I run a services company and the majority of my invoices are by time. I use the Billable Time entry which is good, however my clients are requesting that I include a column for hourly rate and time on each task in the invoice. Is this possible? I’m happy to hack the html invoice template to achieve this.
Time charged is already shown in parenthesis added to the description you enter. Rate is not.
Thank you, but it’s not what I’m after.
I think this could be solved by making sales invoice a bit smarter. After all, Manager knows you are billing for time because you are using an appropriate account. So instead of showing quantity 1.5, Manager could show 1h 30m etc.
Can you show some sample invoice how you picture it should look like?
@lubos, is there a chance this change can be worked in with other invoicing improvements that have been discussed? I’m thinking here of the need several of us have mentioned to be able to add billable time, billable expenses (disbursements), or any other type of line item regardless of which module the sales invoice was originally created in.
Hi @lubos thanks for taking the time to reply. Attached is a dodgy little mockup of what my clients like to see. Perhaps you could split out your “description” to “description.text”, “description.billableTime” and “description.rate” or something?
I know I keep saying this, but it’s a great bit of software that has helped me to learn some basic accounting practices. Thanks!
I think first I will make it so hours:minutes will show under quantity column, rather than in description.
Then it’s just a matter of renaming columns. But even here Manager could be smart. If all line items are billable time, then quantity column could be automatically shown as Hours and unit price column as Rate.
In other words, what you are proposing is pretty much how it might look like anyway without using any custom template.
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I would like to use billable time for time that an aircraft has been leased. Time is recorded by Tacho meters and therefore the difference will show as and is recorded as e.g. 1.83 hrs.
My questions are, can Manager accommodate this?
Furthermore, like in Sales Invoice Items, could there be Billable Time Options where prices can be preset?
You could use Billable Time for leasing, but right now, Manager will only accept hours and minutes, not decimal fractions of an hour. But you cannot preset the rate. Others have mentioned a desire for that capability (for example, rates tied to different labor categories or personnel).
A different way to handle this, however does exist. Define the different aircraft leasing rates as sales invoice items, with an hourly price. You can then input decimal units and all is well. This is probably a cleaner approach anyway, as Billable Time works best for time recorded in the present that will be billed later, such as when a project is finished or at the end of an accounting period. I suspect your leasing charges will be invoiced immediately after the flight.
Hi Tut,
Thank you. That is how i set it up.
And yes you are right i bill after each flight. (Maybe procrastinated a bit the last few months)
I know this is an accounting software, however using the billable time would mean that upon export it would also export the hours.
Yes, the summary for Billable Time shows hours and minutes. And you could search for a customer and get a listing of all their flight times to export. But the sales invoice also shows the time.
Likewise, if you go with the sales invoice item approach, the sales invoice will show the quantity (time). But the summary listing of invoices does not.
Either way can do the job. If I were you, I would make some experimental entries. Try it both ways and see which is easier for your overall workflow. Check what the printable invoices show each way to make sure you have what you need. From the accounting perspective either is correct and will produce the same results. Be sure to delete the experimental entries when you are finished. 
@stuguru, the latest version (15.3.81) is a bit smarter about billable time. When you generate sales invoice, it will put number of hours into Qty column. When viewing invoice, it will show hours suffix in quantity column. If all line items on invoice are for billable time then Qty column will be outright renamed to Hours.