Billing options: Billing items [in-depth guide]

Guide contents: Navigation | Setup | Add a billing item

Navigation

Admin/manager > System setup > Billing options > Billing items

Most commonly, billing items allow you to track & organize services, purchase items, expense report items, and media items for use in project reporting and printing client invoices. These billing items allow you to group similar services & expenses to create invoice lines based on these groups.

Billing items can alternatively be used as a way to post sales amounts, on an invoice to several sales GL accounts from a single line item on an invoice. When used with the 'post using detail' option found under Admin/manager > System setup > GL settings > GL tracking options > Advance sales tracking, you can have the system automatically determine where to post sales amounts based on how transactions are tied to billing items and how those billing items tie to GL accounts.  Billing items can also be used on an invoice to default the standard price on an invoice.

For example, say you want there to be two lines on your printed invoices. 'Labor' and 'expenses'. And you want them to be very high level, yet have lots of detailed posting behind the scenes.

Or maybe you group labor and expenses into single categories. Such as 'production', which includes time billed & expenses billed. But yet prints with one line labeled 'production' with the total amount.

Setup

Add a billing item

Most commonly, all you need is an ID, name, and description to fulfill the typical use cases of billing items in the system.

1. Click   to add a new billing item.
2. ID: enter a unique ID for this billing item. This field is required.
3. Name: enter a descriptive name for this billing item. This name will be used as the default when creating invoices using billing items. It is also the description that you will see and drop-down list when selecting a billing item. This field is required.
4. Standard price: enter the standard unit price for this type of billing item. This unit price defaults to an invoice line when you select a billing item on the line.
5. Description: enter descriptive text which describes this billing item. This descriptive text is also automatically copied onto an invoice line when you select a billing item on the invoice line.
6. Sales account number: select the default sales account that you would like associated with this billing item. This sales account will default when creating an invoice by billing item.
7. Class ID: enter a class ID that you would like with his billing item. This will get defaulted when creating an invoice by billing item.
8. Tax1/tax2 applies: allows you to set if this item is taxable in the system. The tax rate is set via the client company record and/or client invoice.
9. Active: If checked, allows the billing item to be selected. If inactive, the billing item may still be available for reporting purposes.