if I have a flat fee job, and half of the fee is due when the project begins, and the other half is due when it ends, what's the best way to handle that in Billings?

Hi Beepy

Can you explain more about what you mean? Are you asking how to set up slips, what to put on your invoice, or how to accept payments?

You can set up a retainer in Billings, which is like a flat fee that you receive in advance of doing your work. Then you can send an invoice at the end of the whole project, for the full amount, and when you receive the second 50%, make two "payments" against the invoice: One payment for half the money would have "retainer" as the payment method, the other would have cheque or whatever method the client used.

HTH,

Sorry I was so vague. What I mean is, I wanted to be able to have a single invoice which said something like:
Total due: $5000
Payable Immediately: $2500

Part of my problem is that I don't normally expect payment up front so I'm not even sure what people usually do. Two invoices?

You could modify the invoice template to include an area that specifies the total due, or you might be able to achieve this using some trickery with slips. However, I don't have a specific solution for this. Generally, our built-in invoices total the slips that you include and expect that you want to bill for the full amount.

It is an interesting predicament, though. Perhaps some other users will have suggestions about how they handle this in general. Two invoices seems fairly reasonable to me, where the amount due can be cancelled out or the work listed as essentially pro-bono.

Let's see if other people have ideas!

quote:

Originally posted by beepy:
if I have a flat fee job, and half of the fee is due when the project begins, and the other half is due when it ends, what's the best way to handle that in Billings?

I'm a small business owner who does video photography. In the state I live, 70% is taxable and 30% in non-taxable (sitting fee) and I collect 50% upfront and collect the balance when the project is complete.

I've been using QuickBooks NUE 5 and would like something more "Mac like". I've been evaluting several other invoice packages what I need is the same layout I did get in QB.

For a $1000 package, my invoice showed:
Package @ 70% of total ie. $700
Package @ 30% of total ie. $300
Downpayment (50% of list price ) ie. $500

"Any custom notes would go here"

And then the balance due $542

Can Billings do this?

Thanks,
Grant H

In theory - what you are doing is sending an estimate and asking for money up front before you begin work - the work has not begun yet and thus - in theory - you can't really invoice.

So send an estimate, ask the $$$ up front using the comment area. Then when you receive the $$$ you accept it as a retainer. Then when you create the real invoice, you can choose to do one of two things. You can deduct the $$$ from the retainer or you can send the invoice without deducting the retainer.

Some people specifically get a retainer and the retainer does not get deducted until the last invoice (this in their practice - not in the app).

What should be happening here is that a statement should be send at the same time as an invoice if you are going to apply a retainer or if partial payment has been made. That's the proper accounting way of doing it - but no one really does it that way.

How many people are in this partial payment or upfront payment predicament?

quote:

Originally posted by AJ:
In theory - what you are doing is sending an estimate and asking for money up front before you begin work - the work has not begun yet and thus - in theory - you can't really invoice.

I've attached an image of a screen shot from a typical QB invoice I send. I tell the client the price, the amount required (to reserve the date of event phootography) and then enter the amount of the check I get from them and send them an invoice with custom notes. Maybe, by definition, I'm not sending an invoice, and I'm probably not doing accounting correctly, I only use QB for the invoice features. I keep my financial records in Quicken and the two programs don't interact (meaning, I don't link the two). All I'm looking for is an invoice program that isn't QB. :-)

I could probably just build a template in Word and fill it in on a case by case invoice. But what I do like about "invoice" programs is that everything is in one place.

If that's not how these programs are meant to be used, I'll probably just stick with QB because it gives me the layout I'm looking for, otherwise if someone from the company can help, I'll drop the money for a full version of Billing.

Thanks in advance.

Grant

Hi Grant

You can achieve what you're looking for by using an expense slip with a negative dollar value. So, your typical work--travel, video photography--would be handled by ordinary Billings slips of the various types (mileage, timed, etc.) Then, you can show a "down payment" by making an "expense" slip with a negative dollar value equal to the amount of the down payment. In the case of the example above, you'd just make an expense slip with an amount of ($ 350) or -$350, depending on how it's formatted in your system.

It's easy to do the invoice you've got there from QB, but with more style and customization, in Billings. If you have any difficulty achieving the desired result, let us know here and we'll help you figure it out.

HTH,

I've been struggling with the 50% up front issue too, and I can't seem to find a workaround.

