Multipart Invoices

would be great!

We could use this feature too in our graphic design firm since very often we are paid an advance on commissioning and the balance on successful completion of the project.

Would you all do anything different? Or is this the way you’re likely to do it yourselves?

Nice idea. Why not try to implement “Invoice Packages”?

This way in list view you only have a single representation of project invoice in all invoice list but with an indication that clicking thru dials down into a package of invoices (ex. 3 invoices included: Start, Milestone #2, Final).

This way you can maintain project payment context in a single webpage view with individual invoices for milestones.

We also take deposits and something specifically for this would make it a lot easier to manage.

This feature or soomething like it would be great. Personally a project level drop down for milestones on a project (basically payment levels) i.e. 40% on Order, 30% on Documents, 30% on Handover. Which linked to invoice?

I would also love this feature. I would imagine for most web / graphic businesses this would be very useful as I’m sure most of use work on a 2 / 3 part invoice.

I am so glad to learn you are working on this. I am new to Harvest and have found no tool to date that helps me with this billing process. Let me explain how I work so that you can add it to your list of use cases/stories.

When I get a project I immediately begin the process of building out a set of tasks which I then attach time estimates too.

I tally the time estimates to understand how long a project will take.

I multiply time estimates by their billable rate, add it all together, and that becomes my project estimate.

Once I have my estimate, I present it to the client in the form of a Statement of Work. They approve (sign) the SOW and I issue an invoice for 50% of the total amount. When payment is received work begins. When the project is complete, I invoice the remaining 50%.

Note: some projects are billed at 50/50, 33/33/33, 50/25/25, etc.

With this data I then want my contractors to bill against the tasks I have defined in the estimate and assigned to them. I then want to be able to create a report that says how accurate my estimates are/were. I want to be alerted when contractors exceed the estimate.

I would like to be able to present to clients the concept of a “statement,” which is different than an invoice. A statement shows hours worked, but is clearly labeled, “This is not a bill.”

How I have been solving this problem using existing tools:

Having never found a tool that helps me with this exact billing workflow, I have done the following in Billings Pro from Marketcircle:

I begin by creating an estimate with a value of the deposit (50% of total project cost). I present that to the client to solicit payment. They send me a check and I create a retainer, which I then bill against.

It is a very hackish solution IMHO. I am still looking for a system that is more accommodating to my workflow.

I hope this background helps! Thanks for a great product!

I second the mult-part invoices. Currently here is my process:

1.) Send estimate
2.) User approves estimate
3.) Convert to invoice, change to 50% of original invoice.
4.) Send invoice. User pays.
5.) On Project completion, sen second 50%. Duplicate the original invoice. Change up the language for second half installment.
6.) Send invoice. User pays.
7.) Done!

As you can see it’s a bit of a management required at this point. The reason I do 50% is because I work with people all over doing website maintenance and customizations. So when working with people I’ve never met, who are possibly in another country, I need 50% down so I dont get burned. I wish the process worked like this:

1.) Send Estimate.
2.) On Approval, automatically converted to invoice. Preset settings know it’s a 50/50 invoice, so it lets the user immediately pay the 50%.
3.) At end of project, I tell harvest to send second half.
4.) User pays.

This way will a little bit of prep work, I have two interactions with Harvest instead of many.

Thanks for listening!

I agree with Pelton Interactive. Creating an automatic workflow upfront that allows the user to approve the estimate and have the system automatically convert to estimate and send out the Invoice would be great. The ability to accept a down payment for the project at that time would be perfect. Then ability to get additional payments that are customizable in amount or percentage in advance would make workflow and interaction with the system awesome. Thanks for considering this important piece to invoicing.

I second this. All my projects start with a 25% down payment then are progress billed monthly.

Currently I invoice the down payment, then on the next invoice I have a line item for the deposit with a negative amount so the total bill vs payments received match up in the end.

+1 from me, this would be a huge help!

Thanks Squared Eye, I agree.

+1 from me too, this is my only gripe with Harvest, otherwise it’s perfect!

Could I be added to the ticket please

I would also love this feature. Working around this is really clumsy. Our usual schedule is a 50% deposit and the remaining 50% due upon project completion. The Qty = 0.5 trick works for some projects, but say we’re doing 2 apparel designs for a band, then Qty for the first 50% would be 1, but that’s confusing for the client.

I recently read this article on your blog, and the interviewee mentioned that he uses the retainer feature for such payment schedules. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Maybe Harvest can write up a best practice post for multipart invoicing until the feature becomes official?

+1 from me on this as well.
Every time we start a new project I find myself Googling around to see if anyone has come up with a good way to track this. Actual, built-in support for it would be very nice to have!

I’m currently trialing Harvest and have a similar flow to Austin Stewart. We also have clients where we bill in advance for a set number of hours of support/updates, where there is a similar need to deduct hours billed in advance from a later invoice.

I had hoped the retainer feature would be the answer, but it’s not ideal, mainly because:

- A retainer applies only to a cash amount, not a number of hours. For example, sometimes we give a discount on pre-billed hours. I can’t use a retainer for that.

- You can’t mix retainers and non-retainers on the same invoice. So for example, I can’t send an invoice that includes both the project advance (retainer) plus a domain registration.

I’m can see how to hack around this in Harvest using negative lines on a regular invoice, but I had hoped Harvest would replace the need to maintain my own system tracking estimates, what I’ve billed in advance and what hours are still left to bill.

+1 for me to…I’m currently in the trial phase of your product…your system is great, but I spent hours looking for a way to take care of 50% deposits. I’m glad I found this thread. Are you guys working on it already? I see the demand and am curious to know.

