Project and Timesheets: Tasks, Stages and Billing
What to know
Projects contain tasks organised by stages (kanban), with assignees, tags, milestones, deadlines and sub-tasks. Projects can be private (members only) or shared with all internal users; a project's stages belong to that project, so changing a stage affects only that project's flow.
Timesheets are the bridge to billing. An employee logs hours on a task (grid or list view) with a date, description and a Billable flag. For invoicing, the sales order line must use a service product configured with Timesheets as the tracking type, and the invoicing policy (ordered vs delivered quantities) decides whether hours can be invoiced. With Delivered quantities, the invoiced quantity equals validated, billable hours not yet invoiced. Timesheet cost comes from the employee's cost/rate, which drives profitability. Optional features include timesheet validation/approval, planned dates, recurring tasks and task dependencies.
Traps
- Hours logged on a task not linked to a sales order line remain unbillable.
- A timesheet flagged non-billable is excluded even if the hours exist.
- Editing a timesheet after invoicing changes delivered quantities but does not re-bill automatically - a second invoice or credit note is needed.
- Service products must be of the right type and tracking; a quantity service product ignores timesheets.
- Deleting a task deletes its timesheets; archive instead.
Rule of thumb
Invoice = billable, validated hours × rate. Eight hours at 60.00 on a delivered-quantity timesheet product gives 480.00 on the next invoice, minus any hours already invoiced.