Mark all charges billed

[RenFin]

Hi. I've been using CommitCRM and have over 1000 charges that are marked as not billed. Now I want to sync with Quickbooks. Is there a way to mark all of those old charges as billed so they don't come over to Quickbooks? Thanks.

[Support Team]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Thank you for posting this.

You can go to the Charges tab under Accounts, Tickets or Contracts and at the bottom is a Mark All as Billed button.

Alternatively you can go to the Charges window then uncheck the Billed and Not-Billable boxes so you have just the unbilled and billable Charges showing in the list. You can also specify a date range or other filters to narrow it down further. Then simply click Mark as Billed on the toolbar - this will instantly mark the selected Charge (ie. the one at the top of the list) as Billed and it will disappear from the list leaving the next one selected so you can quickly go through them all.

[raymond]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Holy crap -- thank you! Not sure when this got added but this will be a serious time saver for us!

Can we also get an option to "Mark All as Billable" as well?

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: Mark all charges billed

You're welcome!

A global Mark as Billed option might be too risky, but maybe with the right up-front warnings it may work. Thanks.

[raymond]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Not asking for a global "Mark All as Billed", rather we need a "Mark All as Billable" in the same place as the "Mark All as Billed" button is. If we have 50 charges in a ticket (which happens a lot for project type work), we still have to mark them as billable first before we can mark them as billed... (!)

thanks!

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Noted. May we ask why do you need that? Don't you use a Contract that mark these automatically as Billable (or no Contract at all), this way it eliminates the need to manually mark the Charges as billable to begin with.

[raymond]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Absolutely not! We NEVER EVER want the system to automatically mark charges as billable. This is why we have been asking for custom contracts for about 6-years now...

When a charge gets marked as billable, it immediately gets processed (invoiced) by the bookkeeper, which means the Account Manager has no time to review and approve the charges. Every time a charge gets added to a ticket, we have to immediately and manually uncheck the billable box so that the charge doesn't automatically process.

Workflow: When a ticket is deemed complete by the tech working on it, they change the status of the ticket to "completed pending approval". This tells the "real" Account Manager that they can review the ticket in it's entirety (what was the problem, what was the resolution, how much time is being billed, what did the tech write in the charges/notes/resolution fields, etc.) and approve the charges accordingly. They make any edits that are needed, mark all items as billable then close the ticket (which sends the final email to the client telling them that the problem has been resolved). It's a pretty simple process and prevents many billing errors.

Note that ultimately ALL charges get marked as billable then finally as billed (hence the awesomeness of the "Mark All as Billed" button!). This way we can look at "non-billable" item/labor reports and make sure everything is properly processed. I honestly have no idea how other shops are managing without doing this but having charges automatically default as billable is a huge problem for us, and not ultimately having all charges end up as billable/billed must mean things fall between the cracks.

Two things on the workflow stuff:
1) We need custom contracts so we can make everything default to non-billable. Folks here have been asking for this for a very, very long time!
2) We need a second layer added to accounts and tickets to track the Lead Tech and the Account Manager. I've talked about this before but in short, the Lead Tech is the person that new incoming tickets get automatically assigned to (or are manually assigned) and the Account Manager is the person responsible for the client relationship and making sure everything is good on a global scale. I'm guessing most commit shops are using the one field for both functions but we are at a level where we have two persons involved (sometimes they are the same but most of the time they are not): the tech assigned to the ticket and the Account Manager. This second field (Lead Tech) would be identical in form and function to the current Account Manger field but would allow folks to assign a Lead Tech (the person managing a ticket) and an Account Manager for separate tracking and managment.

Understanding how we use commit for actually workflow, it's hopefully easier to see why we might want a "Mark All as Billable" button next to the "Mark All as Billed" button.

thanks!!

//ray

[lpopejoy]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Ray, on item #1 above.... That's how contracts have always worked. When you use a contract, it AUTOMATICALLY marks any charge on that contact as NOT billable.

