Turn recorded project hours into explainable invoices

At a glance

Frappe ERP connects Projects and Tasks to Timesheets, with separate costing and billing information and a route to Sales Invoices. Use those records to make a project invoice explainable. The central decision is commercial: time worked, time the contract allows you to charge and time already invoiced are not necessarily the same amount.

Start on billing morning

The project manager is ready to send the monthly invoice. An engineer has logged work under a broad support activity, but part of it corrected an earlier mistake. Another entry describes a customer request that was never approved. The hours are real; the right amount to bill is still unresolved.

Frappe's Timesheet records activity and project references, with separate billing hours and costing information. That gives your team a place to preserve the work while deciding its commercial treatment. You do not need to delete useful effort history just because the customer should not be charged for it.

The cited official version 13 documentation describes the core records. Confirm their behavior on your chosen release, especially invoice selection and correction procedures. This guide concerns project delivery and billing, not payroll functionality or a promise about a separate HR application.

Give work a home

Frappe's Project model is task-driven: a project can be divided into Tasks, and the project can carry customer and Sales Order references. Use that structure to name work in terms the delivery team recognizes. A task should be specific enough to review without turning every short activity into an administrative exercise.

Choose the task boundary around a deliverable or meaningful work package. If the customer buys an installation, separate agreed installation work from an additional training request when the commercial treatment differs. Keep the explanation with the project so the reviewer does not have to reconstruct scope from a consultant's private inbox.

Agree when time is recorded. A brief daily entry is often easier to explain than a reconstruction at invoice time. That is a recommended working practice, not a measured productivity claim. Test the effort required with the actual team before requiring detail nobody has time to maintain.

Separate cost from billing

Frappe's Timesheet documentation distinguishes hours, billing hours, billing rate and costing rate, with corresponding amounts. These give finance different views of the same work. The internal cost helps explain project effort; the billing amount follows the terms agreed with the customer.

Worked example, hypothetical and not an ERPNova result: an engineer records 28 hours at an assumed internal costing rate of USD 45 per hour. Recorded labor cost is USD 1,260. Only 22 hours are billable at USD 120 per hour, giving USD 2,640 of billable value. The difference is USD 1,380 before other project costs. It is not a net-profit figure or cash already received.

The remaining 6 hours still belong in the work record. They may be internal rework or another nonbillable activity. Have the project manager explain their classification. Hiding them makes a project appear less expensive without changing the resources it consumed.

Review before invoicing

Use review to resolve commercial ambiguity, not to ask staff to reconstruct every minute. A useful entry explains what changed or what deliverable advanced. Completed work is too vague if the customer will reasonably ask which task the charge covers.

Set a review cutoff and name the person who approves billing treatment. If your policy requires an approval workflow, scope and test it explicitly. A submitted timesheet and a manager-approved billable entry are not interchangeable concepts merely because both sound final.

The official documentation notes that billing and costing rates are locked after timesheet submission. Establish the correction procedure before users submit a full period with the wrong rate. Have an ordinary user demonstrate the supported route on your version and identify who approves the resulting change.

Check a mixed timesheet during the pilot. The reviewer should be able to recognize different projects or billing treatments without applying one assumption to the entire document. Prefer a visible correction now to a credit note after the customer has challenged the invoice.

Invoice the agreed basis

Frappe documents creating a Sales Invoice from a submitted Timesheet and tracking billed hours and amounts. Use that route when time-based billing matches the contract. Review which entries are included, then reconcile them to the invoice so the same work does not enter the billing conversation twice.

A fixed-fee milestone needs a different commercial decision. You may still want timesheets for internal cost evidence, but recorded hours do not automatically authorize additional charges. Ask the implementation team to demonstrate the agreed invoice route separately instead of forcing the contract into an hourly model.

Include customer-facing detail in the test. Some customers need a task summary; others require approved time evidence. Decide what accompanies the invoice and who checks it. A mathematically correct amount can still be difficult to collect if the supporting description does not match the customer's purchase order.

Review the unfinished value

Hold a review for recorded work that has not yet become an invoice. Separate entries awaiting approval from work intentionally excluded under the contract. The action is different: one needs a decision, while the other needs an accurate project-cost explanation.

Frappe's Project documentation describes accumulating timesheet costing and billable amounts on the project. Treat the displayed totals as inputs to review. Have finance verify what the configured project figures include before describing a difference as margin, especially where purchases or other costs also belong to the engagement.

Bring ERPNova a project scope, a sample timesheet and the invoice your customer expects to an ERP audit. Ask for a pilot that preserves nonbillable work and demonstrates the billing review. Once the invoice is issued, our receivables guide covers the matching and follow-up work that turns an outstanding amount into an accountable collection task.