Create an invoice as part of a project

Here's how to create an invoice in FreeAgent as part of a project.

There are several places to start.

1. Start from Projects

You can either open the project by selecting it from within the Projects Summary screen (Work > Projects) and select Add New, and choose Invoice:

2. Start from Invoicing

Or, from the Work menu, choose Invoicing, and select the Add New Invoice button:

3. Start from Overview screen

Or, from the Overview screen, select the Quick Links menu, and choose New Invoice.

The Create New Invoice screen appears.

Choose the client contact from the drop-down menu. This will be pre-populated if you started from the project.

Choose the project for which you're issuing this invoice. This will also be filled in for you if you started from the project.

You can also include unbilled time, expenses or estimates from other projects on your invoice. To do this, choose "Include additional projects," then select the projects that you want to include.

Unbilled project items

In this section, you can choose what unbilled items you would like to include on the invoice, and how to group them.

Time

Choose, from the Add Unbilled Time drop-down menu, whether you want to include time that you've tracked for this project and haven't yet billed to your client. You don't have to. You might want to carry that time forward and put it on the next invoice. If this is what you want to do, choose "Don't include time".

And you have the choice to list each timeslip individually, or group the time, by task or date. For example, you might be printing stationery for a client, and within that project have one task for business cards and one for letterhead. You could choose to group time for those tasks separately on the invoice, so that your client sees how much time you've spent on each task.

Remember that only billable tasks will be added to your invoices, unbillable tasks won't.

If you have included additional projects in your invoice, your unbilled time will first appear grouped by project, then by the option you select here.

Expenses

Choose, from the Include Expenses drop-down menu, whether you want to include any expenses that you've incurred for this project and haven't yet billed. Again, you don't have to, you can choose the "Don't include expenses" option.

If you do want to include expenses, you have the choice to include each expense on a separate line or to include all expenses on one line.

Including them on separate lines will add each expense as a separate invoice item. Including them all on one line will group together all expenses as one line item and all mileage claims (with the same mileage rate) as another line item.

If you choose to email this invoice to your client manually from within FreeAgent, and you've attached one or more receipts to your expenses, you'll be able to choose to attach the receipts to the invoice email when you send it.

If you have included additional projects in your invoice, your unbilled expenses will first appear grouped by project, then by the option you select here.

Estimates

And finally, use the Add Unbilled Estimates drop-down menu to choose whether you want to include any estimates that you've sent to your client. Only estimates that have been sent, i.e. open estimates, and estimates that have been approved, can be included. Estimates that have been converted to invoices, are still in draft, or have been rejected, can't be included on invoices. Also, estimates in a project that's in a foreign currency can't be pulled through on to invoices within the project.

If you have included additional projects in your invoice, your unbilled estimates will first appear grouped by project, then by the option you select here.

Invoice reference number

FreeAgent will automatically set the invoice reference depending on whether you set the referencing to be project-level or not. If you did, then this will overwrite contact-level referencing or global referencing.

Enter the date of the invoice, and the payment terms, as usual, and put in any additional information that you want to print on the invoice, for example "As discussed", or holiday closing dates. Remember, this information will be visible on the final invoice, so don't put anything here that you don't want your client to see!

Under More Options, there are the usual options for any invoice, but particularly useful for projects is the option to set a PO reference for this particular invoice, which will override any PO reference you have set for the project, and to display the project's name on the invoice under "Other Information".

Once you've finished, select Create New Invoice to save this new invoice and start working with it, or Cancel to close this screen without saving the new invoice.

You're then ready to track time, create tasks, and re-bill expenses for your project.