Setting up recurring bills (fixed fee billing)

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In Practice CS, you can use recurring bills (also known as fixed fee bills) if you bill a client for the same amount on a regular basis. The recurring bill process alleviates the need to manually enter the billing amount against work-in-process (WIP) entries. Otherwise, billing and invoice printing works the same way as for the regular billing process.

  1. Choose Setup > Clients, select the appropriate client, and click Enter.
  2. Click the Engagements tab and select the engagement that you will be billing on a recurring basis.
  3. Click the Recurring Bills sub-tab for the selected engagement.
  4. Choose a recurring bill description from the drop-down list.

    If there are no appropriate recurring bill descriptions defined in Practice CS, you can add one by choosing Setup > Recurring Bill Descriptions, or by right-clicking in the Description field and choosing Add Recurring Bill Description from the context menu. These descriptions are short identifiers that enable you to identify different types of recurring bills. For example, you might have descriptions of accounting, monthly, quarterly, and so on. These are not descriptions that appear on invoices.

  5. Choose a method:
    • Fixed Time & Expenses — The amount specified is billed against all WIP items entered for this engagement, and any positive or negative WIP carryover is adjusted to zero.

      Note: With this method, you can only generate a recurring bill if at least one WIP transaction exists for this engagement at the time of billing.

    • Progress — The amount specified is billed out as a progress bill without being allocated to any existing WIP transactions. This method does not require any WIP transactions to exist prior to billing, but does require that the progress bill transactions be closed out against WIP transactions at a future date. For more information on progress bills, refer to Billing without relieving WIP using progress bills.
    • Adjustment — Using this method, the recurring bill is generated even if the client has no WIP. Practice CS will bill the amount specified, and will immediately close out any carryover on the transaction with a positive WIP adjustment. This differs from the Progress method, which assumes that you will come back later and net the accumulated WIP against the negative progress bill entries. For more information on adjustment entries, refer to Entering a final bill without WIP.
    • Fixed Time + Expenses at Standard — The amount specified is billed against all time-based WIP transactions for this engagement. Expense type activities are billed in addition to the amount specified, at the value calculated on the expense transaction in time & expense entry.

      Note: With this method, you can only generate a recurring bill if at least one WIP transaction exists for this engagement at the time of billing.

    • Fixed Expenses + Time at Standard — Any expense type transactions for this engagement are billed for the amount specified. Time-based WIP transactions are billed in addition to the amount specified, at the value calculated in time & expense entry.

      Note: With this method, you can only generate a recurring bill if at least one WIP transaction exists for this engagement at the time of billing.

    • WIP at Standard — All WIP transactions entered for this engagement will be billed out at their standard value (the calculated amount of the entries in time & expense entry).

      Note: With this method, you can only generate a recurring bill if at least one WIP transaction exists for this engagement at the time of billing.

  6. Enter the amount of the recurring bill.

Using the Progress or Adjustment method activates the Staff and Activity fields, which are used to record the progress bill or adjustment transaction.

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