Percentage of the Total Budget Amount
Note that the invoicing method closely relies on the billing type chosen when setting up your services.
For instance, invoicing a percentage of the total amount of the budget/service can only be applied to the Fixed billing type services if you want to invoice before logging any time in Productive.
Similarly, the Time and Materials billing type services require logging hours and expenses before being able to invoice them.
Uninvoiced Time and Expenses
The first invoicing method, called Uninvoiced Time and Expenses, helps you invoice the logged hours and expenses.
It is applicable both with the:
Time and Materials billing type: designed so you invoice time and expenses only after logging them in Productive.
Fixed billing type: designed so it can always be invoiced in the full budget/service amount, but here, using the Uninvoiced Time and Expenses method, you can invoice incrementally as you log the hours.
For example, if the total price (Budget total) for the "Development" service is $1,000 and five hours have been tracked on that service, choosing the Uninvoiced Time and Expenses method will help you create an invoice charging your client only for the five hours of work that have been logged in Productive.
Tip: Using this method, you can select the date picker and invoice the time entries created in a specific time period.
Remaining Amount
The second method, called "Remaining Amount" (or "Total Amount" if no previous invoices were issued), helps you charge your client for a specific uninvoiced amount.
Productive will calculate how much of the total amount was invoiced before (if there was any previous invoicing) so you can quickly invoice the difference.
It is applicable both with the:
Time and Materials billing type: designed so you invoice time and expenses only after logging them in Productive. In this case, if you previously invoiced only 40% of your logged time, you can choose this method to invoice for the remaining logged time at a later date.
Fixed billing type: designed so it can always be invoiced in the full budget/service amount, but here you can use the Remaining amount method to cover any uninvoiced portions of the budget.
Note that if you have any invoices in drafts, the amount there is taken into consideration when calculating the amount remaining to be invoiced.
For example, if the budget total is $1,000, and you have $200 in invoice drafts, the remaining amount calculated will be $800.
Tip: You can invoice the whole budget upfront without logging any time in Productive using this method, but this applies only to Fixed billing type items.
Selecting "By Service" will add service line items to your invoice, while the "By Budget" option shows one singular line item representing the whole budget.
Invoicing a Budget Percentage
Productive also allows for creating partial invoices by entering a percentage of the budget that will be invoiced. Changing the percentage will affect the quantity and thus the total amount for invoicing.
This invoicing method takes into account:
Any Time and materials amounts: but not before you've logged time against them. Remember, such services become invoiceable only after you've logged time and expenses against them.
The full budget amount of all Fixed billing type items.
Invoicing using a budget percentage can be chosen both for using "By Service" and "By Budget" options, depending on what you would like to include in the invoice (service by service line or just the budget as a whole).
Monitoring Invoiced Amounts
In the Budget
You'll see how much you've invoiced for in the Invoicing section in the budget. Moreover, you'll see the amount of the draft invoices as well if you hover over the info bubble!
In the Reports
To stay on top of your budget invoicing:
Navigate to Reports
Select "From scratch" in the upper-right corner
Choose the Budgets data source
And then incorporate available Invoicing fields
This report will help you monitor pending budgets for invoicing, offering visibility into the ratio of invoiced to uninvoiced amounts.
