Billing reports

Once you have configured your workspace’s time and billing settings, set your billing rates, and tracked time on tasks and/or added charges for clients, you are ready to create a billing report in todo.vu.

Billing reports are customized digital records of time billing and fixed charges for a client. You can use billing reports to streamline your invoicing and provide your clients with exceptional service, as they can see exactly what they are being billed for.

To best understand the advantages of billing reports and how to use them, ensure you first understand how time billing in todo.vu works; please see our Help article: About Time Billing.

Quick glossary

Note

Depending on your user access level, the billing features and functions mentioned in this guide may not be available to you.

Only Administrator users and Workspace owners have unlimited access to all features and functions in todo.vu. Staff users (Full access and Restricted access users) have limited access.

Learn more about user roles and access levels

What is a billing report?

A billing report is a digitized record in todo.vu that is created from your data, and which incorporates built-in calculations, as users track time and charges according to custom billing and fixed rates.

Billing reports provide a detailed account of your time billing and fixed charges for any one client, with precise calculations based on hourly rates, time spent, unit prices, and quantities.

Though todo.vu does not yet have the ability to directly invoice and take payment from clients, billing reports help speed up your invoicing process and provide transparency to your clients.

They are also helpful for your internal records: when data has been published in a billing report, it is marked as ‘billed’ across the platform, so you can easily see your billed vs non-billed data and make informed decisions about your business.

Billing reports are designed to be shared externally with your clients. You can learn about internal reporting in todo.vu here.

What data appears on billing reports?

By default*, data in billing reports is broken down by time entries, charges, tasks and projects. Time entries and charges (if applicable) are grouped according to the task and then the project they belong to.

For each of the time entries and charges, the report may show the:

• date and duration of the time entry
• hourly rate of the time entry
• user who logged the time entry or charge
• date and quantity of the charge
• unit price of the charge

Billing reports automatically calculate time and billing values per project as well as overall for the report total, which may include taxes, if applicable. This offers a comprehensive view of the work conducted and billing for the client.

See the screenshots below for a simple time-based billing report and more complex billing report that incorporates charges. (Click the image to enlarge.)

*Users can customise data display for each billing report through that billing report’s settings.

Create a billing report: Step-by-step guide

To create a billing report, follow the steps below:

1. Open the billing report editor

Understanding the billing report editor

Data on the ‘Unbilled time and charges’ page, or billing report editor, for a client in todo.vu represents all unbilled time and charges data for that one client.

This data is organized into two primary sections: Time and Charges. These sections are clearly displayed with headers: Time has a calendar icon, and Charges a currency symbol icon.

Sections:

• Time section

Under the Time header, you will find time billing data (time entries). Each entry is categorized by a project subheading, indicating the project it belongs to. The project title is highlighted and accompanied by a symbol that, when hovered over, indicates if the project is a fixed-price or time billing-based project.

If a time entry does not belong to a specific project, it will be grouped under the subheading (no project).

• Charges section

Under the Charges header, you will find data on fixed charges. Similar to the Time section, fixed charges are categorized by project subheadings where applicable. If a fixed charge is not linked to a project, no project subheading appears, as demonstrated by the $20 website hosting fee charge in our screenshot above.

The Charges section header also includes a plus (+) icon next to it; select this icon to add fixed-charges directly to your billing report editor.

• Project and task subheadings

Within each project section, both time entries and fixed charges are further organized by task subheadings. The task title is highlighted and displayed with the task number, preceded by the (#) symbol. Time entries must be linked to tasks to appear in this section, while fixed charges can be added without being connected to a project or task.

• Entry details

Each time entry and fixed charge includes details on the date of the entry or charge, the user who logged it, charge or time entry notes, and applicable billing details (duration, unit, and billing rate).

• Fixed-price projects

For fixed-price projects, time entries will appear in the Time section without any billing value attached, as in our screenshot above.

Learn more about fixed-price projects here.

2. (Optional) Filter the entries on your billing report

You can filter the time entries and charges that appear on the billing report editor to simplify the process.

You can choose to filter your time entries and charges according to a:

• task label
• user
• date range.

However, you can continue to create your billing report without these filters.

Filter options

By task label – With the label icon in the top right-hand side of your workspace, you can filter the unbilled time entries and charges by a specific label. For example, you may want to see tasks labelled “Out of Scope” or “Support”.

By user – With the user filter, you can filter the unbilled time entries and charges logged by a specific team member.

Filter by date range – With the date range selector, you can filter the unbilled time entries and charges according to a date range.

Click on the date range at the top right of the page to expand the tool and adjust it to your desired date. You will see the letters ‘D’, ‘W’ and ‘M’ above your graph on the right-hand side. These stand for:

• Day
• Week
• Month.

These letters determine the length by which you can move your date range selector, which is the rectangular tool highlighted in orange.

