FROM WORK TO BILLING
Explain an invoice amount from the work behind it
Connect reviewed project effort and accepted charges to a financial billing basis, with references that make the delivery context identifiable.
Make the handover to finance understandable
The person preparing an invoice should not have to guess what a project label or a total number means. A useful billing basis identifies the customer, the project work and the type of evidence behind the amount. Tsumira connects supported approved time and accepted project charges to finance, letting the delivery team explain why an item exists before a financial document is issued.
Use approved effort for time-based work
A project task can provide the context for a Time entry: which project it belongs to, what task was performed and how the work was described. Billable entries go through the supported approval workflow before financial use. Approval confirms the reviewed effort; it does not by itself define the customer’s price. Supported pricing and rate configuration supply that separate commercial step.
- Project and task context on effort records
- Billable treatment and time approval
- Pricing separate from measured duration
Use accepted charges for agreed deliverables
Fixed-fee, milestone and retainer project plans provide another billing basis. A permitted manager accepts an amount against a defined charge and its remaining balance. Milestone charges require the corresponding checkpoint to be reached. These are different foundations from hourly effort, so the team can explain a contracted deliverable without pretending that its price must equal the time recorded against it.
- Defined fixed, milestone and retainer charges
- Explicit charge acceptance
- Distinguish agreed price from actual effort
Follow the financial link back to its context
The supported time-finance relationship distinguishes reserved, released, invoiced and credited links and includes document and line references. Project finance events also preserve relevant document context for the delivery record. These connections support a factual answer to “what was this billed for?” They do not mean that task completion issues an invoice or that a credit erases the original work record.
- Document and line references where supported
- Billing-link states remain distinguishable
- Source work and financial document have separate lifecycles
A concrete workflow
Choose the commercial basis
Decide whether the engagement uses approved time or a supported agreed-charge plan.
Review the source work
Check task context, effort descriptions or milestone evidence and the customer association.
Release the appropriate basis
Complete the required time approval or charge acceptance through the authorized workflow.
Review and issue in finance
Check pricing, supported tax treatment and the resulting document before issuance.
An illustrative working example
Example: a monthly consulting invoice
A consulting project contains several research and review tasks. The consultants record effort against the relevant work and submit it for approval. Finance reviews the approved billable items and the configured pricing before preparing the invoice. If the customer asks about a line, the team can return to the linked work context rather than reconstructing the month from memory. A later credit remains a financial event, not a deletion of the effort.
Questions about this topic
Does a completed task always become an invoice line?
No. A task describes delivery work. The billing basis requires the appropriate supported approval, charge acceptance and financial preparation.
Are approved hours already a price?
No. Duration and approval are effort facts. The supported pricing configuration supplies the monetary basis used by finance.
Can a fixed-fee project still track time?
Recording effort and charging an agreed fee answer different questions. Review the project’s actual configuration rather than equating recorded minutes with the agreed fee.
Does a credit remove the original time record?
No. The supported billing relationship can represent a credited state while preserving the distinct source work and financial document history.
Explore connections around this workflow.
Ideas for intended connections. Check the actual availability, permissions and supported data for each app before using a scenario.
Xero
Workflow concept: Match an invoice candidate to its reviewed project effort or accepted charge.
Quickbooks
Workflow concept: Preserve source-work references when planning a reviewed accounting handover.
Microsoft Excel
Workflow concept: Check pricing assumptions separately from the original approved effort evidence.