Billable time mishandled, not sure how to proceed

A user on a server edition has mishandled billable time. I’m not entirely sure how but it seems that by editing invoices with billable time in them or adding billable time directly to invoices (not through the billable time tab in Manager), things have gone bad.

As a result now, Manager shows billable time amount in assets; the same amount in billable time - movement, but there isn’t any billable time to be invoiced through Customers.

I tried to resolve the issue by tracking down invoices but, unfortunately, they don’t have records about which invoices were edited and by how much. And there are about a hundred invoices for different customers which makes things even more difficult.

So, now, the question is what is the best way to proceed? As far as I can see there is no way to move the amount from billable time - movement through a journal entry.

Any ideas will be helpful.

That will do it. The same is true for billable expenses. They must be invoiced from the Customers tab.

Billable time not invoiced through the Customers tab is going to remain in the two accounts mentioned. But I am at a loss for how you get billable time entries there without having them show up as uninvoiced in the Customers tab

I would start by analyzing the Billable Time tab listings. You should be able to discover the source of those entries in the two account mentioned. Even when you add entries directly to a sales invoice, there are automatically generated transactions that could help you track down the problem.

This is how the billable time report looks for the period 1/1/2018 - 12/31/2018 . I’m not entirely sure what the adjustment and closing balance columns represent, but I’m guessing they should be all 0 if everything is correctly invoiced.

Screenshot_20190409_222437

I was referring to the list of billable time transactions in the tab itself.

Below is just a one month report. I’m guessing the first line is some improper invoicing, but then the other two seem like rounding errors? Is this supposed to be happening with the rounding?

Screenshot_20190409_230025

Yes I got that, but first I thought it was a good idea to narrow it down by looking at reports per months/weeks.

You cannot tell much from the summary. There could be a rounding errors, foreign exchange gains and losses, etc.

Tut, but then do rounding errors and exchange gains / losses always stay on the movement account?

I honestly don’t know. I’ve never worked with billable time in different currencies. Nor have I experimented with incorrect entries or processes, except by accident.

The only thing I know of that produces adjustments in the Billable Time Summary is discounts on a sales invoice, applied after the invoice is created properly from the Customers tab. But there could be other things. I can only tell you this all looks like a mess. I think you are in for a real detective effort. Good luck.

I’ve tracked down most of the issues and now I’m left with a small amount (around 4-5 EUR) in negative on the billable time movement and asset account.

I think this means that over all customers and year the amount that is invoiced is bigger than the billable time entered. But there is no way to adjust the billable time to match that over-invoiced amount because per customer I’m looking at amounts that are less than an euro and that is also converted to a different currency, so i would probably need to add values such as 3 minutes and 30 seconds or something like that which is not possible, and/or have to keep track of exact exchange rates for the particular differences in each period.

Except redoing all invoices from start, which I don’t think it’s smart, as 2018 is long gone, what can be done in this kind of a situation? What happens with negative billable time when the accounting period changes from 2018 to 2019?

@Tut do you have any insights? Am I understanding the issue correctly?

Without seeing the accounts, I can only say the following:

  • When billable time is entered, the hourly rate is taken to be in the currency of the customer for whom the entry is made. That is converted to base currency for the balance sheet, but not for invoicing from the Customers tab.
  • When billable time is properly invoiced from the Customers tab, the sales invoice will be in the currency of the customer and the billable time will be zeroed, both in Billable time and Billable time - movement.
  • If the exchange rate is later changed, you can end up with positive or negative balances in those two accounts, depending on which way the rate moved. Meanwhile, Billable time - invoiced (as converted to base currency) and Foreign exchange gains (losses) will also change. Additionally, if you drill down on Billable time - invoiced, you will see various automatic entries on old transactions—write-ons or write-offs.

So you probably will want to make journal adjustments at the end of an accounting period. I confess I have no real-world experience billing time in foreign currencies. As you probably know from your own work, you only get so much perspective making test entries in an artificial company. True understanding of how the program works comes from dealing with your own actual events and transactions. Nowhere is this more true than with multiple currencies and exchange rates.

Anyway, it looks like your situation is most likely related to changes in exchange rates after invoicing.

I was hoping to make journal adjustments but it is not possible to post manually to the asset and movement account for billable time, right?

Oh, you’re right.

I think @lubos needs to comment on how this should be handled.

This is a bug. Basically billable time needs to be revaluated when new exchange rate is entered but that’s not happening. That’s why billable time ends up with a closing balance other than zero even though all billable time for customer has been either invoiced or written-off.

Basically, if customer has no uninvoiced billable time, then their billable time closing balance must be zero.

“Adjustments” are write-offs, write-downs or write-ups.

  • Write-offs (when you mark billable time entry as write-off)
  • Write-down (when you issue invoice for billable time but give discount so invoiced billable time is greater than the amount charged to customer on invoice)
  • Write-up (opposite of write-down which I’d consider a bookkeeping error - e.g. billable time is 5,000 EUR but you invoice customer 10,000 EUR)

I think the report should separate all three reasons for adjustments rather than having one generic column for it and possibly have the figures clickable to see how Manager calculated them.

Closing balance is simply a total of uninvoiced billable time. If there is no uninvoinced billable time then closing balance must be zero - otherwise it’s a bug which is the case here.

Just to make a note that similar things with rounding and exchange rates happens with billable expenses. I just noticed that I have a ballance of 0,43 MKD (which is a really small amount) on the billable expense asset account even though everything has been properly invoiced.

Fixed in the latest version (19.12.5)

No material changes to billable time however billable expenses is another matter…

The more I was digging into this issue, the more I realized I need to change how the billable expenses are actually handled on profit & loss statement. In previous versions there was Billable expenses - markup account and Billable expenses - unrecoverable account.

I changed these two accounts to Billable expenses - invoiced and Billable expenses - cost.

The naming is more consistent with billable time where we already have Billable time - invoiced account. And this account will simply contain the entire income from sales invoice (not just markup). Similar to Billable time - invoiced which contains the entire invoiced billable time as well.

Billable expenses - cost account will contain the entire cost of each billable expense once invoiced.

Therefore, profit & loss won’t be able to show directly markup amount on profit & loss statement but I think that’s fine since we do not show markup on inventory items (we show total sales and total cost separately) and billable expenses work on the same principle (billable expenses are capitalized until invoiced).

Awesome. Thanks @Lubos.

And wow – 0 bugs on the forum. What a Christmas present for the community :slight_smile: