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Bills & Invoicing ​

Transform your team's tracked time into professional invoices that generate revenue.

Overview ​

The Bills section is where your team's work becomes revenue. This is the critical junction where hours tracked in timesheets and approved by managers transform into invoices that get sent to clients and generate payment. The billing workflow in Hidma gives you complete control over what gets invoiced, how it's presented, and when it goes out the door.

You can convert tracked time into invoices with just a few clicks, pulling in approved hours and applying your configured charge-out rates automatically. Beyond just time-based billing, you can add custom charges for expenses, fixed fees, or one-time costs, and apply discounts when appropriate. The system manages your entire billing workflow from draft creation through sending professional invoices to clients, and then tracking payment status so you always know what's outstanding, what's partially paid, and what's been fully settled. This end-to-end billing management means you're not juggling spreadsheets or multiple systems - everything happens in one place with clear audit trails.

Essential Guides ​

Advanced Features ​

Integrations ​

Managing Bills ​

The Billing Page at a Glance ​

The Billing page is organised into four dedicated tabs so you can focus on one stage of the workflow at a time without waiting for a single long page to load:

  • Ready for Billing - Clients and projects with unbilled work, budget, and recoverability indicators
  • Bills - All bills, including Recurring Bill Setups and the instances they generate
  • Receipts - Payments received against bills
  • Credit Notes - Credit notes issued against bills

Within the Bills tab, three chips let you switch between All, one-off Bills, and Recurring Bills (the setups that produce bills on a schedule - see Recurring Bills).

Advanced Filtering ​

Bills can be narrowed down by:

  • Organisation - When your tenant hosts multiple organisations
  • Team - Focus on a specific team's work
  • Bill Type - One-off bills or Recurring Bills
  • Status - Draft, Outstanding, Settled, Cancelled, etc.
  • Date Range - Any custom period

The search box at the top of the Bills list now looks for matches across:

  • Text inside bill rows (titles and descriptions)
  • Recurring bill titles
  • Allocated job names
  • Project names

So if you remember only a phrase from a line item - or the job you closed off against a bill - you can still find the bill without knowing its bill number.

Billing Workflow ​

Standard Process ​

The standard billing workflow moves through six connected stages. It starts with your team tracking time - logging hours against projects and jobs throughout their work week. Once the week is complete, managers approve timesheets, verifying that the hours are accurate and appropriately categorized. These approved hours then become available for billing.

When you're ready to invoice, you create a bill by selecting the client and project, which surfaces all the approved, unbilled hours waiting to be invoiced. Hidma automatically applies the appropriate charge-out rates and generates a preview showing exactly what the invoice will look like. You review this preview carefully, checking that line items make sense, descriptions are clear, and the total aligns with expectations. Once satisfied, you send the invoice - either emailing it directly to the client from Hidma or exporting it as a PDF for your own delivery method.

After the invoice goes out, you track its lifecycle. When the client pays, you record the payment in Hidma, which updates the bill status and reduces the client's outstanding balance. This complete workflow - from time tracking through payment recording - gives you visibility and control at every stage, ensuring accuracy and preventing revenue leakage.

Common Billing Scenarios ​

Time & Materials Billing ​

Time and materials billing is the most straightforward approach: you bill clients for the actual hours your team worked, multiplied by agreed-upon hourly rates. This model fits naturally with Hidma's core workflow. Your team logs time throughout the project, managers approve it, and you create bills pulling in all approved hours for a given period. Hidma applies the charge-out rates you've configured for each user or role, calculates the amounts automatically, and generates the invoice. This approach provides complete transparency to clients about what work was done and how much time it took, which builds trust while ensuring you're compensated for all effort expended.

Creating Bills from All Hours

Selective Billing ​

Sometimes you can't or don't want to bill all tracked hours. Perhaps the client has a budget cap and you need to stay within it. Maybe some team members' time should be excluded, or certain types of work were explicitly agreed to be non-billable. For these situations, selective billing lets you cherry-pick exactly which hours to include on the invoice. You can filter by team member, by job type, or by specific date ranges, selecting precisely what goes on the bill and leaving the rest for future billing or writing off entirely. This granular control ensures you're billing appropriately while maintaining accurate records of all work performed.

