Index

1. Create Sales Order from Project
2. Creating Project Task and Allocating Resource
3. Time Tracking- Resource Time Approval
4. Project Billing
5. Billing Rate Cards
6. Creating Projects from Sales Transactions

Create Sales Orders From Project 

Create a sales order from an existing project or New Project. NetSuite creates line items on the sales order for the service items associated with the project tasks. The new sales order defaults the customer, project, and items from the project tasks and schedule. You can add additional items to the sales order that are not part of the project, such as inventory items, discounts, assemblies, descriptions, and subtotals.

To create sales orders from a project:

• Open a project in Edit or View mode. 
• In the New dropdown, click Sales Order. NetSuite creates a new sales order with the customer, project, and items from the project.
• Click Save.

To be able to create a sales order from a project:

• You must select a billing schedule for the project.

Create a Sales order, on the Custom form field select Standard Sales Order. At the same time, create a project or select a project for the sales order. Then select a billing type and create a billing schedule for the project and select this billing schedule for the sales order.

Figure: Project Billing Schedule- Billing Type is Fixed Bid Milestone and created a billing schedule named as ABCD Milestone. And two tasks are set as milestones.  When the First task is marked complete then 50% of the invoice can be generated also an initial amount is set to 25%. 

Figure: On the Sales Order Billing Schedule – the project billing schedule is selected. And two invoices can be generated as a result of specifying the project billing schedule. 

Creating Project Task and Allocating Resource

To create a new Project task / Milestone by clicking on New Project Task or New Milestone on the Schedule Subtab. Enter the Task name and select the status. If the task is a non-billable type then check the Non-billable box. Provide Task dates, on the contract field select a fixed date to start or by default as soon as possible is selected. If a fixed start is chosen then specify the date as well as the time to start the project. Also, provide an estimated end date that is Finished no later than. On the Assignees subtab of the project task select the resources for the project task and to give the estimated work for the task completion also Select a service item.

Time Tracking- Resource Time Approval

On the project record under the resources subtab there will be the time tracking entries shown by date, duration, status and allocated time. 

Time Tracking

Transaction > Employees > Track Time

On the time tracking sheet select the employee , project , project task and manually enter the tracked time or set clock for tracking time. If it is billable select the Billable checkbox. If it is non-billable, the Billable checkbox grayed out.

Weekly Timesheet

Transaction > Employees > Weekly Timesheet

Select the employee on the employee field then the project , project task, service item and time duration will be shown by date. Click on the submit button.

Approve Timesheets

Transaction > Employees > Approve Time

Check the select box and approve the time. Then the task will show the percentage complete. Once the task is completed status, then post the time. By selecting the time tracking field under resource subtab of project record click on the task that is approved and status unbilled click on the edit link Check the Posted box to manually mark this time transaction as posted.

Invoicing

In transactions under related records on the project record click on the new invoice button. An invoice page is loaded, undr the item sub tab the invoice is present in the billable time.

Project Billing

You can bill projects based on completing project work, achieving project milestones, or according to a schedule of dates.

Project billing type determines which method of billing to use.

Project billing schedule provides the details for when and how to bill the customer over a range of time.

Enable the feature: Project Management and Advanced Billing to bill projects. 

When and How?

• You can create a billing schedule specific to the project or select an existing billing schedule.
• After a billing schedule is set on the project record, the billing schedule is associated with the sales order when you source items from the project. 
• The rules that determine when the order is ready to bill depend on the billing schedule type.
• When an order includes work that has been completed and is ready for billing, that order automatically shows in the bulk billing queue or shows the Next Bill button on the sales order form. 
• Use the Bill Sales Order page as the primary place to invoice for project work associated with an order, including project billable time that is billed on a time and materials basis. 
• Project time must be entered and approved to be billable.

Project Billing Schedule Types

To set up billing for a project, select a billing type and billing schedule on the Financial subtab of the project record. 

The billing type and the billing frequency of the associated schedule determine how Advanced Billing executes project billing.

