Flexible Rules for Billing Projects & Order Items

Flexible and Controllable Project Billing

Especially with large, complex or long-term projects, an order usually contains numerous items that are subject to different billing models. The complexity of billing increases with the complexity of the orders. While, for example, a licence is to be paid in three instalments, effort-based items must be billed monthly. To meet these needs, flexible billing rules were introduced with release 5.19. They allow you to define precisely which order items can be billed at what percentage, when, and under what conditions.

With the flexible billing models in projectfacts, users gain maximum flexibility while retaining full control. This is because individual down payment instalments can now be defined not only at order level, but also at the level of individual order items.

This function is used when different items within an order are to be billed under different conditions.

An Example

An order consists of three items: a main licence, an extension licence and a consulting item. Both licences are fixed order items whose billing is determined by the project status, while the consulting item is billed monthly on a time-and-materials basis.

Until now, a payment plan could be stored in projectfacts that applied equally to all items. With the new release, billing rules in the form of instalments can be stored and integrated into individual order items.

To ensure that all items are billed in full, no cumulative values are entered — instead, the maximum amount that can be billed in that phase is specified.

Everything at a Glance

By the way, if billing rules have been stored for a project, they are immediately visible via the “Billing Rule” tab.