Using Time Billing and Invoices

[erock4]

The majority of my business uses the recurring service modules that I'm familiar with, but a few of my clients are paying my hourly and we settle payment on a monthly basis. How is the best way to use the invoices and time billing within WHMCS for this purpose? As I enter hours that I've worked, I would like for my clients to be able to see them, but it seems that I cannot do that without first creating a new invoice (which then prompts them to pay it), and then I'd have to create multiple invoices throughout the month?

What I really DON'T want to happen is for my client to get an invoice and immediately charge their card automatically, but that's what happened this last month when I chose the "Invoice selected items" button at the end of the month and used the "add to user's next invoice" option.

What am I missing here?

[brian!]

23 hours ago, erock4 said:

The majority of my business uses the recurring service modules that I'm familiar with, but a few of my clients are paying my hourly and we settle payment on a monthly basis. How is the best way to use the invoices and time billing within WHMCS for this purpose? As I enter hours that I've worked, I would like for my clients to be able to see them, but it seems that I cannot do that without first creating a new invoice (which then prompts them to pay it), and then I'd have to create multiple invoices throughout the month?

are you using invoices or billable items for these monthly invoices ?

if they were draft invoices or billable items, then the clients wouldn't see them by default... though there is nothing to stop you showing either to the client with additional hook coding..

maybe another option if you wanted to throw money at this would be the Project Management addon, but whether that is overkill for your situation, only you will be in a position to judge.

[erock4]

Yes, I was using billable items. I will consider the Project Management addon, but will that for sure solve my problem of being able to give transparency for my clients into the hours I'm logging?

[brian!]

On 04/10/2019 at 16:43, erock4 said:

Yes, I was using billable items. I will consider the Project Management addon, but will that for sure solve my problem of being able to give transparency for my clients into the hours I'm logging?

I can't give a definite answer to that because i've never used the PM addon... i'll tag @zitu4life into this as he uses PM and will have more experience of its use.

[brian!]

ok, i've just logged into a friend's install that has the PM addon and my initial impression is that it might be suitable... if enabled in the PM settings, a client can see their projects/tasks in their client area, including the time tracked so far...

only if you're going to use it regularly would the addon really be worth the $100 one-off cost - as I said previously, the alternative would be allowing clients to see billable items and/or draft invoices... but then you'd have to determine a method to show that info, whether it be a custom page/table or homepage panel.

[zitu4life]

12 hours ago, brian! said:

i'll tag @zitu4life into this as he uses PM

Hello there. definitely   you should give  PM a try, @erock4.

If you want  transparency for your clients like you point  it will cover your needs.   In PM you can set your hourly price   work time, and set tasks job for a client project, and then you can set hourly working time for  each tasks created and WHMCS will make all calculations: 

So you can opt to not send  auto email after generate invoice. So you will during  days adding more time entry working time and then assign that to client invoice,  you can repeat these steps according to your needs till end month.

An like   Brian   shows you can ensure after activating  clients ability to follow up in their client area all the transparency. I think PM is a powerful addon   and  you should give it a try.

PM makes my day to day easy, helping a lot for management issues. 

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2019 by zitu4life
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