Billing plans are used to help forecast future monthly invoicing and profit.
If you have Revenue Recognition switched on then it is also possible to plan for your recognised amount within your billing plans.
How your billing plans operate is determined at company level by the settings there.
They can be setup to operate at job and/or phase level though a single job can never have billing plans at both levels. Below are notes on phase level billing plans, though they can be applied to job level too.
If phase level billing plans are generated the will be rolled up and displayed at job level. Job level billing plans only appear, and are reported on, at job level.
Auto billing plans:
If this is set up to be automated at company level then a single item plan is automatically generated whenever a job is created. This ensures all jobs get a billing plan – even small jobs that would not normally be subject to a revenue plan.
Auto plans can be changed to manual plans and vice versa.
New billing plans:
When a new billing plan is generated the company setting options are used as default, but these can be amended. Billing plans have four sections within them which are outlined below.
Date:
A Fixed date can be selected and chosen from the calendar, which will then remain no matter what other dates are amended on the job phase. Alternatively, Relative date can be selected where you can then choose from various options to use your billing plan date to be relative to:
You can then insert the number of months (+/-12) that you wish the relativity to be. Selecting this option means the date of the billing plan will automatically update relative to that date being amended.
Planned values:
In this section you can enter the percentage this plan makes up of your overall total.
The planned value can be manually entered if Manual planned value is selected. Alternatively if Synchronised planned value with quote is selected this field is locked and updates according to your quote.
Depending on how your system is set you may see an Est PO costs column which will automatically pull the the costs from any purchase estimate cost fields, it is then from this the estimate gross profit is calculated. Alternatively, you may see the heading Notional costs which initially has a zero figure but is free for you to enter your expected costs from which the estimated gross profit is calculated:
Revenue Recognition:
If you are using revenue recognition you will get an additional field within the planned values section for this:
Info:
This gives information on what has been invoiced within the billing plan period, any linked invoices and if they were generated from the billing plan.
Notes:
This section contains two free text fields for you to enter any comments or details. If invoicing base on billing plans this information will appear on the invoice in the relevant fields.
Invoicing from the billing plan:
From the billing plan tab, as well as new ones being generated or existing ones deleted, it is possible to invoice from a billing plan:
This will open up a draft invoice based either your billing plan text or quote depending on which option you select.
Invoicing from the billing plan using recognised values:
Once you have generated your invoice based from the billing plan the auto phase allocation menu will have an option to allocate revenue as BP which uses planned and recognised values to calculate invoice billed and recognise now values.
Reporting on your billing plans:
You can use the data view to view projected billings or run the billing plan export from the standard reports section.
Quick billing plan:
In addition to the Quick Add feature (not available on monthly planned jobs), which creates one or more billing plans (determined by the drop-down next to the quick add button) using default settings, you can also use the quick billing plan option on the actions menu.
This allows more control over the billing plan records created - fixed or relative dates, month offset, synchronised with quote or fixed value, as well as the number of billing plans to create.
If your system setup allows both job and phase billing plans you will be asked to choose which type to use for this job. Once you set the type of billing plan only that type can be used on this job. Specify all the other requirements for the billing plans in the input form, such as:
- Phases to create billing plan(s) for
- Billing plan dates (fixed or relative to a job / phase date)
- Number of billing plan records to create - if creating job billing plans a single record per month will be created, if creating billing plans per phase then this number of monthly billing plans will be created on every phase selected
- Manual planned values or synchronized with quote - you can enter the manual values here if you wish
Duplicate:
One or more billing plan records can be quickly duplicated by selecting them and choosing Duplicate from the actions menu
Change dates:
Billing plan dates can be shifted forward or backward by a number of months by selecting them and choosing this option from the actions menu. A drop-down is displayed allowing you to set the number of months to offset the selected billing plan dates by - a negative offset will move the date backward, a positive offset moves it forward.
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