Invoicing

BigTime has a powerful invoicing engine you can use to create invoices for your projects. The invoicing program supports T&M ("time and materials") invoices, retainers, fixed-fee or "percent-complete" billing, milestone billing and more.

Before we take a look at how invoices work, it's helpful to understand how BigTime's invoicing engine is different from the invoicing options in QuickBooks.

Invoicing in BigTime vs. QuickBooks

Since invoices can be either posted (from BigTime to QuickBooks) or imported (from QuickBooks to BigTime), some customers don't use the BigTime invoicing features at all. They simply post time and expenses into QuickBooks and use QuickBooks to generate invoices. To figure out which approach is right for you, it's helpful to run through a quick review of the differences between the two systems.

QuickBooks Invoices are Create One-at-a-Time

If you've been creating invoices in QuickBooks, you're used to creating a new invoice document for each project individually. Then--for each of those documents, you add line items (e.g. - charges) for time, retainers, fixed charges, etc. You keep all of the information about how each project is billed in offline notes, in your head or in memorized transactions. In QuickBooks, most of the invoicing process is manual.

BigTime Invoices are Created in Batch

In BigTime, most of the invoicing process is automated. You start by telling the system what type of invoice each project should use (T&M, Retainer, Fixed Fee, etc.). You fill in a project's basic contract data once. Then, you can create dozens of draft invoices in "batch mode" from the Tools... Invoices, Create Drafts screen.

You can always create a "manual" invoice in BigTime, just like you would in QuickBooks, but QuickBooks is typically a better tool for manual invoice generation. That gives us a simple rule for helping you determine if the BigTime invoicing engine is better for your firm: if your invoices tend to involve lots of manual "changes" that can't be boiled down to a set of rules (e.g. - they aren't based on contract terms, budget amounts, time/expense entry amounts, etc.), then you should continue to invoice in QuickBooks. If you tend to create lots of invoices using a few basic rules (e.g. - percentage billing, T&M billing, retainer billing, etc.), then it will be faster to invoice in BigTime.

BigTime Can work with Either Approach

If you'd like to continue to create invoices in QuickBooks, then you should skip this chapter and take a look at the QuickBooks Integration chapter. There, you'll see how to post time and expense details into QuickBooks, and you can use that detail to generate invoices.

If you'd like to explore BigTime's invoicing options, then this is a good place to start. In this chapter, we'll create a simple project invoice, we'll take about billing pass-through expenses from QuickBooks, we'll walk through editing the draft invoices that you create, and we'll post some invoices to QuickBooks when we're through. We'll also address some more advanced topics (like consolidated invoicing and sales tax calculations).

The Invoice Templates chapter will address creating and modifying the standard invoice templates to fit your own custom billing requirements.