Use a contract, and that will fix that problem. Then your account manager can complete the ticket.

You ask how other shops do it. For us, when a tech decides they are finished, they change the ticket status to review. One of two people review the ticket for accuracy and then complete the ticket (firing off the email to the client).

We invoice once per month. When we invoice, we NEVER invoice for tickets that aren't competed. This way, we never have to worry about tickets that haven't been reviewed getting billed.

I agree we need custom contracts, but they should allow us to say something like "labor is not billable but products are" and "product charges don't decrease the block of money available" (as they will if you make a product charge as billable when assigned to a block of money contract). There are other things that custom contracts need to do, but I can't think of them right now.

[AN-Tech]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Charges will be marked as not billable for all contract types except Global. If you use a Global contract the charges will be marked as billable.

That said I have been pushing for years enhancements to contracts similar to Luke. We need more granular control over the contracts. Right now there is too much manual intervention that needs to occur before a ticket can be billed. I need the option to have labor billable while products are not like Luke mentioned. I also need all labor is billable except a specific list that should get marked as unbillable.

Most of our contracts fall under three categories.

Basic - Maintenance only
Flex - Remote support included
Pro - Remote and onsite support included

Our most commonly used labor items are named remote-support and onsite-support. So for Basic all labor would get marked billable. For Flex all labor would be marked billable except the remote-support labor item. For Pro all labor would be marked billable except the remote-support and onsite-support labor items. And in all cases any parts would be billable.

This would be very similar to the current Custom Pricing section but instead of a custom price we would just have a billable/non-billable option for the override.

[raymond]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Yes, some contracts set some charges to non-billable depending on the type of contract and the charge type: here

What I have been hearing from other commit users over the past 6-years (and what we need) is the ability to configure global tickets (and more precisely, the system global contract) to set the "billable flag" to default as "not billable".

To use contracts for this would require us to use blocks of time or blocks of money, neither of which is a good fit as a "default". I should also mention that we already have a complicated contract system because we are using these to track projects. This is because Commit doesn't have a proper project module.

Sounds like others are doing what we are doing when it comes to approving charges and closing tickets. Techs work on the ticket, enter charges, mark them as not billable and pass it along to the Account Manager to approve charges and close the ticket. This process would be greatly improved if:
1) We had custom contracts and the ability to modify the default behavior of the system global contract!
2) At the Account and Ticket level, we had an additional field called "Assigned Tech" (I've been calling this Lead Tech in the past but the word assigned may make more sense) which is the technical person responsible for either the client as a whole or the ticket in process. This field should behave exactly like the Account Manager but now the Account Manager field can be used to actually manage the account (instead of just managing technical issues/tickets).

lpopejoy, you may or may not be aware that there is a setting in options >> quickbooks to "Leave Charges of open Tickets unselected" which will not allow charges, even if checked as billable, to show up for invoicing unless the ticket is closed. We tried this option but we do bill for materials before tickets are closed so we had to revert back.

ascendnet, we do something similar and have various contract levels. When a client subscribes to a level of support, we set up custom pricing at the account level as their default billing level (we do this by first setting up "template accounts" then using the custom pricing tab, we "copy all custom pricing settings" from the template account"). This way you can leave the client with the default system global contract and adjusted pricing applies (remote work is billed at $0, etc.). When you need to modify this more, layer on custom contracts (which is what we do when a managed client wants project work completed).

Hope this helps and Commit, we are looking forward to custom contracts, and the addition of the Assigned Tech field, when they get implemented.

thanks!

//ray

[Support Team]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Thank you, guys.

We do plan to introduce some enhancements in this area later this year. We think that these will provide an answer to

Ray, your suggestion to add additional Account/Ticket Manager is logged and will also be reviewed and considered.

Hope this helps.

[raymond]

Re: Mark all charges billed

Thanks -- very much looking forward to seeing the updates!

//ray