Manually-billed services must be billed upon completion by you and might be forgotten, therefore requiring more attention than automatically-billed services.
To make manual billing easier, Anchor lets you:
Bill ongoing services retroactively, for a previous period
Bill ongoing services for the same period again
Read on to learn more about each capability.
Billing service for a previous period
If you miss a billing period for any reason, you can bill for a previous period with the Previous Period option. Use this capability to ensure that you don't miss payments and that your clients are billed correctly.
To bill for a previous period:
Click Bill to open the billing pop-up
In the Billing Time dropdown, a bill for a previous period option appears if any unbilled periods are available for the service.
When selecting a period, a pre-populated note will appear in the modal letting your client know that this bill is for a previous billing period. The note can be edited.
Upon clicking "Bill period", an invoice will issue immediately. Your client will not need to approve it as they already have approved billing for that amount in the selected period.
💡 Please note that you can only bill a client for a previous period of up to three months.
Make sure to visit the client’s Billing Hub on a regular basis to bill them.
Increasing the total billing amount (by adding hours, units, or simply changing the total), will require invoice approval. Continue to the next section to learn more about this use case.
Billing a service again, for the same period
Occasionally, the monthly billing amount changes and you need to rebill. Or, you might want to bill hourly services in two pieces, one to be added to the next invoice and one to be billed immediately.
This can be done quickly from the Billing Hub. Whenever you click 'Bill’, you'll be able to bill the service again:
For the same period, immediately (Bill now)
For the upcoming bill
For previous periods, if needed
Depending on your selection, the information box will be updated, letting you know when the agreed quota is exceeded and if the bill requires approval from your client.
Example Use Cases
Let’s look at two examples to demonstrate the capabilities above.
A quarterly service that was not billed for October - December (4th quarter) and needs to be billed again
The agreement includes a quarterly service with an hourly rate and two pre-approved hours. This means that two hours can be automatically billed in accordance with the client's approval.
This service was not billed for October - December (4th quarter).
Since Anchor recognizes that the service wasn’t billed, the ‘Bill for a previous period’ option is available in the dropdown. Once billed, the invoice will be issued immediately.
If you need to bill that service again for October - December you can do so, but the client must approve the invoice:
In the Billing Control panel, click 'Bill' on the service
Select ‘Previous period’ in the dropdown
The information box will be updated accordingly, letting you know that this bill requires approval.
A monthly bookkeeping service that was not billed for three months and needs to be billed again, but with a different number of hours
The agreement includes a monthly service with an hourly rate and five preapproved hours. This means that five hours can be automatically billed each month in accordance with the client's approval.
This service was not billed for December, January, and March.
Anchor recognizes that the service was not billed for December, January, and March and allows you to bill for these previous periods.
You have the option to split the bills based on hours. For example:
For December - bill 3 hours
For January - bill 2 hours
For March - bill 5 hours
If, later on, you realize you neglected to bill the three hours in December, you have the option to add them to a new invoice or tack them on to an upcoming one.
See it in action below:
Invoice #ANC00810 is the first bill sent for 3 hours in December
Invoice #ANC00811 is the second bill sent for 3 hours in December
Since only five hours were approved by the client per month, invoice #ANC00811 requires the client's approval because, in total, this client was billed for six hours for that month.