Bonsai provides you with the ability to effortlessly track the time you spend on projects and bill clients for those hours. To learn more about our time tracking features, check out our resource on Tracking time internally with Bonsai.
This article will provide you with an overview of our invoicing features and how to bill your clients.
Invoicing unbilled hours from a project
Bill your client easily from your Project page, by navigating to the ‘Time’ tab and clicking on the ‘Invoice Unbilled Hours’ button. This will generate a new invoice for the billable amount, which includes a timesheet for the associated hours.
If this option doesn’t work, it is likely that there aren’t any unbilled hours logged for the project.
Adding timesheets to invoices
Invoice your clients for tracked hours easily by linking timesheets to your invoices. Currently, timesheets can only be sent to clients when linked to an invoice.
When creating a new invoice, a reminder message will appear referring to any unbilled time for your client. To add your unbilled time, select the 'Add Unbilled Time' option.
A prompt will appear to confirm that you would like to add the hours.
When adding hours, you can choose to add all unbilled hours or select a custom date range to bill your client for. Once confirmed, the unbilled time will be added to your invoice.
Displaying or hiding timesheets on invoices
Instead of simply linking to your timesheet from your invoice, you can also choose to include the full list of time entries on your invoice itself.
If you choose to "Show list of time entries on invoices" then when you send your invoice they can see the full timesheet printed right below the invoice totals.
Alternatively, you can also choose to hide your timesheet completely so your client cannot see any of the tracked time or comments left. This is sometimes useful for agencies or studios that have other "collaborators" working on a project together, and the client shouldn't see the different hours and comments left on each time entry.
Sending invoices without a billed total
If you'd like to send your timesheet to your client without using it to calculate your invoice amounts, you simply need to track time without adding any hourly rate. Then, when you add your unbilled hours to your invoice it will simply link to the generated timesheet.
It won't affect the invoice total and will only show the hours you worked and any details you've added (comments, tasks completed, etc).
Editing Your Timesheet
Once you've created an invoice with your new timesheet, you can also edit the hours you're billing for from the invoice itself. Just navigate to the timesheet from the invoice page and you can add/edit/remove time entries all you need before sending the invoice out. Note that any changes you make to a timesheet will automatically recalculate the invoice amounts for you.
If you've made a mistake, you can always delete the invoice and choose what to do with the associated hours.
Once an invoice is deleted you will not be able to recover it. Any associated payments and income reporting will be removed.
If you have any questions about invoicing your tracked time, please feel free to contact the Bonsai Support team at support@hellobonsai.com for assistance.