Overview
In BQE CORE, the Billing Options tab allows you to configure how a project is billed, taxed, and tracked. It provides full control over project-level billing preferences, ensuring alignment with client agreements and internal accounting policies.
You can specify a fee schedule, enter an estimate, and select an invoice template. This screen also includes invoice numbering preferences, allowing you to customize invoice numbers to meet client or company-specific requirements. The Billing Options tab ensures your billing process is streamlined, customizable, and compliant with both internal processes and client-specific billing structures.
How To
Field Descriptions
| Projects > Project Center > Settings > Billing Options | |
| Reflect Root Project Settings | Allows the child project (phase) to reflect the billing-related settings of its root parent project. When selected, the phase fields stay synced with the parent, indicate when values are inherited, and provide a quick link to the parent project for editing those settings. This option is available for project phases only. |
| Project Fee Schedule |
Allows you to override the default employee (or vendor) bill and cost rates for matching combinations with special rates when time and expenses are logged to a project. The Use for Budget Fee Schedule checkbox determines whether the budget for a new project should automatically use the same fee schedule as the project. You can select a specific budget fee schedule from the drop-down menu when this option is unchecked. The Update rates of Budgeted Items checkbox determines whether the budget item rates should be automatically updated according to the selected fee schedule for the newly created project, including budget items of phases. You can keep this option unchecked if you prefer to keep the existing rates. |
| Estimate | Allows you to select an estimate for the project. This is the estimate that is usually sent to the client for approval and then the budget is based on the approved estimate. |
| Message on Invoice |
Enter a standard message to print on all invoices of the project. This message displays above the footer of the invoice. You can also define a standard invoice message for all the projects of a client on the Clients screen or globally for all client and projects from Settings. If a message is defined, it shows up automatically on invoices. |
| Invoice Number |
Allows you to customize the invoice number format for a project. It takes precedence over the invoice numbering set in Settings. CORE supports both numeric and alphanumeric invoice numbers in a prefix-last number-suffix format. Both prefix and suffix strings remain static. You can see the preview of the numbering when this option is enabled. Example: For the ease of remembering, you should keep the prefix as something that relates to the project like Project ID or year, say, ABC or 2026. Last invoice number can be something like 0000 so the new invoice number would be 0001. The suffix comes last and can be, say, LA for a project located in Los Angeles. The resulting invoice number will be '20260001LA'. Deleting an invoice with a custom number resets the last invoice number here. Also, if you generate an invoice (or a draft) and delete it, CORE re-uses that number so that there is no gap in the sequence. |
| Automatic Billing: | Allows you to set up a project for automatic billing at a specified frequency. It knows when is the start date of the first billing or when the last invoice went out for a project, how much approved work-in-progress it has, and when the next invoice is due. |
| Start Date |
Represents the start date of the first billing cycle of the automatic billing schedule. It is the first day you want CORE to automatically process an invoice for you. Depending on the billing frequency set, CORE triggers the processing of the first automatic invoice on this date and includes the approved time and expense entries for the project covering that period. Then the next billing will occur exactly after the selected period (frequency) of the current billing and so on. Example: If you set the Start Date as April 15th of this year and your billing frequency is Monthly, the first billing will occur on April 15th for the approved time and expenses of the entire calendar month from April 1st to April 30th. The second billing will occur after 30 days on May 15th covering the month of May (30 days). Then the third billing will occur again after 30 days on June 14th covering the month of June (31 days), and so on. |
| Frequency |
This represents the frequency at which the automatic billing will occur. In other words, it determines how often or at what interval the billing cycle gets repeated, say weekly, monthly, etc. It generates the next bill date accordingly and determines the Billing From-To period on invoices. The billing continues till the End Date or indefinitely, as per your selection. Example: If you set the Start Date as April 15th of this year and your billing frequency is Monthly, the first billing will occur on April 15th for the approved time and expenses of the entire calendar month from April 1st to April 30th. The second billing will occur after 30 days on May 15th covering the month of May (30 days). Then the third billing will occur again after 30 days on June 14th covering the month of June (31 days), and so on. |
| Process Mode |
Determines how the invoices are processed after being generated automatically.
