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Review the invoice, don't rebuild it
Month end arrives and finance chases timesheets, exports time to a spreadsheet, asks delivery what was agreed and rebuilds each invoice by hand. Draft invoices come from approved time and the contract's billing rules, and finance reviews them.
This pillar covers the last two stages of the chain
Prospect
Customer, opportunity and proposed work
Proposal
Scope and rates for the work proposed
Deliver
Run the engagement from what was agreed
Time and cost
Capture work, review exceptions
Bill
WIP and invoice lines from the records
Post
Hand off to your accounting system
How much of your month-end billing is rework?
Answer for your last billing run. Each yes is a place where work is retyped, chased or explained between delivery, finance and accounting.
Does someone chase people for missing time before each billing run?
Invoices wait while entries come in, one reminder at a time.
Do you export time into a spreadsheet to build each client's invoice?
Hours and rates are pulled out of one system and rebuilt in another.
Does finance ask delivery or sales what was agreed before billing a client?
The billing rule is in someone's head or an old email, not the record.
Do invoices go round by email to be approved?
The approver sees a PDF and replies, and nobody sees where it stands.
When one line is wrong, does someone rebuild the whole invoice?
A correction means starting again, not splitting or sending the time back.
Does someone rekey approved invoices into your accounting system?
Amounts and ledger codes are typed in a second time.
One record from approved time to the ledger
Finance reviews an invoice that already shows who it bills, its engagement and contract, and who approves it.
Hierarchy
- Bill to
- NovaTech Care
- Bill from
- Day One Consulting
- Billing contact
- Michael Torres
- Approver
- Admin (000135.9.2329)
- Engagement
- Customer Telephony Triage Line
- Engagement contract
- Telephony Triage — Call Handling
Invoice line
- Description
- Current-State Assessment - Project Manager - Content Strategist - Strategy Consultant - Senior Consultant - Technical Architect - Partner
- Quantity
- 1
- Line amount
- $72,504.50
- Invoices are draftedA scheduled run builds a draft invoice for each client from approved time, ready milestones and approved expenses, using the contract's billing rules.
- Approve in stepsBy default the manager approves, then Finance, and your organisation can set its own steps. Finance can edit, postpone, split, merge, write off or send time back to the person who logged it.
- Post with the codes setThe invoice reaches your accounting platform with the GL codes your organisation sets for the business unit or client.
Questions finance leaders ask
Can't see your question? Ask us directly.
Does DAY ONE replace the ledger?
No. It manages the commercial record and invoice path before the accounting handoff.
Is every completed item ready to bill?
No. The time and milestones must be approved, and the invoice then goes through approval steps, by default manager first, then Finance, and your organisation can set its own steps.
What should we review first?
Pick one WIP item that took several conversations to explain. Trace the source and the missing decision. Read Audit-ready WIP for the deeper method.
Who can send an invoice back, and where does it return to?
Finance can send time back, and those entries return to Re-work for the person who logged them. Rejecting an invoice deletes it and releases its value back to work in progress. Finance can also postpone, split, merge or regenerate before approving.
Talk through one billing run
Tell us where the last invoice had to be rebuilt before it could go out, and we will talk it through.
“Day One enabled us to automate our invoicing process that took a large admin team 2-3 weeks per month to reconcile billing down to a smaller team where invoices can go out same day, or max same week.”