Cherry Pick User Hours

Fixed Fee + Extras ​

Fixed fee billing involves charging an agreed-upon amount regardless of how many hours were actually worked. But projects rarely consist purely of the fixed fee - there are usually extras like out-of-pocket expenses, additional services beyond scope, or one-time charges that need to be added. Hidma handles this by letting you create bills with custom charges that aren't derived from time tracking. Add your fixed fee as a line item, then add additional charges for reimbursable expenses or extras. You can also apply discounts when appropriate, giving you complete flexibility to structure invoices that match your agreements with clients while maintaining clear documentation of all components.

Creating Bills with Custom Charges

Video Tutorials ​

Watch and Learn

  • 🎥 Cherry Pick User Hours - Select specific hours for billing
  • 🎥 Specify Hours to Add - Manually enter hours to bill
  • 🎥 Grouping Items into One Bill Row - Consolidate line items
  • 🎥 Creating Percentage Discounts or Charges - Add adjustments
  • 🎥 Document Templates Walkthrough - Customize invoices
  • 🎥 Download Bill Contents as CSV - Export billing data
  • 🎥 Closing Hours Against Bills - Mark hours as billed
  • 🎥 Closing Off Time Against Finalized Bills - Allocate hours to settled bills
  • 🎥 Canceling a Bill - Void an invoice
  • 🎥 Managing Time and Charge Allocations - Adjust allocations on bill rows at any stage
  • 🎥 Recurring Bills - Automate whole bills on a schedule with smart placeholders and Xero push
  • 🎥 Copying & Duplicating Bills - Reuse an existing bill as the starting point for a new one

Tips for Effective Billing ​

Pro Tips

Regular Billing Consistency in billing frequency matters more than most people realize. Whether you bill weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, sticking to a predictable schedule dramatically improves cash flow. Clients come to expect your invoices at regular intervals and can budget accordingly, payment cycles become more predictable, and you avoid the feast-or-famine pattern where you go weeks without billing and then send out massive invoices all at once. Pick a frequency that matches your projects and stick to it religiously.

Clear Descriptions The line item descriptions on your invoices do real work. When a client receives an invoice and can immediately understand what they're paying for, approval and payment happen faster. Vague descriptions like "Professional Services - 40 hours" force clients to come back with questions, delaying payment and creating friction. Specific descriptions like "Financial statement preparation for Q3" or "Tax research for asset restructuring" give clients confidence that they're being billed appropriately. Take the extra thirty seconds per line item to write clear descriptions.

Review Before Sending The preview feature exists for a reason - use it every single time before sending an invoice. Check that line items make sense, verify that charge-out rates applied correctly, ensure client contact information is current, and scan for any obvious errors or omissions. Catching mistakes at the preview stage takes seconds. Catching them after the invoice went out requires embarrassing corrections, possible credit notes, and damaged client confidence. Make preview review a non-negotiable step in your billing process.

Use Templates Document templates that standardize your invoice formatting save enormous time once you've set them up. Define your branding - logo, colors, fonts - once in a template, configure which fields display and how they're formatted, and then every invoice you generate automatically looks professional and consistent. Templates also reduce errors since the structure is standardized, and they make your firm look more professional to clients who receive consistently formatted invoices rather than ones that vary randomly each time.

Track Unbilled Hours Work-in-progress (unbilled hours) represents completed work that hasn't been invoiced yet. This is revenue you've earned but haven't collected, and letting it accumulate unchecked creates problems. Large WIP balances tie up cash flow, increase the risk of writeoffs if client relationships sour, and make it harder to understand true project profitability. Monitor your WIP regularly - weekly is ideal - and investigate when it starts growing beyond normal levels. Ask yourself why work isn't being billed promptly and address the root cause.

Common Questions ​

Q: Can I edit a bill after creating it? A: Yes. You can adjust time or charges allocated to any bill row at any stage of the billing lifecycle—from draft to fully settled—by clicking the Time Icon on the row. For structural changes after a bill has been sent, you may need to create a credit note.

Q: What if I billed the wrong hours? A: You can cancel the bill and create a new one with the correct hours.

Q: Can I combine multiple projects on one bill? A: Yes, you can add line items from different projects to a single invoice.

Q: How do I handle discounts? A: Use the discounts and charges feature to add percentage or fixed amount adjustments.

Next Steps ​

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