Track Billable Work for Invoicing Using Accounts

Use Tempo accounts to track billable work, create an invoice for a customer, and track non-billable hours for the same customer for other types of work, such as pre-sales. Using two accounts gives you control over how the work and projects for your customers are organized, and gives you rich data for reports.

You can track billable work using two methods:

• The Billable hours field

• Billable Tempo accounts

These steps walk you through using billable Tempo accounts.

Create Jira projects

Create at least one Jira project that is associated with billable hours and one that is associated with non-billable hours.

You can associate multiple projects with accounts.

Create a customer

Add a customer in Tempo to be able to link them to all their related Tempo accounts.

1. Select Accounts in the Tempo sidebar to open the Accounts main page, and then click the Customers button in the top right.

2. On the Customers page, click + Create Customer in the top right.

3. In the Create Customer form, enter a Name and a Key, which is a unique identifier for this customer. You might want the key to match the customer's ID in your accounting software.

Create categories for the Tempo accounts

Create new categories for the customer's billable and non-billable accounts. Categories let you organize and group multiple accounts together in a way that makes sense for your company, such as for Administration, Development, Research, and Internal Training.

Account categories also let you identify accounts to be of a certain Type, which is useful to filter reports. There are four Types you can use: Billable, Capitalized, Internal, or Operational.

1. Select Settings in the Tempo sidebar.

2. Under Accounts, select Account Categories.

3. For the billable account category, enter a Name and Key. The Key is a unique identifier for this category

4. Set the Type to Billable. Click Add beside the new category to create it.
   

   

5. For the non-billable account category, enter a Name and Key, and set the Type to Operational, which can be used for non-billable hours.

Create billable and non-billable Tempo accounts

Create two new accounts for tracking work as either billable or non-billable. These are the accounts to which her team logs their time.

1. Select Accounts in the Tempo sidebar.

2. On the Accounts page, click the + Create Account button in the top right. The Create Account form appears.

3. For the billable account:

   1. Enter the Name.

   2. Optionally edit the automatically generated Key. The account Key must be unique, and you can't change it after you create the account. You might want the account Key to match the related data in your accounting system.

   3. Add yourself as the Account Lead.

   4. Select the Customer.

   5. Select the billable category type you created as the Category.

   6. Add a Contact for the customer. No email is required for this.

   7. Link the account to its associated Jira projects.
      

      

4. Check Create another, then click Create. The Billable account is created and the Create Account form stays open.

5. For the non-billable account:

   1. Enter the Name.

   2. Optionally edit the automatically generated Key. The account Key must be unique, and you can't change it after you create the account. You might want the account Key to match the related data in your accounting system.

   3. Add yourself as the Account Lead.

   4. Select the Customer.

   5. Select the operational category type you created as the Category.

   6. Add a Contact for the customer. No email is required for this.

   7. Link the account to its associated Jira projects.

6. Click Create and the non-billable account is created.

Link Tempo accounts to the Jira issues and log time

Link the billable and non-billable account to the appropriate Jira issues in the Jira project. Then your team can log their time to the correct account selected in the Account dropdown in each issue, which was added during setup.

1. Open one of the Jira projects for the billable work.

2. Open an issue in this project.

3. From the Account dropdown in the issue, select the billable account. Only accounts that have been linked to this Jira project appear in this dropdown. All work logged to this issue are automatically assigned to this billable account.
   

   

4. Open the Jira project associated with non-billable work, and select the non-billable account in the Account dropdown in its issues. Then log non-billable hours, such as presales, to these issues. All hours are automatically assigned to the non-billable account

You can check how much time is logged to each account in its Timesheet.

Create a report on billable accounts for invoicing

After some time has passed, you can generate reports about the work done to the billable and non-billable accounts, and then send the reports to your Accounting department.

• A report for all the work done for the customer for financial insights.

• A report for only the billable consulting work done for the customer. This report is the base for sending an invoice to the customer.

1. Select Reports in the Tempo sidebar, then click the Logged Time tile.

2. For the first customer account report: In the Create Logged Time Report wizard, select Customer in the Filter by field and select the customer from this list.

3. In the Group by field, select Account, Project, and Issue. The time logged to each Jira issue is grouped separately into the two accounts for this customer: billable and non-billable with each project listed beneath it.
   

   

4. Click Create and the customer's accounts report is done.

5. In the date picker in the top left, select Last and then Month to create a report where the data shown is always for the last month relative to the current date (a dynamic-period report). Click Apply.

6. Click Save at the top and give the report a name, such as Customer Accounts - Monthly, and click Save Report.
   

   

7. Click Export in the top right and select XLS Report Data, which saves the report in the Excel format.

For the billable-only account report, simply modify this first report:

1. Remove Account from the Group by field, keep Project and Issue, and then add User and Worklog. Click Apply.
   By adding User and Worklog, the customer knows who is doing the work for them and all the details down to the individual worklog.

2. Click in the Filter by field and then select CATEGORY TYPES and check Billable, so only the billable accounts for the customer are displayed.
   

   

3. Open the Save menu and choose Save as and give the report a name, such as Billable Accounts - January 2022.

4. Click Export in the top right and select XLS Report Data, which saves the report in the Excel format.

You can run this billable report each month, save it as a new report with the name for that month, then export it and send it to the Accounting department.