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Monthly Billing

I have experimented with several ways to bill out at the end of the month. I have not found a "great" way to accomplish this to date.

Does any one have a recommended method of billing out each month. We have "retainers" that are a flat fee each month. The total of the hours we have worked for the month apply to this retainer amount. If the client goes over the allotted number of hours, we "bank" them, if he is short on the number of hours we "bank"' them. The two should even out eventually. I have figured a method of showing this "banked" figure, however, I have not found an easy way to bill this out. I can't job bill because the "banking" involves using two job numbers. What I have been doing to date is multi billing, using the "retainer" job number and the "banking" job number. Does any one have any better suggestions?

Thank you,

Teresa Jimenez Growth Strategies Group

Here's what I've tried with some success:

Use the "expense" module. You don't have to put in any kind of cost if you don't want to "carry" costs into the next months retainer, but you can put gross costs in, and some descriptions. PLUS, the big plus, is you can move bank time (debits or credits). There is no financial impact to this method. You're just moving around billing memo notes.

Or you could use Job Cost Transfer module- not as flexible, but a good tool too.

Roxanne M. Cowan Director of Finance
Rutherford Bolen Group
www.rbgdesign.com

That sounds like WAY TOO much work. We have retainers and I put in my specs that if this retainer exceeds allotted hours, they will be billed as incurred. If we come in short, I don't say a thing; however, I do keep take this in consideration the next time I bill overages. But I close out as much as I can each month or billing period. Status codes are everything to me.

Felica Sparks Office Manager Benton Newton & Partners Advertising
Visit our web site at www.cre8ive.com

we too bill monthly retainers (fee). time goes against the retainer. if we are under/over we carry over until the end of the year or the end of the contract. I don't maintain my reconciliation on C&P. we keep it manually and produce it quarterly (for most of our clients). We have a general job for every client that we use to bill the fee monthly, and all overhead expenses i.e. fax, long distance, etc. Account management and admin/accounting may put their time there if it isn't job specific. Job specific time is placed against jobs and time sheets are pulled quarterly and reconciled against the fee. We send a cover sheet showing current quarters hours and cost, we then line item the over/under and show a current balance against the fee. As back up we attach the time sheets for each job.

I couldn't figure out an easier way. If you want more information, please feel free to e-mail me.

Shelly Constantz