New billing possibilities for rule based lump sums and the like
Order confirmations serve to define how rendered services are charged between contractor and client. For services that are charged on a time and material basis, a specific unit of time is usually billed at a specific rate. If one of your employees works 8 hours on a project, projectfacts supports you to invoice the agreed daily rate of the service with a few clicks.
Sometimes there are more far reaching agreements with customers. Sometimes precise rules are agreed upon, under which conditions performed times are billable and which costs follow from it. For such cases we introduce a new article type in projectfacts. The new rule article joins the already known ones, such as effort or fixed price articles. With this you can map a variety of complex billing agreements. The good thing about this is that the colleague who tracks his times does not need to know the rules; the order confirmation does the work.
In the following, we would like to give a few examples of what these articles do and which requirements you can map with them.
Examples of the potential of rule articles
The new rule articles allow you to map billing scenarios of varying complexity. The new function is particularly suitable for billing flat rates. These are often agreed with customers in connection with travel times. Below are three examples with increasing complexity.
1st scenario
You are an IT service provider and have agreed with a customer that you will charge a fixed hourly rate for your work. In addition, you always charge a fixed flat rate for the technical control of a customer’s server, regardless of how long this activity took.
What does the working colleague have to do?
One of your colleagues books the time spent on server control under a special category “Server control”.
What does the item/position do?
A rule item is created in the order of the project, which charges a flat value of 50€ for every time booked to the “Server control” category. Times that are tracked on the same project but in a different category are billed normally.
2nd scenario
You are a consulting company whose employees frequently travel to clients and work on site. You have agreed with your clients that a flat rate of 200€ will be charged for the travel of your employees if it takes at least 2 hours. This flat rate can only be incurred once per day.
What does the working colleague have to do?
One of your colleagues books the time taken for the trip under a special heading “Travel time”.
What does the item/position do?
A rule item is created in the project’s order, which charges a flat value of 200€ for each time booking to the “Travel time” category, if a time booking reaches or exceeds the time value of 2 hours.
Time values below this value do not trigger a lump sum. Even if there are multiple time bookings over 2 hours in one day, only one flat rate will be charged.
3rd scenario
Again, you are a consulting firm whose employees frequently travel to clients and work on-site. One of your clients has agreed very detailed travel time agreement with you. For travel time, there is a flat rate of 200€ if it exceeds 4h. In addition, there is an overnight lump sum of 300€, if:
- The consultant stays at least two days with the customer.
- He works on the respective days each at least 6 hours for the customer on site.
What does the working colleague have to do?
One of your colleagues books the time he used for the trip under a special category “Travel time”. He books the time he worked on site under the category “Billable”.
What does the item/position do?
A rule item is created in the order of the project, which charges a flat value of 200€ for each time booking to the category “Travel time”, if a time booking reaches or exceeds the time value of 4 hours.
Another rule item controls the times under the category “Billable”. If there are project times of 6 hours each on two consecutive days, the overnight lump sum of 300€ will be charged.
Application and advice on the new rule articles
The use of the rule articles offers you many possibilities to map specific billing requirements. The configuration of the articles can vary greatly. So if you are interested in this innovation, please contact our consultants. We will be happy to talk to you about your specific requirements and show you how exactly you can implement them with the rule articles. You don’t use projectfacts yet, but you would like to test it? Click here to get your personal test account:
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