Working with Progress Billing

For long-term projects or larger orders, you can use progress billing, sending invoices for portions of the work as milestones are achieved. Progress billing records generate deposit invoices for the customer. When you open a progress billing invoice, it credits a deposit on the General Ledger. The final invoice issued serves as the revenue-recognition invoice, reversing the existing deposits.

Invoices generated from progress billing records are not linked to shipments. In other words, if you first create an invoice using progress billing, then ship a shipment, aACE will not auto-generate an invoice for that shipment. This applies even if your system is configured with the 'Auto-generate invoices on shipment' preference. (Note: If you ship a shipment before creating a progress billing record, aACE will auto-generate a regular invoice.)

Accessing Progress Billing

You can access progress billing from either the Projects or Orders module. This guide uses Orders as an example.

1. Navigate from Main Menu > Order Management > Orders. 
2. At the detail view, click Management tab > Invoicing tab > Progress Billing tab.

Creating Invoices with Progress Billing

Manually

1. At the Progress Billing portal, specify the invoice date, then enter the title, description, and item description, as needed.
2. Enter the dollar amount or the percentage of the total order that the invoice covers in the Amount or Percent field.
3. Click the Create link.
   aACE generates the progress billing invoice, with the DEPOSIT line item code showing the amount or percentage you specified.

Automatically with Automation Schedules

You can enter data for multiple progress billing records, then let aACE process them at the correct times. When the 'Auto-Generate Progress Billing Invoices' automation schedule runs, it checks open orders and projects for progress billing records that have the current date. For these records, it auto-generates the deposit invoice.

Your system administrator can configure this automation schedule to run at the best times for your organization.

Completing a Progress Billing

When the project or order is at completion (whether or not the entire payment has been covered by progress billing invoices), you can generate the revenue-recognition invoice from the Progress Billing section by clicking the link to Create Final Invoice.