I would hope we can quickly convert an accepted estimate into an invoice. Am I missing something or do I have to copy over my estimate into an invoice if I am invoicing 50% of the total estimate prior to services being rendered?

+1 add me too! This would be immensely helpful for my web/graphic design business. We often will create an invoice and then ask for a percentage up front. Then the client pays the remaining portions as each phase is completed.

This is how we do it…but sometimes with varying phases since our services aren’t delivered all at once:
1. Create estimate
2. Invoice client for 25% deposit up front
3. Phase 1 completed, invoice client for another 25%
4. Phase 2 completed, invoice client for another 25%
5. Phase 3 completed, invoice client for remaining 25%
6. Send final invoice showing client has paid in full

Thanks!
Is there a place to keep tabs on when such a feature might surface?

Thanks Samara! I appreciate your transparency.

I think what we will try for now is to first create an estimate with the entire project for each client. And then send separate/partial invoices for each completed phase.

Takes a bit of finagling but totally worth it for the great Harvest experience! Something I much prefer to FreshBooks or the others.

I agree that being able to bill phases or a percentage of an estimate is critical to most firms. I consult with graphic designers and ad agencies on accounting and project management software. Clients want to move to a cloud based system. Quickbooks Online is good for accounting and now that Syncr is available to sync Harvest to QuickBooks, it makes Harvest tops on my list of recommendations.

However, even though many firms are tracking time, they bill a flat fee for the work they do. They provide an estimate then bill a percentage or phases of the estimate as the job progresses.

They also need to be able to make changes to the estimate, either by a change order, or an estimate addendum, that can also be invoiced to the client.

A summary and detail report should be available for active projects that shows the following amounts: ESTIMATED | ESTIMATED HOURS | ACTUAL HOURS | BILLABLE HOURS| BILLABLE EXPENSES | AMOUNT INVOICED

The Estimated column would include any addendum(s). The report would allow the user to calculate how much of the estimate remains to bill (Total estimates – total invoiced), or to calculate the remaining estimate compared to actual time and expenses.

+1 — I’ve been testing out Harvest for a couple months and am still trying to find the best way to do this. We provide a quote for projects and then invoice 50/50 (deposit and on completion). It would be nice to invoice from the estimate the first 50% and then come back and invoice the last 50% when it’s complete and have it marked as complete or closed (?). Also, on the final invoice, I’d like to show the payment received for the deposit. Is there a way of accomplishing this now?? Is everyone manually creating invoices instead of converting the estimate? I’m a bit confused on the intended workflow. Thanks!

I agree with @stevensonmedia and am right with @angela. New to Harvest as of this past month and it’s super hard to use the system to show total estimate, what was collected as a deposit and what is remaining unbilled not only to do end of month invoicing but for reports in terms of what money if floating out where.

Does anyone have a simple and easy way to deal with how to keep track of what is billed vs. not in Harvest itself while they are working on a potential feature for us. I hope it’s soon, I moved over to Harvest without realizing this wasn’t part of the workflow yet & miss it a lot!

Samara, Another thought as I try to get through my first end of the month invoicing. (perhaps there is a way to do this and I am mistaking?)

I have a client that has many projects billed by the hour vs. a flat rate (usually 50% upfront and 50% at the end, sometimes 100% all at once at the end) Today I need to bill them for all the hourly May charges and that flat fee for 1 of the projects on their account (100%) – if I change the quantity to 1 at $ x on the invoice and the rest show hourly than the quantity unit becomes confusing – so it’s almost like it needs to show a flat rate if you were to ever want to show all charges on 1 bill without confusing the client. Most people would gather it’s 1 at $x and the rest show hourly x $x rate per hour and you could make a note for now in the description on the flat-rate item or % billed for it, but more flexibility on this would be great.

It sounds like the multi-part invoicing is a huge one for all of us graphic designers out here that work off deposits vs. retainers if you want to keep the proper set up without all these work arounds. I hope they look at this soon! :)

Thanks!

+1 I would also vote for this feature. As a web agency we often work with that model of invoicing.

+1 this is a very necessary feature. We tried a solution provided by Harvest email support, but have had a bad response from clients and confusion from part-time admin staff.

The Harvest suggested solution was to provide 1 full invoice with a percentage due now (15 days) and a percentage due on project completion.

I’m glad to see this feature request getting so much support. Hopefully the Harvest team will move this up in their queue of features to add.

+1 Thanks! To me this is a CRITICAL feature!!!

Currently if I wish to raise a commencement deposit, I have to generate an invoice outside of Harvest, which means the billing isn’t recorded or added to financial totals.

It runs the risk of creating duplicate invoices. From harvest full invoice and work-around invoices generated to obtain a deposit. I have to manually delete the deposit invoice from my accounts archive so I don’t double up on invoicing.

It seems that smaller sized companies are usually the one’s requiring deposit up front to maintain cashflow.

I appreciate your team is busy working on valuable features, but hope this feature gets alot more attention and due focus – especially when this issue was first raised Nov 19, 2009. As I said, it’s a critical issue and for me reduces alot of the value of using Harvest in the first place – unifying time & accounts management.

Hi all,

Just wanting to register my frustration at not having this feature.

Invoicing in stages is crucial to cash flow and our business model and a real shame it’s not available when it is already available on similar packages like

Our system is:
35% up front
45% at an agreed middle stage
20% on delivery/completion

But a flexible system would be needed to cover everyones needs.

Sam

Sorry, didn’t finish that sentence as still awaiting responses from other online invoicing systems. WIll let you know if I find any that already have this % invoicing system.

So from looking around it doesn’t seem like other systems are using % staged invoicing, which seems like a great opportunity for Harvest to be the first. :-)