Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice screen

Use the Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice screen to generate a time and material invoice from the list of unbilled project costs. You can also enter invoice lines manually. Time & material invoices are used to bill for:

  • Time spent by employees and subcontractors for work performed

  • Materials used (including markup)

To open the Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice screen, click Projects > T&M Billing > Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice in the All Tasks pane.

Time & material invoices are often used when it's not possible to accurately estimate the size of the project.

For example, suppose you buy 3 switches for the project at $10 each, and your pricing agreement says that you mark up switches by 50%. If you enter a generated time & material invoice for the project, the 3 switches will automatically be listed as unbilled costs at $15 a piece. You can choose to add these costs as invoice lines and adjust them as necessary, depending on the type of cost and/or agreements with the customer being billed.

You can create a generated time and material invoice for any project that uses a time and material billing format with the billing code setup defined to generate billing amounts from the project (in other words, the Generate Billing Amount from Project checkbox is selected on the Billing tab of the Project screen). If needed, you can create a new generated time and material invoice by copying a voided invoice for the same project. When copying a voided invoice, only unbilled cost lines that have not been included on another invoice are copied to the new invoice.

Tip: Use the Enter Contract Invoice screen to create invoices for a project based on a contract amount. Use the Enter Manual Time & Material Invoice screen to create a time and material invoice by manually entering all lines.

Each time and material invoice is assigned an invoice number. The invoice number can be assigned automatically using the next available accounts receivable number in sequence or it can be entered manually.

A time and material invoice can be saved in different stages. A time and material invoice that is in progress can be saved in "draft" stage. You may want to save the invoice as a draft if you intend to route it to other individuals for review or approval. When an invoice is saved as a draft, it is editable and is not available for posting. Once the invoice is complete, you can save the invoice as "ready to post." An invoice that is ready to post cannot be edited or deleted. To make further changes to the invoice before posting, you must reset the invoice stage to "draft" in the Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice screen.

When saving an invoice as ready to post, you must create the PDF of the time & material invoice form and view, print, and/or e-mail the form. These actions can be performed for a single invoice directly from the Enter Generated Time & Material Invoice screen or for multiple invoices from the Print Time & Material Invoices by Batch and View Time and Material Invoice Log screen.

You must have the software required to open a PDF file—such as Adobe Reader—installed on your computer to be able to view it. You can also send an e-mail with the PDF file as an attachment. You must have MAPI-compliant e-mail software—such as Microsoft Outlook—installed on your computer to send an e-mail message with an attachment.

You can post time & material invoices from the Post Time & Material Invoices screen. Once a time & material invoice has been posted, changes can no longer be made to the invoice. However, you can void the invoice using the Void Time & Material Invoice screen and enter a new time & material invoice that reflects any necessary changes.

Note: After entering and printing a generated time & material invoice, you may want to post it using the Post Time & Material Invoices screen.