Approving and posting billing items

SECURITY  To access the Approve & Post page, you need a Manager security level, which provides access to Contracts.
What items you can approve and post on the Approve and Post page or on the Pending Billing Items Widget Drill-In Table is governed by the Contract permissions of your security level, which could be set to All, None, Where I am Account Manager, and Where I am Project Lead.

NAVIGATION   > Contracts > Approve & Post > Approve & Post

• If labor is tracked under a contract with the Approve & Post setting set to bill "Immediately without review", the labor item is automatically posted when it is entered. If the Approve & Post setting is "On timesheet approval", it is posted when the timesheet is approved. Refer to Billing settings for approving labor.

NOTE  On the Pending Billing Items drill-in table, "On timesheet approval" labor items will be displayed, but their check boxes will be disabled and show a tooltip that explains the Approve & Post setting on the contract. They will not be posted even when you select "Approve & Post All".

• Labor invoiced directly from a ticket is also posted automatically. Refer to Generating an invoice from a ticket.

NOTE  However, if you unpost labor entries with a setting of "On timesheet approval", they will appear on the Approve & Post page so they can be modified and re-posted.

On the Approve & Post page, you can approve and post all billing items subject to your security level's permissions, or you can use filters to narrow the focus of your search.

By default, the Approve & Post page displays billing items for a default date range of Today minus 30 days. The date range filter consists of two fields, Date >= and Date <=, and is required. You can change the date range, but both fields must be populated.

NOTE  If your table has more than 500 items and you choose Approve & Post All from the menu, you will get a prompt that will allow you to post the first 500 items. They will be posted in the order of the table. Note that out of those 500, they all may not all be posted depending on your selection on the overage prompt.

This applies to all 6 tabs.

About the "Show on Invoice" filter

On the Labor tab, you can select the Show on Invoice filter. This filter applies to labor that is not directly billable (labor that is associated with a fixed price or recurring services contract). The following options are available:

For general instructions, refer to Applying a search filter.

Filter field descriptions

Most entity fields are available to filter on. To review the list of available filters, click Choose Filters.

NOTE  When you click a new tab, any filters the second tab has in common with the first one are copied over.

The next step is the review of your billing items. A context menu allows you to review and adjust the price of each billing item.

NOTE  Not all menu options are available for each billing item type.

IMPORTANT  Adjusted values will be used when posting this item, but will not be reflected in pending billing item reporting or on dashboards.

On the widget drill-in table, do the following:

1. Hover over the context menu and select Adjust Prices.

A dialog will open.

The Date, Type, Organization, Item Description and Extended Cost fields are read-only.

NOTE  Select Adjust Contract Service to adjust contract prices in recurring contracts.

2. Modify the Unit Priceor Hourly Billing Rate, Quantity and Extended Price fields as needed.

NOTE  The three fields are linked. Unit Price x Quantity = Extended Price. You can change one or two fields, and the third is updated so the equation remains correct.

3. Select or clear the Billable check box.
4. Click Save.

The values are updated in real time.

On the Approve & Post page, editing is done inline. Click the Save Changes button after adjusting prices.

NOTE  You cannot adjust prices for Labor items associated with per ticket, recurring service, or fixed price contracts. On widget tables, the Adjust Prices option is not available and, on the Approve and Post page, the Hours to Bill, Hourly Billing Rate, and Extended Price columns are not editable.

How rounding errors are avoided

If you change the Billable Amount, the Unit Price is recalculated as Billable Amount / Quantity. Then, the Billable Amount will be updated to Unit Price * Quantity. This will prevent rounding errors.

The following rules apply to editing time entries:

• Approve & Post permissions will override other security level permissions. For example, users with Manager level permission to Approve & Post can edit all project task time entries on the Approve & Post page, even if their project level permissions are limited to Mine in other areas of Autotask.
• When you change a field on the time entry, that change applies to the time entry only. Changes to the time entry do not change the settings at the task, ticket, or issue level.
• If the timesheet that contains a time entry has been submitted, you cannot edit the following fields: Resource, Date, Start Time, End Time, and Hours Worked.

To change a time entry for a labor item:

1. Click the context menu for the labor item's row in the search results table and select Edit Entry from the menu. The Edit Time Entry page opens.
2. Make changes to any of the following fields:

NOTE   Editing a time entry causes the page to refresh. Any changes previously made in the Hours to Bill or Hourly Billing Rates columns will be lost. Make all time entry changes before you make any changes to the Hours to Bill or Hourly Billing Rate columns.

For additional information on the task, issue, and ticket time entry pages, refer to Adding and editing time on a task  and Adding a ticket time entry for tickets).

You can edit all fields on the ticket with the exception of the ticket number, but only Work Types and Contracts have an impact on billing.

Work type

The Work Type selected on the ticket determines if:

• The ticket is billable or non-billable
• The Tax Category
• A factor is applied to the role rate
• The work is performed at a flat rate
• The work is performed at a custom rate that overrides the role rate
• There is a minimum and/or maximum of hours billed with this work type

If you change the work type at the ticket level, you will get a message telling you that there are unposted labor entries, and giving you the option to either change or keep the old Work Type.

NOTE   There are some restrictions. You cannot assign a work type with a Flat Rate billing method to a ticket associated with a Block Hour contract. If you attempt to do so, you won't be able to save your changes.

