2 More User Tips

It's all about time.

That's more than a marketing slogan. It is a commitment to how we have  approached BillQuick improvements for the past 12 years. And a key part of our continuous improvement strategy is to listen to our customers about time in their companies.

Two things we hear are:

• I want to bill faster. I just need to bill the remainder of a contract.

• We need regular management and project information, but we don't always remember to run the reports regularly. And our administrative assistant is as buried as we are.

Here are a couple of features for saving time. Over a year they can turn many non-billable hours into billable hours.

Bill Final

BillQuick's Billing Review screen includes an option to bill the remainder of a project's contract with a quick click of the mouse. You can Bill Final any project, regardless of contract type. Here's how.

For the project you want to bill, make sure all time and expenses have been charged to the projects and approved.

1. Open Billing Review and enter the appropriate parameters. Click Refresh to generate the project billing records.

2. Following current procedures, print the Billing Review Report for the billing manager and determine which projects should be billed for the remainder of their contracts.
   
   

3. When ready, highlight the rows on the Billing Review screen containing the projects for which you want to bill the remainder of the contract.

4. Anywhere on the Billing Review screen, press the right mouse button. From the context menu select Bill Final. BillQuick computes a New Net Bill for the selected projects.

5. Click the Draft button to generate draft invoices for review or the Process button to produce invoices.

BillQuick computes the New Net Bill as the difference between the contract amount and the amount billed to date for a project.

New Net Bill = Contract Amount - Amount Billed to Date

Any difference between the New Net Bill and the Original Net Bill is treated as a write-up or write-down.

Write-Up/(Write-Down) = New Net Bill - Original Net Bill.

The write-up/write-down adjustment is allocated to the timekeepers and project. Its effect can be reviewed on the Write-Up/Write-Down Report by Employee and by Project.

Automatic Report Distribution

Situations in your company and with projects constantly demand your attention - and everyone else's in your company. It can be hard to remember to run a group of reports on the firm's health or reports about a portfolio of projects.

BillQuick's add-on module, Agent, handles report generation for you. It delivers them to your printer or your email inbox. When you schedule Agent to deliver the reports you want, you are essentially making an appointment with yourself.

Agent also saves time by delivering Alerts about special events, like 75% of the contract being used. And Agent's workflow automation monitors time entry to make sure timekeepers record their hours promptly.

To setup Agent to run and distribute a report automatically, follow the steps below.

1. Log into Agent and select the Reports button on the main panel. Select the Report Filters tab.
   
   

2. Select the report you want to automatically generate and distribute. Also, select any desired filters. In the example above, the Budget Comparison Report is being run for the projects managed by CJ, the manager.

3. Select the Scheduling and Auto Run Settings tab.
   
   

4. From the Process On calendar, select the date when the report should first be run.

5. Choose how often to run the report from the Repeat drop-down list.

6. If you want the report printed, check the appropriate box. To deliver the report as a PDF via email, enter the person's email address and type in a message. You can distribute reports to multiple parties if you wish.

7. Click the Save button. Agent will now generate and distribute the Budget Comparison Report to CJ every week.