The Workamajig Way – Billing (Mike Wang)
You can bill a variety of ways. Workamajig wants you to be able to avoid billing project by project. Workamajig came up with the electronic billing worksheets to address this problem. There is an associated workflow so that the billing process can be carried out online. The idea is that you have a set billing frequency.
First step is to Generate the worksheet — creates sheets for all projects with unbilled items. Then they are assigned to the AE’s and they will appear on their desktop for review. They can be assigned to the AE or reassigned to someone else. Once they come back to the billing department, they can be reviewed, approved and billed, using the Create Invoices option. The AE is assigned the worksheet by default. It can be reassigned by the AE or an employee with the appropriate security rights.
Where does this start? With the client. You set the default billing method in their client record. It is also important to set how you invoice the client. Do they get one invoice for each project, or one invoice with several projects? These are the two most popular options. Why is this important? In the worksheet, you have the option to create master worksheets and you can group child worksheets together. This works well if the client wants one invoice for all of their projects. One worksheet will be created for each project and then an extra worksheet is created to group them all together. You get the individual attention for each project but can affect them all under the master worksheet. This would work for Campaigns as well. Keep in mind this is the automatic way. You can create a master worksheet and attach whichever child sheets you like.
Since you set this up at the client level, every new project will default this billing method, though you can change it if need be. Remember: default at the client, goes to the project. The billing method is only used to determine the way a billing worksheet bills.
Back to billing worksheet screen: click the “Generate” command. You can filter by date range, due date and client. You include approved time and expenses with options to include PO’s and Media Orders. You can filter by AE, Project or Billing Status. Click search and the system returns all projects it thinks you should bill. It shows the project, budget, invoiced, unbilled and variance amounts. You are looking at the projects that you now have the option to generate a billing worksheet for. Select projects and click to generate worksheets. The AE will have these in summary form on their dashboard as a pending approval. The projects are also removed from the billing worksheet search screen. System assumes that all unbilled items will get billed. If this is correct then you simply click on the check box and approve the worksheet. You can drill down, however, to get the detail for review. Their is a summary that shows how much there is “To Bill”. The AE can also drill down into this field. The AE can then edit those transactions — as in a write-off. When done in a worksheet, it is essentially a “proposal” to write it off. The AE can add comments to explain themselves. This will not show up on the client invoice. Remember: this is a proposal. Oh and Workamajig got slick and will now allow you to do a partial write-off of a single time entry by drilling down into the ‘pencil icon’ for that entry. They weren’t bragging. It just came up during Q and A. We’re keeping it secret for those that went to another part of the conference. Don’t tell. Moving on. These transactions essentially stay within this module as a proposal and can continue to be shifted around as a type of transaction (on hold, write off, etc) or moved to another project. You are assigning what will happen with all WIP assigned to each project. You can use a selection to do a “Mass Change” to alter all transactions at once. What happens to any variance you assign to your actual billable costs (if you manually adjust you billable items over/under)? You can select to track this figure in Control Accounts, and assign a g/l account for this figure. You can specify an account for Labor and one for Expense. Before approving the sheet you can set invoice default information.
Once the worksheet is approved, you can generate an invoice for that worksheet. You can toggle (from the main screen) which worksheets are still out for approval. To see if you are expecting more worksheets.
Once the invoices are generated you can pull up the listing for invoices “Not Printed”, print the invoices and send them out. Alternatively, you can mass email your invoices to the client based on the email address associated with the primary contact for that invoice.