Billing types: hourly, fixed fee and retainers

Billing type on a project says how the client pays for it: by the hour, as one total amount, or as a recurring fee that includes a number of hours. It is set per project and it decides what Temponia offers you when you create an invoice, and what the project dashboard and project report show.

Time is tracked the same way on all three. What changes is what becomes an invoice line. The question mark next to the field opens the same explanation inside the app.

Time & materials

The default. Tracked hours are invoiced at the rates you configure on the project, and the project's rate settings decide what an hour is worth.

When you create an invoice, uninvoiced entries on the project become invoice lines. Entries whose rate works out to zero are left out.

Fixed fee

One total amount for the whole project, however many hours it takes. The Fixed fee field takes that total, not an hourly rate, and it has to be above zero.

Tracked time is not invoiced separately. Invoicing the fee marks the project's uninvoiced time as covered by it, so the same hours cannot be billed twice.

On the invoice screen the remaining fee is prefilled and you can lower it to invoice an instalment. Temponia keeps track of how much of the fee is still open, and if the deal is extended later you raise the fee and the difference becomes invoiceable again.

The project dashboard shows REMAINING FEE / UNINVOICED TIME instead of the usual uninvoiced total.

Retainer

The client pays a fee per period and gets a number of hours included for it. Setting one up needs a Fee per period, Hours per period ("the number of hours included for the fee") and a Billing period.

Monthly, Weekly, Quarterly and Yearly periods renew on their own from the Start date. For those you pick one of two ways to handle a period that does not come out even:

• Roll over unused hours to the next period carries a surplus forward and subtracts an overrun from the next period.
• Extra hours rate bills hours above the included hours at that rate on the next period's invoice. Leave it empty to not bill extra hours at all.

Choosing both is rejected. It has to be one or the other.

Ad hoc renews nothing. The client buys a block of hours and you open the next one yourself with Start a new block, on the project's edit page or on its dashboard. That settles the current block and opens a fresh one with the hours and fee currently configured, at most once a day. Unused hours always carry into the new block. Extra hours are billed at the extra hours rate if you set one, and otherwise come off the new block.

With Automatically create a draft invoice for each new period enabled, every new period or block produces a draft invoice for its fee, plus any extra hours from the period before. That option needs both a fee per period and a client on the project.

A retainer period's fee is always invoiced in full. Instalments are a fixed fee feature only.

Comparison

Rates on fee projects

Fixed fee and retainer projects still resolve an hourly rate for every entry, and the project form is explicit about why: "These rates are not billed to the client, the fee covers the work. They are only used in reports to value the tracked time."

Set them anyway if you want to compare the agreed fee against what the hours would have been worth. Leave them at zero and the time still counts in hours, but not in money.

Where it shows up afterwards

• Project report puts a Fixed fee or Retainer label next to the project name, and adds Fee, Fee invoiced and Fee profit columns. Fee profit is only visible to people who may see costs.
• Project dashboard shows the remaining fee for a fixed fee project, and used against available hours for a retainer, along with a Retainer periods table listing each period with its hours available, hours used, balance and invoice.
• Budgets work as normal on time and materials and fixed fee projects. On a retainer the budget selector is hidden, because the included hours per period already are the budget. See Budgets and tracking progress.

What you need enabled

Invoicing is a module rather than something every company has switched on. An owner or admin turns it on under company modules. Without it you can still set a billing type and track against it, but no invoices are produced.