Hours and Billing for Software Projects, from the Monthly Report to the Purchase Order

At the end of every month someone sits down with a spreadsheet, adds up hours, multiplies by the rate and sends the client a number. The client asks where the number came from, and someone sits down again. Here the monthly report is built from the same hours logged on the tasks, the client sees it in the portal, the month is submitted and accepted with a click, and the total is checked against the client's purchase orders.

The monthly report

The report shows how many hours were logged on each task in the month, by the date of the work rather than the day it was logged, and the month's fixed expenses separately. The client sees it in the portal and downloads Excel or PDF in their organization's language. Hours that came from a time tracker without a matching task wait on a separate list on the provider's side, and enter the report once they are linked to a task.

Who sees amounts

Money and reports are separate rights. A person can be given reports without seeing rates and amounts, and the owner of the organization always sees them. The rate is set on the organization's participation in the project, and every time entry keeps the rate as it was at that moment: a rate change does not rewrite work already done. Internal hours, how much of the logged time was internal work, are kept on the entry on the provider's side and never reach the client, not even in the change log.

A monthly cap per task

A task can have a cap in shekels per month. From 80 percent of the cap it is flagged with a warning, and at the cap itself as reached, so there is time to decide whether to raise it or slow down. Only someone who sees amounts can set the cap. Someone who does not see amounts only sees that the cap was reached, without numbers.

Fixed expenses

Payments, subscriptions and services that are not hours, such as a cloud service, are recorded for a month and a department in shekels. In the report they are a separate part, shown only to those who see amounts, and they count in the match against purchase orders. Expenses that repeat every month are listed as what has not been entered for this month yet, with last month's amount as a guide, and are entered with a click.

Submitting and accepting the month

On a project where it is switched on, the provider submits the month and the client accepts it or returns it for fixing with a note. The person who submits is on the provider's side with the reports right, the person who accepts is on the client's side with the money right, so a provider cannot accept their own month. Every step sends an email to the other side. A month that has waited for the client for a full week is flagged, and the provider can send a reminder.

What acceptance locks

A submitted or accepted month is locked for both sides: no hour can be logged, edited or deleted in it, including through a connection to an outside system, and its expenses cannot be changed. A month returned for fixing is open again. On acceptance, the Excel and PDF of the report are kept exactly as the client accepted them, with the total hours and amount. A forgotten hour is logged in the current month with a note of the month it belongs to, and the accepted total does not change. To reopen a month, the provider asks and the client agrees.

Purchase orders matched to hours

The client's purchase orders are loaded from a file or entered by hand: the order number, the legal entity, the amount before VAT and with VAT, and the month the order is for. The system matches each order to the departments' total for that month, hours times the kept rate plus fixed expenses, before VAT and within the same legal entity. The difference is always shown, and a gap of up to one shekel counts as a match. Several orders can cover one department.

A document in iCount

From a matched order a document can be issued in iCount: each line is a task, the hours are the quantity and the rate is the price, and fixed expenses come in as lines of their own. The provider sees the document before it is sent and sends it with a click, one order at a time. Once the document is issued, its number is kept on the order and the order cannot be issued again. The iCount connection is switched on by agreement.

Frequently asked questions