When you select ‘D’, you are selecting ‘Snap to day’, which means you will be able to select a range down to the nearest day. If you select ‘M’, you are selecting ‘Snap to month’, which allows you to select a range in monthly intervals.

Note

You can apply more than one filter; for example, you can filter your list to display hours logged by a specific team member, with a specific label, for a specific date range.

3. Add items to a draft billing report

Simply select any of the time entries and charges from the editor that you want to include in a report.

A pop-up bar will appear at the bottom of the page with the option to add your selected items to a report (“Add to report”), as well as additional options to edit your time entry or charge.

When you select the ‘Add to new report’ option, you will be given the option to add the selected charges/entries to an existing draft report, if any exist. If no draft reports exist, a new draft billing report will be automatically created containing the selected charges/entries.

Note: Bulk select & edit

You can bulk select all entries under either the Time or Charges sections by clicking on the section headings. Similarly, you can bulk select all entries within projects or tasks by clicking on the project or task headings. To deselect any entries, simply click on them again. You can also deselect entire sections, projects or tasks by clicking on their headings.

When you select multiple entries and/or charges, any edits you make using the additional options described below will apply in bulk to all selected items.

Additional options:

When you select one or multiple time entries or charges, you are also provided the following options:

• Non-billable — to mark these time entries/charges as non-billable. This will move them to the ‘Non-billable’ section of the page (Underneath ‘Unbilled’ on the left-hand side). You can mark these items as ‘Billable’ from this page to undo this action.
• Change rate (time entries only) — to change the billing rate of the selected time entries.
• Change task (time entries only) — to connect selected time entries to a separate (or new) task.
• Edit charge (charges only) — to edit the fixed charge.

 Note you can also edit entries from within a draft billing report in the same way, with a few different options:

Options within a draft billing report only:

• Move to unbilled — to remove the selected entries from the draft report and place them back on the billing report editor (Unbilled time and charges page).
• Move to another report — to move the selected entries to a separate draft billing report.

Note: 

1. You can select the pencil icon on individual time entries or charges to further edit the time entry or charge.
2. You can select the arrows icon on task subheadings to move the task to a different project.

See the screenshots below to see how this looks in the platform (select the image to enlarge).

To delete a draft billing report, it needs to be empty of any entries. An empty draft billing report will display a trash can icon at the top right-hand side, which will allow you to delete it.

Start with an ‘Empty’ draft billing report instead

4. Publish your billing report

Ensure you are on the draft billing report page of the report you want to publish. Select from the left-hand column the report you want to open.

Note: All of your billing reports, both published and draft, will be stored here; your draft billing reports will be represented with a red icon, and your published reports with a green icon.

Now, you can add a billing report name at the top, and an external invoice ID to the left of the billing report name for your own referencing purposes.

Remember, as long as your billing report is in draft, you can continue to adjust time entries or charges using the same additional options as described above.

Click on ‘Publish report’ at the top right corner of your workspace when you are satisfied with your report. You can also leave your report as a draft for as long as you like; time data in the draft report will appear as ‘Draft’ across your workspace.

Though your report is published, it may not be ready to share just yet; especially if your report includes fixed-price projects. See Step 5, below, for more.

5. Customize your published billing report

Once you have published your billing report, you may still want to customize how it appears to your client.

You can do this via a published billing report’s settings.

Here, you can update:

a) your billing report title and invoice ID
b) how time is grouped on your report
c) how you display data relating to time-billing based and fixed-price projects
d) whether your report shows task IDs
e) your billing report timezone
f) your billing report footer
g) your billing report style and logo (exclusive to Business Time subscribers).

Note about billing fixed-price projects:

todo.vu incorporates default settings for displaying fixed-price project data on published billing reports. Be sure to review section c), below, to ensure your published billing reports with fixed-price project data reflect your desired appearance.

Here’s more information on each of your customization settings on a published billing report:

When you are finished editing your published billing report, simply select ‘Return to report’ at the bottom right-hand side, or the (x) at the top right-hand side.

Note that other than these settings, you cannot make other changes to a published billing report. If you need to make additional changes to your report, you will have to select ‘Retract’ at the top right corner of your published billing report page to send the report back to ‘Draft’ mode, from where you can edit and then republish.

Note

All edits made to published billing reports, either made by retracting the report or through the billing report’s settings, happen in real-time.

That means even if you have already sent a link to a billing report to a client, and need to edit that billing report, you can still do so and the client will see the updated report through the same initial link.

6. Share your published billing report

Once you have updated your settings, you can share your published billing report with your clients by copying the unique URL above the report. You could, for example, share the link on your invoice or in an email.

Congratulations – You have created a billing report!

READ NEXT:

Learn more about fixed charges in todo.vu. Read here >>