Project Allowance Billing

Allowances let you do "time and materials" billing for some items, in a project that otherwise uses draw schedule or progress payment billing. Allowance billing is the way you will settle up for the difference between the original allowance amount, and the actual costs for the allowanced work.

HINT-- Allowance billing is a very useful part of the Goldenseal project billing software and project management software.

When to use Allowance Billing

Use allowance billing to "settle up" for allowanced items from an estimate. The allowance bill is for the difference between the original allowance amount and actual costs. It may be for a positive or negative amount, depending on the actual expenses for the allowanced item.

HINT-- An allowance lets you do some items as "time and materials" within a fixed-price project.

Allowance Billing Setup

Follow these steps to set up for allowance billing:

Create a Customer account for the person or business who is paying you for the work.
Create an Allowance for the work that you'll handle with an allowance.
Create an Estimate that describes the work you'll do. Use an item breakdown, and include the allowance as a line item in the estimate breakdown.
When you start work, create a Project account, and enter the estimate into the Estimate field.

Entering Allowance Costs

After you start work, enter your costs into Goldenseal so you can bill for them. For example, to enter employee hours for a project allowance, follow these steps:

Choose Labor Hours from the Costs menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the employee, the hours, and other details about the work.
Enter Project into the Job Class popup field.
Enter the project into the Job field.
Click in the Applies to popup field, and enter Allowance.
Click in the Transaction field, and enter the Allowance.

Creating Allowance Bills

To create bills for several sets of project allowances, follow these steps:

Choose Billing from the Bank menu, and choose Allowances from the submenu.
Double-click on each project with completed allowances.
Turn on the ones that are ready to bill now, then click OK.
When you are finished selecting Allowances, click the Create Bills button.
Goldenseal will create Billing Records with an Allowance breakdown.

Allowance Billing Records

After you use the Allowance billing command, Goldenseal will create a Billing Record for each allowance. Choose Billing Records from the Bank menu, to see them.

The Goldenseal accounting software shows the following information in each column of an allowance billing record:

Bill-- Turn on the checkmark to bill for this item now.
Allowance-- Goldenseal lists each allowance for this project.
Base Amount-- Goldenseal lists the base amount for each allowance.
Calculation-- Goldenseal lists the calculation method for each allowance.

Material Cost-- Goldenseal lists the total of all material costs for this allowance.
HINT-- This amount is the total of all Material Purchases that have this allowance in the Apply To fields.

Other Cost-- Goldenseal lists the total of all non-material costs for this allowance.
HINT-- This amount is the total of all Equipment Hours, Labor Hours, Subcontractor Costs and Other Costs that have this allowance in the Apply To fields.

Previous-- Goldenseal lists the amount of any previous allowance billing.
Current-- Goldenseal shows the amount that has been completed in this bill.
Bill Now-- Goldenseal shows the amount that you are billing for in this bill.