Invoicing is a crucial aspect of any business operation, and it's necessary to ensure timely and accurate billing for services rendered. Connecteam's scheduling and time-tracking capabilities are great tools to help you generate invoices to bill your clients.
In this article, we’ll go over the steps for how to do invoicing with Connecteam’s features:
Each industry has its unique invoicing requirements, so setting up the schedule should align with the specific needs and preferences of both your business and your clients/customers. For example, field services may charge clients based on the time spent on-site by technicians while the homecare agency may invoice clients based on the number of hours of care provided by caregivers.
👟 Step 1: Set up your Time Clock and Job Scheduler
Setting up your time clock and job scheduler are the first steps to take in order to make sure you can gather all the relevant information to generate invoices. If you are tracking time with Connecteam’s time clock, make sure to sync the Job Scheduler and Time Clock. This will allow users to clock in and out of the job attached to their shift. You can also set time clock limitations so that users’ hours remain close to their scheduled shift hours.
⏱️ Time Clock
If you are tracking time with Connecteam, make sure to customize your time clock settings to suit your business's payroll requirements.
Adding shift attachments is a great way to add additional information to your employees' working hours. They're information pieces that users are asked to add to their shift time. These could be the equipment or material that was used while on the job, mileage covered, or any other information you need to bill your clients for.
🗓️ Job Scheduler
The Job Scheduler is where you will plan and dispatch shifts for your users. Adjust the settings to suit your scheduling requirements first.
If you are not tracking time with Connecteam’s time clock, you can use the ‘check-in’ and ‘completed’ features instead to track the length of time it takes to get a job done. If you're unable to turn this setting on, it's because your time clock and job scheduler are already synced.
💼 Step 2: Add jobs
Jobs are useful for identifying the job that needs to get done and are also used for time tracking: users can clock in and out of this job in the time clock, giving their working hours an association with a specific job. When adding a job, you can add a description, location, and qualify select users or smart groups. This means that only users who are qualified will be able to clock into this job.
Jobs can signify different things depending on how you run your business. Jobs may represent roles such as manager/waiter/hostess/cook. These may be customers, or job types, such as cleaning, roofing, or delivery. They can be worksites or projects. If your company has consistent clients, they can get added as jobs.
👩💻 Step 3: Add shifts
Now that you have added users and jobs to the schedule, you can start filling up your schedule with shifts. Learn more about adding shifts here.
For invoicing purposes, including essential information on each shift ensures accurate billing and transparency with clients. Here are some key details to include:
Client Information: Clearly state the client's name, contact details, and any specific billing instructions or reference numbers provided by the client.
Date and Time: Specify the date and duration of the shift, including start and end times. This helps clients understand when services were rendered and for how long.
Service Details: Provide a description of the services necessary to perform during the shift and add a method to track completion. In Connecteam, completed tasks can be tracked using shift tasks (link) or by attaching a checklist or form to the shift (link to shortcuts). The employee can add additional shift notes if necessary to account for any additional services provided.
Employee Details: Assigning a user to the list is important to identify the employee(s) who worked the shift. This helps clients track who performed the services and may be important for their own records.
Additional Notes: Include any relevant notes or comments, such as special instructions from the client or details about ongoing projects that may impact future invoicing.
If your clients (i.e. jobs) vary, we would recommend adding the client’s name as the shift title rather than adding a separate job for each client name. The most important thing is to ensure consistency, so that you have an easier time grabbing the data you need at the end for invoicing. Therefore, if you choose to add the client name as a shift title, we would recommend to copy and paste the client name into each shift, or use your saved history to repeat the client’s name.
A way to keep a record of repeating clients so that you can re-use the name is by saving them as schedule templates.
👷 Step 4: Start working!
As your users depart for their shifts, encourage them to clock in or check in when they start working on a job, which they can easily do through their mobile app. As your team works, their hours are automatically recorded in the system. This will provide accurate data for invoicing purposes. You can send them this tutorial for the time clock and this tutorial for the job scheduler.
This is how it'll look when users check into a shift for example:
🗒️ Step 5: Pull data for invoicing
Once the job is completed or at regular intervals, pull the data you need for invoicing. This can be done using the Time Clock's Job Insights and with the Job Scheduler's List View.
Using Job Insights
Job Insights shows you which employee worked which job, and the total amount of time actually spent on the job. This information can be exported and sent to clients. You can also download your users' working hours by using the time clock’s timesheet export options. Keep in mind that Job Insights shows you an allocation of resources by user or by job name only.
Learn more about using Job Insights here.
Using the List View
The List View allows you to see shift information from the schedule, but separated into an exportable list.
The List View shows you the planned hours for each job, however if you enable the check in and completed options, you can also see how long the user was on shift and view a comparison between the total hours worked and total planned hours:
Export this information by clicking on Export. This will download an Excel spreadsheet which you can use to generate the invoicing and share with your clients.
Learn more about using the List View here.
💡 Tip: By default, the list view will show you all shifts (draft and published, assigned and unassigned). Filter to only see the types of shifts you need, for example, only published shifts with assigned users.
Related Articles
Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question.