Billing types include:

• Projects and Time and Materials Billing – Bill customers for actual project expenses, such as resource time and materials.
• Fixed Bid, Interval Billing Schedules – Bill customers for work completed at predefined intervals.
• Fixed Bid, Milestone Billing Schedules – Bill customers based on the percent of work completed, or preset milestones.
• Charge-Based Project Billing — If you use the Charge-Based Billing feature, you can create charge rules that provide added flexibility for calculating billable value on projects. Billing Rate Cards can be used to set billing rates on Charge-Based projects.

1. Time and Materials Billing

Use the Time and Materials billing type to bill customers for actual time worked on a project and material costs.

If you use a Time and Materials schedule, you cannot show an initial payment against the project because the order lines are removed when you convert the order to an invoice and there are no lines to create an initial bill against. You can, however, accept a customer deposit in this case.

Bill customers for time and materials projects using Advanced Billing. You can:

• Bill from the billing queue
• Bill manually

Use the Billing Schedule page to create a Time and Materials billing schedule. You can access this page from the Financials subtab of a project or go to Lists > Accounting > Billing Schedules > New.

Description: The Time and Materials billing schedule defines the billing frequency and payment terms and always bills in arrears. You can define a public time and materials billing schedule and then use it for as many projects as you want. You do not have to create a separate time and materials billing schedule each time you create a time and materials project. If you want to create a private time and materials billing schedule that can only be used for one project, then you must create the billing schedule from the project record.

To create a Time and Materials billing schedule:

1. From the Financial subtab of a project record, click the Add New icon next to the Billing Schedule field.
2. Enter a name for the billing schedule.
3. In the Recurrence Frequency field, select the frequency for bills to recur. select how often to create bills.
4. The In Arrears box is checked by default because all billing for time and materials projects occurs at the end of the recurrence period.
5. In the Recurrence Payment Terms field, select the payment terms to be used on all recurring invoices.
6. Clear the Public box if you want this billing schedule to be available only for the project it was created from.
7. If you do not want this schedule to be applied to new projects, then check the Inactive box.
8. Click Save.

2. Fixed Bid, Interval Billing Schedules

• Fixed Bid, Interval billing schedules allow you to invoice customers at predefined intervals. 
• This schedule type bills in arrears only. 
• You can specify an initial amount, recurrence frequency, payment terms, and the type of time entries to bill for these schedules.

Bill customers for a fixed bid, interval projects using Advanced Billing. You can:

• Bill from the billing queue
• Bill manually

Description: Billing with Fixed Bid, Interval schedules are similar to using a standard billing schedule with a regular frequency. However, NetSuite calculates the number of billing cycles based on the duration of the project and the billing recurrence frequency. 

The percent work completed as of the bill date for each project item determines the amount billed. Use the Invoice Actual Time Only check box when creating the schedule to determine the type of time to bill. You have the option to invoice planned project time and actual time worked during the interval, or the only invoice actual time worked. If you invoice actual time only, then you cannot specify an initial amount. Because these schedules do not contain any project or order-specific information, they are public by default and can be shared. In the Billing Item field, select the service item that will appear on transactions billed to the customer. In the Project Price field, enter the project price. This is the price billed to the customer on transactions. It is also used to calculate the gross profit margin for the project.

To create a Fixed Bid, Interval billing schedule

1. From the Financial subtab of a project record, click the Add New icon next to the Billing Schedule field.
2. Enter a name for the billing schedule.
3. In the Initial Amount field, enter the amount to bill on the first invoice created from the sales order. You can enter the amount as a currency amount or a percentage.
4. In the Initial Payment Terms field, select the terms to be used on the first invoice to be created from the sales order.
   To add new payment terms, go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Lists > New. Select Term.
5. In the Recurrence Frequency field, select how often to create bills.
6. Check Invoice Actual Time Only if you want to bill time worked and recorded but not planned time in each interval. You cannot specify an initial amount if you bill actual time only.
7. The In Arrears box is checked by default because all billing for a fixed bid, interval projects occurs at the end of the recurrence period.
8. In the Recurrence Payment Terms field, select the payment terms to be used on all recurring invoices.
9. If you do not want this schedule to be applied to new projects, then check the Inactive box.
10. Click Save.