I think part of the problem is that if you create an invoice for $1000, and accept payment of $500 against that invoice, Billings won't let you invoice the client for the other $500, because you can only create an invoice with a slip, and the $1000 slip's already been deleted when you sent the first invoice.

The workflow that seems most logical to me is:
1. Create estimate (say $1000)
2. Invoice client for $500
3. Accept payment for $500 (retainer)
4. Invoice client for remainder (Billings should automatically calculate what's still owed.)

This should be possible without having to create a dummy retainer payment at the very end of the project for a check the client wrote you months ago.

Hopefully I am missing something and there is in fact a simple way to do this.

Thanks in advance,
Ross

Hi Ross

Although it is indeed a workaround, the steps that I described in the above workflow should help you achieve what you're looking for.

HTH

quote:

Originally posted by adam:
You can set up a retainer in Billings, which is like a flat fee that you receive in advance of doing your work. Then you can send an invoice at the end of the whole project, for the full amount, and when you receive the second 50%, make two "payments" against the invoice: One payment for half the money would have "retainer" as the payment method, the other would have cheque or whatever method the client used.

If this is the method you're referring to, I see two major problems: no way to generate the first invoice for 50%, and worse, sending a client a second invoice that is twice as much as it is supposed to be.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ross

The workaround I think is to use slips to create invoices that match your needs. For instance, on the first invoice, you can use any kind of slip (such as an expense slip) to make a line item asking for the first 50%.

The second invoice can contain a "negative" expense slip; that is, a slip with a negative value equal to the payment received. This line item would be called "down payment" or something similar, and would have the net effect of reducing the total of the second invoice.

The retainer and payment would be set up normally; you would use the retainer to add a payment against the first invoice, and the second invoice's payment would be handled normally. The main caveat to this solution is that if you don't use the same kind of slip on the first and second invoice, or if the numbers don't match up perfectly, it might affect expense or other reporting. But, if you set up, for instance, a $500 expense on the first invoice (asking for 50% up front, say), and a $-500 expense on the second invoice (to indicate the downpayment received), it should work as expected.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the need to improve this and I believe there will be a better solution in Billings 2! For the time being, I recommend using the above method.

Thx,

I've been dealing with this problem as well. Mine is a bit more complex, as my projects tend to be long-term and I often charge in 3 phases, 30% of the estimate up front, 30% midway thru, and the final 40% plus any additional incurred charges on completion. I've been doing this using the workaround you suggested above, using temporary negative-value slips to show payments received, and then deleting the invoice and making all the slips active again. It's not a great solution, but it's getting me by.

I'm wondering if it would be better to create a custom report/statement that could do this, rather than creating/deleting an invoice each time. I'm no accountant, so I have no idea what the normal way of doing this is. Would it be possible to create a report that could handle this type of billing situation? and how would I go about that? It should look and feel like an invoice, I think, but should show received payments/retainer amount (ideally without creating temp time slips), the total amount of the invoice (total of all working slips), and the current amount/date due.

Would be super cool if Billings could do this sort of thing without workarounds in the future, but for now, maybe this could work...

Thanks
Chad

We added the ability to easily use the retainer on an invoice in the latest beta.

When you're making an invoice, simply check "Apply retainer," which will indicate how much of the retainer will be used (Billings tries to use as much of the retainer as possible). The invoice will automatically show the amount of the retainer that has been used, before showing the balance due.

You can change the name of the line item that indicates the prepayment, in Invoice & Estimate Preferences.

HTH,

I think I may have found a way to make the 50% due immediately work.

When you create a dynamic text object, there is a checkmark you can enable next to an option called "Evaluate Entire Text as Mathematical Expression".

Select this before you insert your object (Invoice Total), as well as the currency formatter, and type "/2" immediately after to calculate the 50%.

What I found was that I couldn't apply text formatting to this expression field, so I get a different format than I've applied to the rest of the contract. But otherwise it seems to work.

A couple of things:

It only worked for me when I selected the "Evaluate Entire Text as Mathematical Expression" before I inserted the object, and then only if there is no other text but the actual equation.

I'm adding a whole new dynamic text box right next to the descriptive text on the contract.

If anybody at MC can tell me how to get Billings to allow me to edit the text formatting of that field that'd be great.

Luis

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Luis Giraldo,