Clicking on the WORK-IN-PROGRESS tile (in the INVOICING...OVERVIEW screen) will allow you to browse through all of the unbilled time and/or expenses within your system. We call unbilled time/expenses "work-in-progress", or "WIP" for short.
This article walks you through the screens you will use to explore and manage your firm's "WIP." As you create/delete invoices, time and expenses will fall in and out of that unbilled WIP pool.
What Is Work-in-Progress?
WORK IN PROGRESS is how we refer to your unbilled time and expenses in the system. For Time/Materials invoices, it's where you begin when you are ready to invoice. Only submitted time can be added to an invoice, so your WIP does not include unsubmitted time.
WIP and Billing Rates
While unbilled expenses are easy to understand, the dollar amounts displayed for the "fees" in this section are based on the rates you have set up within each project. In order to see a dollar amount WIP for fees, you must have billing rates set up for your project.
TIP: HOURS WITH NO FEES
Projects that appear in your WIP list with hours but no fees are most likely projects that do not have billing rates set up yet. You can adjust a project's billing rate directly from the WIP details screen. Just drill all the way into that project's WIP detail, then click the UPDATE BILLING RATES button at the top of that page. BigTime will apply your adjusted billing rates to that project's WIP automatically.
Viewing WIP by Project
The WORK-IN-PROGRESS tile can be found by navigating to INVOICING...OVERVIEW and clicking on the dollar amount displayed under Work-In-Progress.
Drilling down into this view will display a list of your clients as well as the hours, fees, expenses, and "total WIP" associated with each client in your system. BigTime only shows clients with unbilled WIP, so it gives you a good idea of which projects are active within your system.
In this view, WIP is broken down by project. You can search for specific projects, filter, sort/group this list, and drill down into the unbilled fees (hours) and/or expenses that make up that WIP.
Customizing Your View
You can adjust this grid to include the columns you would like to use in your invoicing process. Click on the GEAR icon at the top of the screen to adjust the fields in your view. You can hover over a checkbox to get a basic definition of the field you’re viewing, and then add that field by checking it off. All of the fields added within your view are available to any financial administrator in your system.
Filtering the Projects/WIP on Screen
Live filtering allows you to activate a setting that adds a filter icon to any column currently added to your invoicing view. Each column will display its own live filter icon in which you can select values to filter on or simply enter free-text to narrow down your view on.
The ADVANCED FILTERS button will drop-down a set of project-related filters that allow you to restrict the projects you see on screen based on fields that don't appear in your grid. In addition, you can set a WIP date-range filter to allow you to see only the WIP that was logged within that date range.
Searching
If you are looking for the WIP related to a specific project, you can use the search bar at the top of the page. This will let you type in a few letters from the project's display name and it will filter out any projects that don't match.
Drilling Into WIP Details
For each project listed in the WIP screen, the FEES and EXPENSES column values are both clickable. These links will take you to the detailed entries that make up your unbilled WIP on each project.
Within the details, you can even click on specific entries to view/edit them before invoicing. In the same view, you can print out the detail, update the billing rates, and even manually select specific entries to invoice.
Creating Invoices From WIP
While you are drilled in to the project WIP screen(s), you have the option to create invoices directly.
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To create a single invoice, check off the project you would like to invoice and click the CREATE INVOICE button at the top of the screen. You will be forwarded to the invoice wizard where you can select the type of invoice you would like to generate.
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To create multiple invoices in bulk, check off all of the projects you would like to invoice and then click the BULK CREATE INVOICES button. You'll be asked to confirm that you want to bulk-invoice those projects. Once they're finished, you'll be able to jump to the drafts section where these new invoices can be reviewed/edited.
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To generate an invoice from specific entries, drill into the WIP details screen and check off the entries you would like to invoice, then click the CREATE INVOICE button on that page. For more detail on this, see Manually Selecting WIP to Invoice.