HaloITSM Guides

Billing a project using Charge Types

Billing using charge types will bill labour on project and project task tickets using the rates you have set on your charge types, much like billing for other tickets in your instance. 

To set this up, ensure the setting in Fig 1 (Use Charge Rates instead of Budget Types) is enabled, found in Configuration > Billing > General Settings.

 Fig 1. Use Charge types instead of Budget Types

Once this is enabled you will be able to link each of your budget types to an associated charge type. Head to Configuration > Project Management > Budget Type, click into a budget type to edit it (or create a new one).

In the 'Charge Type' field you can choose which charge type this budget is associated with. 

Fig 2. Charge type field on budget type

Associating a budget type with a charge type allows the time spent on an action that uses this charge type to be deducted from the associated budget type on the project.

Now when you complete an action on a project ticket or project task the time spent on this will be billed at the rate of the charge type on that action. The charge type will either be determined by the charge type field on the action, or by the customer's billing plan combinations. 

As you complete actions, both on the parent and child tickets, you will see the time spent on that action will be deducted from the project budget associated with that charge type. If a charge type is used that has not been linked to a budget type this will still be billed for, but it will not be reflected in the budgets tab of the project. 

When billing for the project the labour will be billed at the hourly rate of the charge type not of the budget type. 

Billing projects this way is used when you want to bill labour at the rate already configured in your charge types and would like to use your existing billing plan combinations to determine the charge associated with an action. It allows you to also set separate budget rates for reference, this gives a guideline how long should be spent on each type of work and the cost associated with this.

How to set charge rates and Budget rates to be the same automatically (v2.168+)

If you would like your charge rate and budget rate to match it is recommended to enable the setting shown in Fig 3, found in Configuration > Project Management > General Settings. 

 Fig 3. The Budget Rate will come from the Charge Rate for the Customer

Billing using Budget Types

Billing with budget types will bill labour on a project at the rate set on the selected budget type for that ticket. This allows you to set different hourly rates to your existing charge types and customise the rates at which work is billed on particular projects.

To bill with budget types ensure the setting in Fig 1 is disabled, found in Configuration > Billing > General Settings.

Now you need to ensure that your charge types are set to be overridden by budget types, head to Configuration > Billing > Charge Types > select a charge type > Rates tab > edit the rate, enable 'Override rate with the Project budget rate'.

Fig 3. Override rate with the Project budget rate

This will need to be done on every charge type that you will be using on the project ticket. 

Now, you are ready to create your project ticket. When creating the ticket ensure that the budget types you select cover all labour charges you will be using, as the budget types on the parent determine the budget types you can choose from on the child ticket. 

When setting the budget type, you can change the rate this is charged at if you would like this work to be charged at a different rate on this project. 

When creating project tasks you will need to set a budget type against the task ticket. To do this ensure you have the 'Budget Type' field set against the ticket type. This can be found in Configuration > Tickets > Ticket Types > select your ticket type > Field List. Here you can add in the budget field by selecting the + icon. 

Fig 4. Budget type field

When choosing a budget type for the project task, you will be able to choose from the budget types set against the parent project ticket. 

Fig 5. Budget type set on task ticket

The budget type you have chosen for the project task ticket will bill all the work on this ticket at the rate of the budget type, regardless of the charge type you choose on the action.

For example, if you complete 3 actions on the ticket, all using different charge rates, these will all get billed at the same rate. In Fig 6 we can see three different charge rates have been used on the ticket. But, as the ticket is assigned the 'remote training' budget type this work will all be billed at the rate of the remote training budget type. This is the case even when using the 'no charge' charge rate.

Fig 6. Charge types and budget type on ticket

As the budget type is set per ticket rather than per action, for any work that you would like to be billed at a different rate, you will need to raise a new child ticket. 

As budget type rates can be edited at anytime throughout the project this makes for much more flexible billing. If you have already completed several project tasks and would like to increase/decrease the rate they are billed at, you can just edit the budget rate for the assigned budget type in the parent ticket to the desired rate. This rate will be applied when the invoice for the project is created. 

Billing using budget types is useful for when you would like to bill labour on projects at a different rate to your usual labour rates. It also makes time tracking easier as the hours and value of labour spent on the project is accurately reflected in the budget tab on the project.