Finance Project billing tracking
Billing tracking on a project fits on a single line with four columns: ordered, produced, invoiced, paid. These four numbers should follow each other closely, and the gap between any two of them always tells a story. When it opens up between the second and the third, the company is working without being paid, and does not know it.
The four states of a project euro.
Each step from one to the next can get stuck, and each blockage has a different cause.
Ordered
What the client has committed to: initial order and amendments. The reference for everything else.
Produced
What has been delivered or consumed, depending on the commitment mode. It is what should be billable.
Invoiced
What has gone out on an invoice. The gap with produced is under-billing, and it is silent.
Paid
What has been collected. The gap with invoiced is collection, and that one makes noise.
The gap between produced and invoiced is the only one of the three that never flags itself. No one asks for an invoice that has not been issued: neither the client, who has nothing to pay, nor accounting, which cannot guess what should have been issued.
Under-billing, and why it is silent.
Four situations produce it, and none comes from negligence.
The milestone reached without being seen
The delivery triggered an invoice. It took place, but it was not reported to whoever issues the invoices.
The amendment never formalized
The extra work was done, the order did not follow. It is produced, it is not billable.
The invoice held back out of caution
You wait for the client to be happy, or for the disputed point to be settled. The postponement becomes an oversight.
The project end that drags on
The balance waits for acceptance, acceptance waits for a fix, and the balance of a closed project is hard to claim.
An invoice that is not disputed.
Drift is very often detected at billing, when the client refuses to pay because they believe they were not delivered, or because what was delivered does not match their request. It is the latest and costliest moment to discover a disagreement on scope.
An invoice that is not disputed is an invoice backed by dated proof that the client read along the way. It is not a matter of how the invoice is worded: it is a matter of what happened in the previous months.
When every committee has produced minutes that were submitted and approved, when every request has left a trace at its date, the invoice arrives as a consequence and not as a claim. This is what we call operational commitment management.
The four states on the same line
Ordered, produced, invoiced, paid, project by project. The gap can be read without manual reconciliation between two systems.
Billing milestones in the grid
A milestone reached is a fact of the project. It stops being information that someone has to remember to pass on.
Amendments backed by a gap
Every request becomes a dated trace. What was produced on top shows before it is given away.
The proof behind the invoice
Minutes approved by the client, history frozen. See the approval of minutes.
pylotik does not issue invoices: your ERP produces them. What pylotik passes to it are the billing orders, milestone reached or month produced, through a connector built according to your needs. The dividing line is detailed in ERP or steering software.
The overall financial frame is on project financial tracking. What is available today and what comes next is detailed on the roadmap.
What goes to pure waste.
Scope that slips without leaving a trace is paid for twice: in margin consumed, and in an invoice that does not go out. The details are on the value lost in projects.
What we are asked about billing.
What is progress billing?
Invoicing as work is produced, rather than on fixed dates or at final delivery. It requires knowing continuously what has been produced, which is precisely the data that is most often missing.
How do you spot under-billing?
By comparing produced to invoiced, project by project. It is the only one of the three gaps that never flags itself: neither the client nor accounting can raise an alert about an invoice that has not been issued.
What should you do with an invoice disputed by the client?
Reopen what was presented and approved at the previous committees. If the dated proof exists, the discussion goes back to being a finding. If it does not, the dispute will rest on recollections, and the balance of power will win over the facts.
Does it replace our invoicing tool?
No. Invoice issuing, accounting and collection stay with your tools. pylotik handles what comes before: knowing what is produced and billable, and on what proof.
Is the module available?
Billing tracking is available, like management control. The details are on the roadmap.
How do you track outstanding amounts?
As a gap, not as a stock: what is produced and not yet invoiced, and what is invoiced and not yet paid. The first is corrected internally, the second within the client relationship.
Going further.
- Approval of minutes: the proof the invoice relies on.
- Project financial tracking: budget, consumed, remaining work.
- The roadmap: what is live, and what comes next.
- Operational commitment management: the definition of the category.