INVOICE: Service Package
I have most customers on a monthly plan and tickets are charged by hourly time. However, there are optional a-la-carte services that repeat and will be on each invoice. Items like Backup/AV/RMM etc.
A customer may have 20x RMM, 20x AV, 8x Backup. This "Service Package" will be different for each customer. I would expect I could define this package somehow and have it automatically included in each month's invoice for each customer.
Currently, it seems I have to manually add each of these as a separate "Product" line..in each invoice..for each customer..MANUALLY. This is brutal if you're generating 50 invoices each month. Also, since the service package doesn't often change for each customer, this opens up a window for human error if I accidentally typed 9x for Backup instead of 8x, etc.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to run an invoice batch at the beginning of each month and not have to go in and edit each one. I'd like to generate the batch and press email to customer and be done.
Has anyone else had this same difficulty and how have you solved it? Thank you
Comments
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I was just generating invoices again and these manual added steps seem unnecessary. The whole purpose of PSA and Billing modules are to automate these activities and save me time. I am being forced to do a lot of manual work needlessly each month just to get the billing done.
As it stands now, I have to go in and manually add each service to each invoice for each customer each month... A bit painful (and could be error prone) when I should be able to just define this once per customer and have it auto added to each monthly invoice like the labor is currently.
If someone has experienced the same and has a workaround, I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks all
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Hello @Russ,
I might have a workaround for you, that could help with this issue. There is a little bit of a setup, but it will automate some of the tasks.
Edit: There were changes some time ago to how our billing works, allowing us to create the invoices, without having to generate a ticket schedule and a ticket automation rule, please scroll down for the solution.
For each of the separate services that you bill for, you create a Retainer/Flat fee contract. For example, you create one for AV. You make the Retainer/Flat fee contract, and there you add a rate that is the amount you want to charge for the AV, let's say $5. During the contract creation, you select the number of AVs that the customer has, let's say 20 and you select the billing period of "Monthly".Create New Contract: Retainer/Flat Fee – Atera Support
If needed you can also add taxes and so on. Don't make the contract default, we don't need that. You can also leave the SLA as None. Also, keep in mind that you have the option to change all of the values within a contract after creating it, except for the contract type. So, if the number of AVs that you provide to a customer changes, you can simply change the Quantity later, and even the Rate.
Now, we have a contract that will bill the customer. In order to create an invoice for this contract, we will need to create a ticket, the ticket needs to have the contract that we have created assigned to it, and then the ticket needs to be closed. Now, this would be a tedious process to do each month, for each product that you provide, so we can do something else.
We create a Ticket Schedule. This ticket schedule basically will generate a ticket automatically at the date when you have to bill your customer. On the ticket schedule section, you have the option to assign the contract that we just created. Also, very important, to assign a name to the ticket that will most likely never be used anywhere else, something like [AV billing]. Create the schedule.
Now, every month, a ticket with the contract assigned will be created, however, you would still have to set the status as Resolved or Closed.Schedule a ticket – Atera Support
This is still somewhat of a process, but we have a solution here. You create a ticket automation rule, that sets the status of the ticket to Resolved automatically. So, go to ticket automation rules, and create a rule with the Trigger=New ticket created, in the Condition of the rule, add Ticket Title > Equals > [AV billing], basically the title of the scheduled ticket. Then, action Set Field Value>Status>Resolved.Ticket automation rules – Atera Support
And this is the whole setup.
The logic is the following
Create a contract for each product you sell, you can clone the contract if you sell the same service/product to multiple customers. Then create a schedule ticket for each of the products that you sell to each customer. I would suggest you use the same title for all products across all customers, this way, you need to only create a ticket automation rule only for the products you sell. When you create the billing batch, you will have the option to select the Contracts and generate invoices automatically.
Also, keep in mind that the Start date and the billing period of a contract dictate the date that you can bill your customers. For example, if you have the contract Start Date set as the 1st of August, and the Billing period as Monthly, you will be able to bill your customers only on the 1st of each month. Take that into account when creating the contract and ticket schedule.Important note: Please keep in mind that this is not fully tested, I did some tests and in some parts, it appears to be working. Please attempt to do a test first then see if it works for you.
I know that this is a tedious setup, but in the long run, if it works, it can save you quite some time.
In case I find other more suitable solutions, I will reply here.
Another thing, I will forward your scenario internally to our teams, maybe over time we can develop a more suitable solution.I would also be interested in learning how some of our customers deal with this. If anyone else in the community has a better suggestion or any feedback on this matter, please let me know.Hope it helps a bit.1 -
Good workaround, awful process. This will probably solve most people's issues, but atera really needs to focus on improving the billing portion of the product.
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Hello @Russ and @tanderson
It also might be possibile that you do not need a ticket for a retainer/flat fee contract to generate the invoice. I will test this and let you know. If this is the case, things can move faster
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@dragos.t I appreciate you taking the time to try and think through a temporary workaround for this.
So, following this process flow, I would need to create a new contract for every service for every customer. Also, I would need to schedule a ticket for every service for every customer. Then I would need to create an automation rule for every auto created ticket for every customer. Do I have that correct?
