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Invoicing your tracked time

How to invoice your client for the time you’ve tracked

Updated over a week ago

Bonsai allows you 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.

Exploring the billing status of time entries

On the Time Tracking page and on a Project's 'Time' tab, each time entry is assigned a billing status: non-billable, billed, or unbilled. With Bonsai, you're able to update these statuses for accurate record-keeping and invoicing purposes.

Here's a breakdown of each billing status.

  • Non-billable: Time that will not be charged to the client.

  • Billed: Billable time that has been invoiced to the client. Time entries marked as 'Billed' can be invoiced and outstanding, or invoiced and paid.

  • Unbilled: Time that is unpaid by the client, which has not been included on an invoice or is on a drafted invoice.

To change a time entry's billing status, go to the 'Billable' column and simply select the dollar sign icon ($). This option can be used to mark time entries as unbilled and non-billable.

A green dollar sign icon indicates billed or unbilled status, while a grey dollar sign icon represents non-billable time:

Manually record billed time

You can mark unbilled time entries as billable by using the toggle and then selecting 'Mark as Billed' from the additional options.

If a time entry was manually recorded as billed and you need to change it to unbilled, go to the additional options and choose 'Mark as Unbilled':

To view the associated invoice of a billed entry, select 'Edit Entry' from the additional options. A banner linking to the invoice will appear on the pop-up.

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 you're unable to select 'Invoice Unbilled Hours', 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

You have the option to either include the full timesheet of your time entries, show a link to your timesheet, or hide the timesheets on invoices to your clients.

If you choose "Show full timesheet below invoices" the full timesheet will be included right below the invoice totals.

If you choose "Show link to timesheet on invoices" there will be a link included below the invoice totals that will redirect your client to the timesheet.

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 you may not intend for the client to review the different hours and comments left on each time entry.

Editing Your Timesheet

Once you've created an invoice with your timesheet included, you can also edit the hours you're billing for, from within the invoice itself. Just navigate to the specific invoice > select the timesheet 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.

Note: Once an invoice is deleted you will not be able to recover it. Any associated payments and income reporting will be removed.

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