Financial management

This part of the guides covers the financial side of your projects: how they are budgeted and priced, how invoices are created and sent, and how payments are recorded.

What you will find here

• Project budgets and financial control: the budget of a project and how its progress is followed.
• Contract types: time and materials, fixed fee, and the other ways a project is priced, and how each one affects billing.
• Billing and cost rates: what you charge the client for each kind of work, and what that work costs your firm.
• Invoicing overview: how invoices are built from your time, expenses, and tasks.
• Generating invoices: create invoices from the work recorded on a project.
• Editing and sending invoices: review an invoice before it goes to the client.
• Split invoices: bill one project to several clients, each for its share.
• Payments and invoice status: record payments and follow each invoice until it is paid.

How it fits together

A project's contract type and rate schedule decide how its work is priced. The time and expenses your team records are valued with those rates, and the result feeds both the project budget and its invoices. Your administrator sets up the rate schedules, labor categories, taxes, and invoice templates in Administration. For firms that use an accounting application, the Integrations section covers the connection.

Example: monthly billing for a compliance project

An environmental compliance project is billed time and materials every month. At month end, the project manager checks the approved time and expenses, generates the invoice, and reviews its lines before sending it. One of the sites is shared by two owners, so the invoice is split between them by their agreed percentages. When each owner pays, the payment is recorded and the invoice status changes to paid.

What you can do next

1. Contract types to see how each pricing model affects your numbers.
2. Invoicing overview before you generate your first invoice.
3. Overview and dashboard to follow earned value, expenses, and invoices on your dashboard.