Contract name

Similar to making the change on the labor entry, selecting a different contract can:

• Change the billing rate for the role
• Change the billing method to a prepaid (block hour or retainer), or a fixed price contract
• Change the organization the labor is billed to (when a parent contract is selected)

NOTE  From the ticket detail you can also add or edit ticket charges that will appear in Approve & Post > Charges.

Contracts, work types, roles, and adjustments can all impact the final amount the customer is billed. If you are not sure how the Extended Price was arrived at, click the context menu and select Work Detail.

This table explains the factors that impact the final number of hours to bill, and the final amount to bill.

The next step is to approve and post billing items. This can be done on the Approve & Post page, or on the Pending Billing Items widget drill-in table.

The difference is that users with access to the Approve & Post page have permission to view and edit all billing items, whereas the Pending Billing Items widget drill-in table will filter all transactions by the user's permissions.

NOTE  A maximum of 500 items can be posted at once.

EXAMPLE  For users for whom the Can Approve & Post security setting is set to Where I am Project Lead, their own name is selected in the Project Lead filter for charges, and the drop-down menu is disabled.

NOTE  If you made any inline changes on the Approve & Post page, be sure to click Save Changes before you approve and post.

1. To approve and post a single item, click the context menu and select Approve & Post. Only this specific item will be posted, regardless of how many items on the table are selected.
2. To approve and post multiple items, click the check box to select rows, then click the bulk selector drop-down menu and select Approve & Post Selected.
3. To approve and post all items in the table, even items on pages that are not currently visible, click the Approve & Post All button above the table.
4. If the Prompt users for posted date in Approve and Post system setting is enabled, you can specify a posted date that is different from the current date.

The date defaults to the most recent previously-entered posted date. Enter a different date, if desired.

NOTE  Both the Approved Date and the user-specified Posted Date will be stored in Autotask. The Approved Date is equal to the actual date the items were approved, the Posted Date is a user-specified date. Revenue is considered posted as of the date you enter here, independent of the actual approval date on the Executive Dashboard and in all reports. This allows you to control the month the billing item is considered revenue in reports and for revenue-recognition purposes.

5. Click OK or Cancel.

If you click OK, Autotask will check that a valid posted date has been entered. If yes, the Enter Posted Date page will close and the items will be approved and posted with the posted date you entered. If you click Cancel, the page will close and the selected items will not be posted.

6. The page will be refreshed and all posted items will have been moved to Contracts > Invoices & Adjustments > Invoicing / Items to Invoice

What happens when you approve & post?

• All posted items are moved to Contracts > Invoices & Adjustments > Invoicing / Items to Invoice.
• Once items are posted, they are considered revenue in Autotask. "Posted" means "Billed!"
• The posted amounts will impact both the cost and revenue numbers for the projects, tickets and contracts they are associated with, and will show up on organization, project and contract financial reports. For more information, refer to Financial reports on the Organization page.
• Time entries that have been posted can no longer be edited on the resource's timesheet.

IMPORTANT  Approved and posted items cannot be modified. If you need to make changes after items have been posted or even invoiced, you can either un-post transactions or invoices, or make adjustments (labor items only). Refer to Fixing billing mistakes.

Mistakes happen!  If you find you have posted a billing item in error, you can undo that action by un-posting it. Refer to Searching posted billing items and un-posting transactions.

For more general information about correcting billing errors, refer to Fixing billing mistakes.

After you post a labor billing item associated with a block hour contract, Autotask applies any block hour modifiers and then deducts the total hours from the contract’s active, available block purchases. When the total hours exceed the number of hours remaining on the current block purchase, if there are additional active block purchases available, the excess hours are deducted from the additional purchase(s). This results in separate invoice items for the deduction from each block.

EXAMPLE  For example, XYZ Block Hour Contract has two remaining active block purchases of 4 hours each. A time entry of 6 hours, with no block modifier, is posted against the contract. All 4 hours of the first active block purchase are used. The remaining 2 hours of labor (6 hours posted – 4 hours deducted from the first block) are deducted from the second active block purchase. Because the single labor item is split between the two block hour purchases, two separate billing items appear on the invoice; one for the 4 hours deducted from the first block purchase and another for the 2 hours deducted from the second block purchase.

When you are posting labor against a block hour or retainer contract or charges against a retainer contract that does not have sufficient block hours or retainer amounts to cover the item, the Potential Overage dialog will appear before any items are posted.

The dialog will display all rows that would generate an overage, and you must select how you want to deal with the overages:

• Do not post any potential overages
• Post only items that have an automatic repurchase (repurchases will be created)
• Post all potential overages (overages will be created)

After you select an option, click Approve & Post to proceed.

Any items you choose not to post will be re-displayed on the table and are selected by default.

For block contract overage rules, refer to Billing rules when no blocks or purchases are available.

NOTE  Charges on projects and tickets governed by a retainer contract will be deducted from a Retainer Purchase, if one is available. Contract Charges will NOT be deducted from the Retainer Purchase.

If you are using TaxJar to calculate sales taxes and Autotask is unable to calculate sales tax on an item, the entire invoice batch will not be processed.

The usual reason is that the billing address does not conform to the TaxJar standards. The items that failed to be posted remain selected, so they are easily identified. Review and edit the billing address, and then attempt to post again.