Talking about billing in BillQuick could be a training course all by itself. Often a simple feature has enormous potential to turn non-billable time into billable hours, improving both your top line and the bottom line. While time-saving estimates vary, our users report the following features save them several hours per billing cycle. Now, that’s something!
Invoice Wizard (Saves 30 Minutes to 5 Hours per Billing Cycle)
Designed primarily for first-time and occasional BillQuick users, Invoice Wizard can be used to bill clients quickly and easily. BillQuick scans for projects due for billing (those with unbilled, approved time and expense), projects with billing schedules and projects with recurring contract types. Then the wizard prompts you with the billing decisions to make. When ready, you can create a draft or final invoice.
Phased Invoice Wizard (Saves 15 Minutes to 5 Hours per Billing Cycle)
Like the Invoice Wizard, this wizard walks you through creating and processing joint invoices for projects with multiple phases. After selecting the billing period (the date range for unbilled, approved time and expenses), you select the phases to include. If you want, you can include completed and yet-to-be-started phases. Typical billing decisions can be made, including computing the net bill amount based on the Percent Complete.
Billing by Client Manager and Contract Type (Saves 5 to 30 Minutes per Billing Cycle)
You can view billing records by Client Manager and Contract Type (billing arrangement). This is in addition to viewing them by Client, Project, Project Manager, Group, etc. No more scanning through records for the select few you want. Having improved processing efficiency clearly trims your billing time.
Hide/Show Columns (Saves 30 Minutes to 5 Hours per Billing Cycle)
This feature, also known as the Field Chooser, lets you dynamically turn on/off different fields on the Billing Review grid. You can use this to adapt BillQuick to your billing style. This enables you to make faster and more efficient billing decisions. And with one-click sorting, you can organize billing records by project types that require similar billing decisions for quick batch billing.
Write-Up/Down (Saves 15 Minutes to 1 Hour per Billing Cycle)
In BillQuick, you can write up or write down an invoice in several ways. You can change the net bill amount, adjust the value of a group of unbilled time records or adjust individual time records by percentage or dollar amount. Also, BillQuick tracks all the write-up/downs and also lets you run reports on that (in detail or summary formats).
Billing Details (Saves 15 to 30 Minutes per Billing Cycle)
The Billing Details screen in Billing Review shows a summary of information about the project and billing records you select. It is most often used to view billing information before producing a draft or final invoice. Similarly, you can view Invoice Details on the Invoice Review screen.
Batch Change (Saves 15 Minutes to 20 Hours per Billing Cycle)
With Billing Review’s Change feature, you can add or modify key items for a few or hundreds of billing records at a time. You can add a reminder or a “Thank you for your business” memo to 90% of your invoices, then to the other 10% a reminder about past due amounts. Additionally, the starting invoice number for all or a group of billing records can be changed. This also applies to the invoice date, allowing for processing and mail delivery before aging starts. You can even apply the same dollar or percent discount to as many bills as desired.
Client and Project Retainers (Saves 15 Minutes to 1 Hour per Billing Cycle)
When you want to apply a percentage of a retainer to a bill, you don’t need to calculate the corresponding dollar amount. BillQuick calculates the dollar amount to apply when you enter a percent. In situations when you apply retainers until the net bill amount is $0.00, or the retainer is exhausted, the Auto Apply Retainer (Billing Review, Options button) makes it automatic.
Bill Final
Billing Review screen includes an easy one-click option to bill the remainder of a project’s contract amount. You can generate a final bill for any project, regardless of its contract type. Simply highlight the desired billing records and right-click to select the Bill Final option. BillQuick will compute a new Net Bill for the selected projects (Contract Amount – Amount Billed to Date).
Automatic Billing
You can specify a frequency for automatic scheduling of invoices for projects with BillQuick. Invoices can be memorized at the project level and set it for automatic processing or processing by a specified person. You can also release time and expenses with it. This virtually cuts all your billing time to a few seconds every billing cycle.
These small saving of minutes and hours could add up to a significant number of hours and days per year. Use these tips and you’ll surely see more revenue in no time!
