Project, staged invoices

[EPICCarri]

Hi Glenn

My query today is kind of linked with this (I think )

Our contracts with clients tend to be for finite sums, with the invoicing for fees and expenses phased over a number of periods, eg invoicing 30% at the start of the contract, 30% at the presentation of the interim report, and 40% on presentation of the final report.

Our clients require us to present invoices for each phase, which is fine, but I can’t find a way of tying it all together from our end apart from as a project. Ideally, I’d like to be able to create a master invoice for the whole project budget, and then issue sub-invoices to clients as each of the milestones is reached. This would allow me at a glance, over long duration contracts, to see how much is left in the budget for both fees and expenses.

I did try this concept out earlier this year, but ended up with the books (for about 5 minutes before I spotted the issue) showing that we had significantly more outstanding debts than in reality…

As I suspect I’m not the only consultant who a) uses Quickfile and b) invoices contracts in this way, I was wondering whether a work-around or solution could be created to this issue.

Huge thanks as always
Carri

[Glenn]

This is a bit off topic from the original post so I’ve moved it to a new thread.

@EPICCarri

I’d like to be able to create a master invoice for the whole project budget, and then issue sub-invoices to clients as each of the milestones is reached.

This wouldn’t really work as an invoice creates a debtor balance. Creating a project total invoice along with sub invoices would just duplicate everything. Invoices will always affect the accounts and this is the way it should be.

If you want to track the total outstanding on a project the way to do this would be to either issue one invoice and stage payments against it, or create multiple invoices and tie them together with the same project code. If you choose the latter option you can create all 3 invoices at once, leave them in draft status and send them as and when you reach each milestone in the project.