At What Level of the Project Should I Place My Billing Formula?

Evaluate ceilings, billing formula types, customers, and project tasks when choosing a billing level for the project.

If your project requires billing ceilings based on the contract or funded value of a specific branch of the project tree, you must place the billing formula at the highest level of the project tree where the values exist. For example, if funding is issued by the customer for multiple phases of the project, you must place the ceilings in the project tree at or above the level where the funding for that phase was entered. In this case, the project tree is set up by project phase.

You must evaluate the need for multiple billing formulas before structuring your project and choosing a billing level. If multiple billing formulas are needed for the project, you must enter the billing formula at level two or below in order for the bills to compute properly.

If you have multiple customers on this project you may need to enter the billing formulas at level two or below. Costpoint can bill multiple customers without the need for separate tasks. However, the billing requirements for the customers must be identical for this to work properly. If the billing requirements by customer differ, use separate tasks to accommodate the needs of each customer. In this case, you must set up the billing level at level two or below.

If the project has none of the requirements above, set up the billing at the top level of the project. This is the easiest way to bill.

What Steps Should I Take if I Have Posted Transactions to this Project before l Set Up a Billing Formula?

If you have posted transactions to your project before you established your billing formula in this screen, you must follow some additional steps to bill the project. Use the following steps to enable project billing for this project:

Evaluate the Manage Open Billing Detail screen for this project. If any transactions exist in this screen for the project in question, you must take them into consideration when you complete the steps noted here. You may want to delete any transactions found on the Manage Open Billing Detail screen so that there is no possibility of duplicate billing.

Set up a transaction-based billing formula on the Manage Project Billing Information screen. A transaction-based billing formula includes all formulas available in this screen except Enter Bill Manually and Unit Price Transactions Only.

Use the Update Open Billing Detail Records screen to populate the Manage Open Billing Detail screen with transactions for this project. We recommend that you run this utility for only one project at a time. The utility does not evaluate the presence of transactions on the Manage Open Billing Detail screen. It uses the General Ledger Detail table to populate the Manage Open Billing Detail screen. For more information on this utility, see the screen documentation for the Update Open Billing Detail Records screen.

Can I Set Up Several Billing Formulas for a Single Project?

Multiple billing formulas can be set up within a single project as long as the project is structured so that billing formulas are not stacked. You cannot enter a higher-level billing formula if Costpoint finds another billing formula at a lower level of the project tree.

Structure the project so that the billing formulas can be entered at level two or below and all the tasks below the billing level fall below the desired billing formula type in the project structure.

What Is a Transaction-Based Billing Formula?

A transaction-based billing formula is billed according to the transactions that were charged to the project. The transaction-based billing formulas include all the formulas in this screen except Enter Bill Manually and Unit Price Transactions Only.

What Other Options Are Available for Billing Projects?

You can enter manual bills on the Manage Project Product Bills, Manage Manual Bills, or Manage Milestone Percent Complete Bills screens. You must, however, establish a billing record on this screen before you can create manual bills on those screens.

The Manage Progress Payment Bills screen exists for projects that are billed using Government Form 1443.

Select the Progress Payment formula if you need to produce Government Form 1443.

Is It Necessary to Set Up a Billing Record on this Screen if I Am Using One of the Manual Billing Processes?

You must set up a billing formula for your project in this screen if you intend to bill the project using any of the manual billing processes. Use the Enter Bill Manually formula in most cases.

If you need to use the Pay When Paid feature, select the Manual Bills with Unbilled Detail formula. This billing formula allows you to use one of the manual billing screens and it populates the Manage Open Billing Detail screen. The data on the Open Billing Detail screen is used to evaluate the "pay when paid" status of individual transactions.