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Hello @Russ and @tanderson
I have done some more testing, and it looks like there were some changes to how the billing works, now you don't need to create a scheduled ticket and a ticket automation rule.
Simply create a Retainer/Flat fee contract with the Quantity and Rates and Save the contract. If you have multiple customers, you can clone the contract.
Then you have the option to go to Billing to create a new billing batch. There search for the contract we have just created. In my case, it is named "AV Product billing Test Russ".
Select the Invoice batch, and create it. Then you will have the invoice created automatically.
You will have to create a contract for each product that you provide to your customers. And for each customer, you can clone the contract.
The only issue that you might have is when you will have to change the quantity and rate on the contracts. That will be a manual process which needs to be done individually for each contract, on each customer.
Please do some tests on your end, and let me know if it works fine for you.
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Thanks! I hope that the ticketing system and billing will soon be able to better understand time and weight.
Here’s what I mean:
Client A has 30 billable hours included in their monthly contract. The ticketing system needs to account for the weight of these hours based on when the work is performed:
- 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.: 1 hour = 1 hour (x1) at $125/hour
- 5:01 p.m. to 7:59 a.m.: 1 hour = 1.5 hours (x1.5) at $187.50/hour
- Holidays and Sundays: 1 hour = 2 hours (x2) at $250/hour
The system should first exhaust the 30 included hours. Once these hours are exhausted, the ticketing system should then switch to monetary billing, continuing to track the hours worked, applying the appropriate weighting, and listing the additional billable hours at the respective hourly rates on the final invoice for the month.
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This would be much more useful for me than listing different services. Most services don't change much month to month, but knowing when and the weight of time would be much more helpful for billing.
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Hello @tanderson,
Thank you for the suggestion, I will forward this internally as a suggestion.
As always, I would also encourage you to add it to our features board, the votes/posts help our teams better understand the need and how many people wish for these new features.
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@dragos.t I was trying to test what you suggested here and see an issue…
If I create a new contract, the RATE dropdown only shows rates. However, once a contract is created and I go to edit it, the RATE dropdown seems to have both defined RATES and PRODUCTS in the list. I have a product called "RMM Workstation" and following your example here, I also created a rate called "RMM Workstation". Now there is a duplicate in the list. I'm guessing the rate dropdown should only contain rates, correct?
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Hello @Russ,
I am not entirely sure what the behavior should be here. Doing some tests on my end, it does appear that this is the case, however, it is a bit weird. I will do some more tests and raise a ticket if needed.
Thank you for letting me know Russ.
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@dragos.t Thank you for following up on this. "this behavior is expected"? How can that be? When you select RATE in one place, it contains rates, when you select RATE in another place, it contains rates+products. How can this be what is expected?!
Can you please explain how this is expected behavior? Thank you
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@dragos.t Ok, I set it up as suggested above. Today (being the 1st of a new month), I went to generate invoices. What I found was that the hourly contract gathered time as expected (i.e. only hours from tickets resolved last month but not this month). The RETAINER contract representing the static service charge though… It added the charge for both last month(as expected) AND THIS MONTH. I do not want to charge for this month. In August I want to bill for July..this is currently including August Retainer charges as well so it's doubled.
Can you advise on how I can modify the Retainer contract or switch to a different contract type if needed so I can just go in and create an Invoice Batch and not have to manually add/delete specific lines?
Thank you
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Hello @Russ,
Sorry for the delayed response, I recently got back from vacation.
"Thank you for following up on this. "this behavior is expected"? How can that be? When you select RATE in one place, it contains rates, when you select RATE in another place, it contains rates+products. How can this be what is expected?!
Can you please explain how this is expected behavior? Thank you"
Sure, this is how the feature has been designed from the beginning, meaning that we do expect these results at the moment. I do agree that this is indeed a bad UX and our teams are going to work on it in the future.
"Ok, I set it up as suggested above. Today (being the 1st of a new month), I went to generate invoices. What I found was that the hourly contract gathered time as expected (i.e. only hours from tickets resolved last month but not this month). The RETAINER contract represents the static service charge though… It added the charge for both last month(as expected) AND THIS MONTH. I do not want to charge for this month. In August I want to bill for July..this is currently including August Retainer charges as well so it's doubled.
Can you advise on how I can modify the Retainer contract or switch to a different contract type if needed so I can just go in and create an Invoice Batch and not have to manually add/delete specific lines?"
Regarding the retainer flat fee contacts. We allow customers to generate the invoices anytime they wish to do so. You are not obligated to generate the invoices for a month, you can simply leave the invoice there and generate it the next month for example
You can simply click on the button at the end of the Invoice batch and select to only charge for the month of July.
If you click on the checkbox next to the customer name, it will select all available invoices for that customer.
Please let me know if this fixes your issue that you are experiencing with the retainer flat fee contract.0 -
Long vacation…Nice. I hope you had fun.
Ok, I'll try that during my next Invoice cycle coming up soon and let you know how it goes. Thank you
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