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| Main Service Tax % | Tax applied to the labor or service amount on invoices. It takes into account the taxes (namely Tax 1/2/3) associated with the activity items. |
| Main Expense Tax % | Tax applied to the expense amount on invoices. It takes into account the taxes (namely Tax 1/2/3) associated with the expense items. |
| Minimum Retainer | CORE allows you to set a minimum retainer amount for a project and then monitors it for you. The minimum retainer set here acts as a threshold and triggers an automatic retainer invoice as soon as the available retainer drops below it. When a draft invoice results in pushing the available retainer below this minimum, then also it generates a reminder. |
| Retainage % |
Percentage of the invoice amount that a client holds back against the verification and quality of work completed on the project. The accumulated retainage is typically paid after the verification is done. CORE computes the invoice amount as: Amount Due = Services Billed + Expenses Billed + Taxes – Applied Retainer – Discount – Retainage Example: If the total bill amount = $1000 and calculated Retainage = $50, the invoice sent to the client displays the bill amount prior to applying the retainage (say $1000) and then the Amount Due after retainage (say $1000 - $50 = $950). |
| Maximum Retainage | You can see this option when the 'No limit' option is unchecked. It represents the maximum amount that a client can retain on a given project. Example: If you set a retainage of 5% and maximum retainage amount is $2000 on a project, CORE calculates this 5% on every invoice (billable amount) until the accumulated retainage reaches $2000. After it reaches this maximum limit, full invoice amount is due from the client. |
| Accounts & Class |
You can override the global-level default accounts with those set at the project level here. These accounts take precedence over the global-level accounts. However, they can be further overwritten at the item level.
Note: When you change a project’s income or expense account, CORE prompts you to apply the change to existing invoices, payments, time entries, and expenses that use the original account. You can apply the update to all, billed, or unbilled matching entries, or choose not to update existing entries. This ensures that only relevant records are updated and prevents unintended changes to entries with different account values.
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| Class |
You can select a project-level class here to be used for time and expense entries logged against it. The relationship between a class and a project is one-to-one (a project can be assigned to one class only). You need to assign a class to items before creating invoices and prior to synchronization with your accounting software. Else, your class fields will remain blank there and not display in reports. Note: When you change the class for a project, CORE prompts you to apply the change only to existing records that use the original class. You can apply the update to all, billed, or unbilled matching entries, or choose not to update existing entries, ensuring that only relevant records are affected. |
| Terms | Determines the number of days after which the project invoice is due. A blank payment term means the invoice is due upon receipt. The payment term for a project overrides the default term set for the client. |
| Billing Contact |
The Billing Contact allows you to manage who receives billing-related communication for a project. If needed, you can assign a different contact to a project other than the default client contact. If you select 'Send Invoice to Contact', then CORE sends the project invoices and statements to this contact instead of the default client contact. In addition, the address of this contact overrides the client address and prints on invoices and statements. To see these contact details in other screens such as Invoice Collections, you must have set this option here.
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| Online Payment Account |
CORE allows your clients to make online payments using the ePayments feature. It is inherited from the client record, but you can select another online payment service account here for the project from the drop-down. You can also set it up at the global level for all clients and projects in the Settings screen. CORE allows you to select multiple online payment accounts. However, you cannot choose two payment services with the same payment method. |
| Split Billing |
You can enable or disable the split billing option for your project (matter) or phase here. This feature is commonly used in the legal industry wherein the invoice is split into various parts to divide work among clients, firms or payers. Example: You might want to split the invoice between a primary matter and a secondary matter in a proportion of, say, 20% and 80%. All the time and expense entries are logged to the primary matter, but the billing is split among the clients of the secondary matters.
