Setting Up Your Billing
- All Apps
- Oct 25, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 15
Setting up your retainers, fixed/hourly/staff rates, and fixed fees is very important to ensure your billing / profitability reports work accurately and to enable you to generate accurate invoices based on time worked in DataGrows. Once set up, this will drastically reduce your billing time at the end of each month.
This post will guide you through the setup.
Setting Up Retainers, Fixed/Hourly Packages or a combination of the them.
Setting Up Staff Rates
Recoverable Expenses
Assign a Rate Group to a client and responsible party
1. Firm Settings
Start by going to Setup then Firm Settings
Click on the record showing My Company
Complete your company details (choose a firm short code of 4 letters)
Scroll down to System Settings and select your preferred time rounding for Staff rate and hourly billing.
Select your invoice preferences under Firm Invoice Details
2. Rate Groups Explained
Next, you want to set up your rate groups. Rate Groups form the basis of your billing. They enable you to set up various billing / retainer packages for your firm or unique billing criteria for each client.
DataGrows enables you to bill according to the following criteria:
Monthly Retainers
Fixed/hourly fees unique to each client or as part of packages for time worked in DataGrows
Staff Rates for time worked in DataGrows
A combination of the above.
Before we get started, please navigate to Setup-Billing and click on Rate Group.
There will be one record here titled Standard. You will use this record to indicate anything that has a standard fixed/hourly/Staff rate within your firm, regardless of the retainer or package that the client is on. If the tasks is added to any other retainer or package, that rate will be used, if not, it will default to the rate stipulated in your Standard Rate Group.
To set up the Standard Rate Group:
Please click on the record
Scroll to the right until you see Setup – Billing
Click on Rates and expand your screen by clicking on the vertical bar next to the input form.
This is a list of all the tasks currently offered in DataGrows. To view them all, make sure to set your rows per page to 200 in the bottom right corner.
To include any of the tasks as a standard rate, click on the record then change the Rate Type to Fixed, Hourly or Staff Rate.
Next, add an amount.
If you want the title on the invoice to differ from the task name, add an invoice description.
If you are integrated with Sage or Xero, please select an Invoice Code or Accounting System Code.
Save
For any tasks that are not billed at a standard rate, leave the Rate Type blank.
3. Setting Up Retainers, Fixed/Hourly Packages or a combination of them.
To set up a retainer or package, Click on ADD RECORD in the top right corner. You will need to create a Rate Group for each package or retainer. If you have a unique package for each of your clients, you will need to add a Rate Group for each of your clients and add the client’s name as the Rate Group name.
If you are setting up a retainer, please add a retainer amount, otherwise leave this field blank.
Add an invoice description if you want the title on the invoice to differ from the Rate Group title.
If you are integrated with Sage or Xero, please select an Invoice Code or Accounting System Code.
Click Save & Edit
Go to Setup – Billing in the top right
Click on rates
A full list of tasks will have been added for that rate group.
To view them all, make sure to set your rows per page to 200 in the bottom right corner.
To include any of the tasks in this Rate Group, please change the Rate Type to the option that best matches the billing for the specific task.
Rate Type:
Retainer
This will include the task in the retainer amount and no extra amount will be billed.
Hourly
This will bill hourly, based on time logged in DataGrows.
Fixed
This will bill at a fixed rate, based on time logged in DataGrows.
No Charge
This will not be included in the invoice.
Staff Rate
This will bill hourly according to the staff rate of the staff member that times on the task. We will explain where to set up Staff Rates later.
Next add an amount.
If you selected Retainer under Rate Type for this specific tasks but you would like a further breakdown of the retainer amounts on the invoice, you can add an amount here as well.
If you want the title on the invoice to differ from the task name, add an invoice description.
If you are integrated with Sage or Xero, please select an Invoice Code or Accounting System Code.
Save.
Do this for each task. You can have a combination of Retainer tasks, Fixed, Hourly, No Charge and Staff Rate tasks in the same rate group, the system will calculate the invoice accordingly.
If this feels too cumbersome to do in the app, please reach out to support@mydatagrows.com and we will help you to export the rates to an Excel file for easy upload.
4. Setting Up Staff Rates
If you bill based on staff rates, please go to the Staff Rate table.
Then click on ADD RECORD
Complete 1 input form for each staff member.
Click Save&New
Your rates have now been set up and you can start billing.
5. Recoverable Expenses
If you have expenses that you need to recover from the client, such as a Xero or Sage subscription. Please add them to the Recoverable Expenses table by clicking on ADD RECORD in the top right corner. They will be added to your invoices once generated.
6. Assign a Rate Group to a client and responsible party
To assign a Rate to a client, go to the Client table, click on the client and select the rate group from the dropdown.
If you want to make bulk updates to your client table, please email support@mydatagrows.com for assistance.
If the invoice needs to be made out to a different client, please select that client from the “Bill to” dropdown.
If you need any assistance with the above, please book a support call via this link.
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