3. Fixed Bid, Milestone Billing Schedules

• Fixed Bid, Milestone Billing Schedules allow the bill to customers for project work at milestone intervals.  
• Billing amounts are based on reaching preset project goals, or billing milestones. 
• To use milestone billing, select Fixed Bid, Milestone as the billing type on the project. Then, create a new billing schedule that is a Fixed Bid, Milestone type schedule.

• Milestone projects bill customers for amounts based on reaching preset goals, or billing milestones in the project. 
• Milestones mark a point in time that must be reached to trigger the associated billing. Then, you invoice customers for a portion of the total project amount.

Description: Billing with Fixed Bid, Milestones schedules are similar to using a standard billing schedule with custom billing dates. You can specify the bill date for a milestone or link it to the completion of a task within the project.

• When it is linked to a project task, the bill date automatically updates when the expected completion date of the linked project task changes.
• When the milestone is marked complete, the amount associated with the milestone is available for billing. If the milestone is linked to a project task, then the milestone is marked as complete when the task is complete. Otherwise, the milestone must be manually marked complete on the billing schedule.

A Fixed Bid, Milestone schedule selected on a project is always private and used only for the project it is associated with.

Monitoring Milestone Billing Using Saved Searches

• Create a saved search and publish the results to your dashboard to monitor billing milestones for your projects. 
• This eliminates the need to open each billing schedule to check the status of project milestones and billing.

To create a search to filter projects by billing milestones, select the appropriate milestone billing fields when setting up an advanced search for projects. Billing milestone fields exposed as related record fields in the Project search criteria include:

• Actual Completion Date
• Amount
• Comments
• Estimated Completion Date
• Project Task
• Terms

4. Charge-Based Project Billing

Charge-Based Billing lets you create charges that you can bill to your customers. When used with the Project Management feature, you can apply rules to generate charges that are included on project invoices.

On charge-based billing projects, there is a new field available — Billing Rate Card. This provides the option to either select a customer-specific rate card or a generally available rate card for billing your project.

Charge rules offer flexibility in calculating the billable value of project activity. Charge rules can be based on:

• the completion of project milestones
• project progress
• time entered for projects
• expenses entered for projects
• The fixed amount generated on fixed dates (for example, upfront materials costs)
• purchase transactions entered for projects

Charge rules determine the amount and sometimes the date of the charges created. 

Enable the feature: Setup > Company > Enable Features > Transactions under Billing. The Project Management and Advanced Billing features are required to enable Charge-Based Billing.

When you enable the feature:

• a new Charge-Based billing type is available on project records
• the Project Billings Report is available
• a Create Charges transaction is available at Transactions > Customers > Create Charges
• new tabs are added to the Financial subtab of the project record where you can set up charge rules, generate charges, and view charges that have been generated for a project
• a Rates subtab is added under the Human Resources subtab of employee and vendor records where you can set hourly rates for project resources
• a new expense item type is available at Lists > Accounting > Items > New
• an Expense Item field is added to expense category records to associate expense categories with items

You can set the default initial billing status for each charge rule type at Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences > Items/Transactions under Charge-Based Billing. For a charge to be billed, it must have the Ready stage.

The billing status of each project is summarized on the Financial subtab of the project record. From there you can view the pending charges and make them available for billing.

Billing Rate Cards

If you use billing classes, you can also enable billing rate cards to define different billing rates for groups of billing classes. These rate cards can then be used to set billing rates on charge-based projects using time-based charge rules.

It is possible to define a rate card specifically for a project and also assign a customer to this rate card. This new rate card is only applicable on projects associated with the defined customer. 

The Related Records subtab on the billing rate card record lists all projects related to the rate card. 

