Introduction to billing

Autotask billing is governed by contracts, which are defined as "billing arrangements."

When no contracts are in place, Autotask tracks the worked time and multiplies it by the selected role rate and possibly a work type factor to arrive at the billable amount.

When standard time and materials billing is not enough, you can set up contracts to:

  • Modify standard hourly rates
  • Bill for managed services and fixed price milestones
  • Bill by number of customer contacts or devices
  • Manage block, retainer and ticket purchases
  • Bill a third party for the labor

NOTE  Before you get started with billing, make sure you understand how contracts work. Refer to Introduction to contracts.

Billing functions in Autotask

Autotask is not a full-featured accounting application. A majority of Autotask customers use an external accounting application. For a complete list of accounting integrations with Autotask, refer to the list of accounting integrations on the Datto website.

  • You can track different kinds of billable items that are generated as your resources work on customer projects and resolve tickets
  • You can review all billing items and make necessary adjustments before they get posted to the customer account
  • You can generate invoices
  • You can reverse billing steps if you need to fix mistakes
  • You can transfer invoices to QuickBooks
  • You can export posted items to .csv or XML
  • Autotask does not have an Accounts Receivable function

Billing items are considered pending revenue before they are approved and posted, and billed revenue as soon as they are posted. Exporting or invoicing an item has no impact from a revenue recognition point of view.

  • Autotask also does not have an Accounts Payable function

Billing workflow

Billing in Autotask is a two-step process.

  1. First, you perform a financial approval step on all potentially billable items before they are posted to the customer. In this step, you can make adjustments as needed. Refer to Approving and posting billing items.
  2. Once posted, billing items can be invoiced in Autotask , transferred to QuickBooks or exported for import into another accounting application. For details on invoicing, refer to Invoicing.

For a complete list of accounting integrations with Autotask, refer to the list of accounting integrations on the Datto website.

Access to billing features

Autotask billing features are accessed from the Contracts module and require a Manager security level. Managers also have access to the Reports module and its financial reports, the Executive Dashboard and the Financials tab in the CRM module.