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Assign Invoice Templates
You can assign a different invoice template to a project instead of the default set at the global level in the Settings screen. Depending on the status of an invoice, you can also change its template from the Invoices screen, wherein you can then reflect that change in the related project.
To set an invoice template at the project level, watch this video or follow these steps:
- Open the Projects screen from the side menu > Projects.
- In the list view, click
on a project row and select View Details.
- In the Project Center view, go to the Settings > Billing Options tab and click Choose Template for any of the invoice templates:
- Standard Invoice
- Joint Invoice
- Manual Invoice
- On the Choose Template dialog, pick a new template for the project after selecting the Show option.
- You can preview the sample template in the viewer. Click Done.
- The selected invoice template is assigned to the project. Click Save.
You can also watch the detailed video on managing invoice templates.
Set Automatic Billing
For hourly or fixed fee projects, instead of running billing reports and checking the billing records every now and then, you can use the automatic billing feature in CORE. You can set up auto-billing for your projects. Based on their contract type, billing schedules, and billable time and expenses, they will be billed at the specified frequency. In case of fixed-type projects, you can create a billing schedule and set the 'reminder date' to coincide with the automatic billing 'start date'. We recommend setting up the Auto Approve rules for time and expenses for the projects that you want to auto bill so that the process is completely automated. That way you do not have to manually approve entries for billing.
The automatic billing feature differs from the recurring invoices in many ways. First, auto-bill is set at the project level while the latter is set at the invoice level. Unlike recurring invoices, automatic billing is dynamic because of the changing bill amount as you do not have a predefined fixed amount being billed to the client. When we set a schedule for a project and the schedule is due, then all the bills (approved time and expense entries, billing schedule, recurring bills, etc.) that can be processed for the project for the current billing period are processed as invoices. If there is nothing to be processed, no invoice is created. So, CORE bills the client according to the billing arrangement and rules set for the project with the automatic schedule.
To set up automatic billing for a project, watch this video or follow these steps:
- Open the Projects screen from the side menu > Projects.
- In the list view, click
- In the Project Center view, go to the Settings > Billing Options tab and enable the Bill Automatically option.
- Enter the required information. Check Field Descriptions above for details.
Start Date
Frequency
End Date
Assigned Biller
You can choose to process the invoice manually in the Invoices screen (by the assigned biller) or completely automate it.
Click Save & Done.
You can see all your automatic billings on the Recurring Invoices screen. You can edit the recurring schedule there as well.
Set Up Split Billing
You can enable or disable the split billing option for your projects (matters) and phases. This feature is commonly used in the legal industry wherein a single invoice is split among various parties (clients) and payment collected from them individually. It allows CORE to distribute services and expenses logged against that matter to one or more matters/clients based on a percentage/amount or remainder rules. For example, you might want to split the invoice between a primary matter (root project in CORE) and a secondary matter in a proportion of, say, 20% and 80%. All the time and expense entries are logged to the primary matter, but the billing is split among the clients of the other matters. The line item taxes and main taxes are included in the split billing percentage set at the matter level. You cannot do progress billing in case of split invoices wherein the time and expense entries are released after billing and then linked to existing invoices.
To set up split billing for a matter, watch this video or follow these steps:
- Open the Projects screen from the side menu > Project (Matters in case of legal company database).
- In the list view, click
-
In the Project Center view, go to the Settings > Billing Options tab and enable the Split Billing option at the bottom.
- Enter the required information. Check Field Descriptions above for details.
- Project: You can choose other matters or phases that are to be included in the split billing.
- Service %
- Expense %
Click Done. Keep adding more matters, as needed. The percentage values are balanced proportionately.
When you have finished, click Save & Done.
After you set up your split billing, it is recommended to set the Joint Invoice template to Split Invoice on the Billing Options tab. That way your split invoices are presented in the right layout. When billing this matter from the Invoices screen, CORE splits the invoice amount among multiple clients.