The field is available for new charge-based billing projects and you can select a customer-specific rate card or a generally available rate card for billing your project.

When a specific customer is defined on the rate card, the rate card is locked to that specific customer. Users are not able to change the customer on projects where a customer-specific rate card is applied.

When creating a new charge-based project with a rate card, you can check the Create Charge Rule box to automatically create time-based charge rules based on the selected rate card.

Enable Feature: Setup > Company > Enable Features and click Employees. Under Time & Expenses, check the Billing Rate Cards box.

A default billing rate card is automatically created after the feature is enabled

To create a billing rate card:

1. Go to Setup > Accounting > Billing Rate Cards.
2. Click View next to the rate card you want to add a version for.
3. Click Create New Version at the top of the page.
4. In the Effective Date field, select the date you want the new rates to go into effect.
5. In the Modify By (%) field, you can enter a percentage by which to increase or decrease all the rates on this rate card. For example, enter 5 to increase all the listed prices by five percent. You can enter a negative number to decrease all the rates.
6. You can also update individual rates by changing the values in the Currency field.
7. When you have finished, click Save.

Each customer can have a default rate card defined on the customer record or directly on Projects. When you create a new charge-based project for that customer, the default billing rate card is used when creating new time-based charge rules.

Creating Projects from Sales Transactions

When you use Project Management and sell service items that are tagged to create projects automatically, use the Create Projects from Sales Transactions page to bulk create these projects.

The Create Projects from Sales Transactions permission is required to create projects from sales transactions. Roles with this permission can create projects from sales transactions using templates without requiring individual permissions for each project element. 

Setting a service item to create a project:

Using Project Management, you can set up a service item to a create project each time you sell the item. This option is available for Service For Sale and Service for Resale items only. You designate a service item to create a project and identify the tasks for the project. Then, after selling the items, bulk creates projects from sales transactions.

1. Go to Lists > Accounting > Items. Click Edit next to the service item.
2. On the item record, click the Related Records subtab.
3. Click the Projects subtab.
4. Check the Create Project box.
5. If you want to use a defined project template for projects created from this service item, select a template in the Project Template field.
6. If you do not want to use a defined project template, you must define the tasks required to complete the project. For each task, complete the following steps:

1. In the Task Template Name field, enter the task name. This is the task name that appears on project records created for this item.
2. In the Start Date Offset field, specify the start date of the tasks relative to the project start date. For example, if the task starts two days after the project start date, enter 2.
3. In the Effort (hours) field, specify the total number of hours typically required to complete this task. This number of hours is set as the initial time budget for this task on project records created for this item.
4. Click Add.
5. Click Save

To create projects from sales transactions:

1. Go to Transactions > Customers > Create Projects from Sales Transactions.
   Sales orders, opportunities, and estimates appear in this list if they include items that are tagged to create projects but are not yet associated with a project and are not in one of the following statuses:
   • Canceled
   • Closed
   • Pending Approval
2. Check the Create Projects box next to each transaction you want to create a project for.
3. In the Project Name field, the name defaults from the Project ID on the project record. You can enter a different name.
4. In the Project Template field, if a project template is selected on the service item the default template is selected. You can select a different template.
5. Select a parent project, if applicable. The Parent Project dropdown appears only if other projects exist for the customer.
6. In the Project Manager field, you can select a manager for this project.
7. Click Submit.

When you submit this form, new project records are created for the service items on these transactions.

These projects default to show the primary contact from the customer on the sales transaction. The start date of the project defaults to the start date of the sales transaction.

Creating Charge Rules

Charge rules can be created on the Financial subtab after you have saved the project. There are four main types of charge rules:

• Fixed Fee Charge Rules — rules based on a fixed fee determined by date, milestones, or project progress
• Time-Based Charge Rules — rules based on time tracked against the project
• Expense-Based Charge Rules — rules based on expenses tracked for the project
• Purchase Charge Rules — rules based on items purchased the project