Invoice the clients based on the staff’s time
In zistemo you have two ways of billing your clients based on the time your staff worked for them:

1. You can create an invoice based on the project (will include all the time your staff spent working on a specific project) (Time & Projects ➝ Projects ➝Click the box next to the needed project ➝ Click ‘Generate Invoice’ button):

2. Or you can add staff hours to the invoice during the invoice creation step. In order to do so, first, choose the client (Sales ➝ Invoices ➝ Create Invoice):

If this client has the projects with unbilled time, you will see a link to attach these hours to the invoice:

Then you can use an old or a new invoice wizard to generate the invoice view:

Note: zistemo will always save the last wizard settings and will show it by default next time when you use it.

The invoice wizard

To learn more about the invoice wizard click here

Invoice against a project balance (invoice the project partly)

If you would like to invoice the project partly, generate it as described in Invoicing projects by generating an invoice.
Then, on the invoice page, you can delete unwanted tasks. You will be able to invoice these tasks later by generating a new invoice.

Which staff members can generate the invoices from the projects?

Only the account owner and team leader can generate an invoice through the project.
The account owner can generate invoices for all projects without limitation.
Team leaders can generate an invoice only for projects where they are the managers.

The billing method of the project

When I generate an invoice the rate of the task on the invoice is $0 or incorrect. Why?

The rates of the tasks on the generated Invoice depends on the billing method of the project (Time&Projects -> Projects -> Create Project (or pick one to edit):

So, if you choose an ‘Hourly Task Rate’ method – rates will be based on the tasks rates.
You can change tasks rates on the project page.

If you choose the ‘Hourly Staff Rate’ method – rates will be based on the staff billing rates.
You can change these rates on the project page in the Staff field.

If you choose the ‘Hourly Project Rate’ method – rates will be based on the special project rate.
You can change this rate on the project page in the Project Rate field.

If you choose the ‘Flat Project Amount’ method – the invoice will not depend on any rates and tasks. The invoice amount will be a flat amount for the project.
You can add or change this rate on the project page in the ‘Flat Amount’ field.

The ability to change hours on generated invoices

By default, if you generate invoices based on the project timesheets, you cannot change the hours’ amount and price.

But you can enable this ability by going to Settings -> Preferences -> mark the checkbox “Allow editing for Invoices generated through the Invoice Wizard”:

Now you will be able to edit the number of hours and the prices.

Each time when you change it, zistemo adds an info message in the invoice history:

Unapproved hours in Invoice Wizard

If you are using the ‘Approve Timesheets’ feature (more here about it here), then the logged hours of staff members can be Approved or Unapproved.

For instance, if a staff member just logged time and didn’t send it for approval or if they did send it, but you (as account owner or admin) didn’t confirm it yet, these hours cannot be billed (cannot be included in the invoice).

In case this happens, you will see this information in the Invoice Wizard.

Next, you can go to the Timesheets page and approve them or keep as it is, to invoice only already approved hours.

Generate Invoice by using Inovice Wizard

You can generate an invoice from all the timesheets related to one project or one client by simply using the Invoice Wizard.
Just go to the projects’ list (Time&Projects -> Projects) – click the checkbox to choose one project and click ‘Generate Invoice’.

Also, you can click on the Project name and press the ‘Generate Invoice’ button through the project dashboard.

Client

In the first drop-down field, you can pick the client that should be invoiced:

Use the new invoice wizard

If it’s switched on (green), then you can group time entries logged to the timesheet by using the ‘long’, ‘medium’, ‘short ’or ‘sections’ format read (more about it below). We recommend to use the new invoice wizard.

If it’s switched off (gray), this tool doesn’t group the information and your invoice will include all time entries logged to the timesheet:

Limitations

You can choose all the time logged to timesheet or filter the time logged by selecting a specific date range:

Also, you can pick only the time logged on some tasks:

Projects

Here you can choose one, several or all the projects related to a client – its’ logged time will be included on the invoice:

Invoice Format

Here you can see three options ‘Long’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Short’. Regarding to the selected format it changes the data view on your actual invoice. You will see real invoice data on the invoice wizard to get a 100% true preview about how your data looks on the actual invoice.

Long Invoice Format

Choose the ‘Long’ format if you want to see each time entries displayed as separate lines items (without grouping).
Here you can also uncheck Project Name (incl. Project Number), Team Member and Notes if you don’t want to have this information on the invoice. See the sample shown below how the invoice will look like. You will see real data from your project.

Medium Invoice Format

Choose the ‘Medium’ format if you want to show time entries grouped by task.
Also, you can uncheck Task Name, Project Name (incl. Project Number), Team Member and Date Range. When you uncheck e.g. Team Member, then all the time logged by any members to one project and task will be grouped in one line. The same happens if you uncheck Project Name (all the time logged by one member to one task will be grouped, regardless of the project it belongs to) or ‘Task Name’ (all time logged by one member to one project will be grouped, regardless of the tasks).

Short

Choose the ‘Short’ format if you want to have only one summary line per project – all time entries logged to one project will be grouped in one line. That means also, if you having several prices per task or stadd, it calculates the average price, so you won’t see the price you set up in the project. Sometimes, a rounding problems could occur calculating the average price making it appear different from the exact rates you originally entered. In that case it puts automatically as quantitiy and unit “1 Project”. It’s a simplified view that avoids showing multiple lines while keeping the total amount correct.

You can uncheck the Date range only. Recommended if you have to handle small projects which don’t include many tasks.

Sections

Choose the ‘sections’ format which helps you to group time entries by project and their sections.
Note: You have the ability to attach the Asana time entries to the invoice only with sections name (without the project name). In case your client requests more details, you can instantly
create a full time-sheet report and attach it as PDF to your invoice.

Detailed time entries information (Timesheet Details Report) attached to the Invoice

If you wish you can attach the Timesheet Details Report with the detailed information about all time entries logged to your invoice  by all staff members to all projects (which are chosen on the wizard page) – just check ‘Attach a detailed timesheet report’

In this case, you will have this report as a PDF attachment to the generated invoice.
This feature is especially helpful if you don’t want to have all time entries featured in invoice item table (if you group this information and only display a summary) but your client needs the detailed timesheet report. After clicking ‘Generate’ on the Invoice Wizard, you will see this report attachment below the invoice items table:

Or below the invoice document on Invoice Preview page:

Just click this green link to open and review the timesheet report.