Status: LIVE

Customer Invoicing Protocol

Standard procedure

1. The PM informs HoF (and HoP), by sending them a note of the deliverables [1] to be invoiced. The PM does this when a new project is accepted by the Product Team, right after the hand over from the sales team. Also communicate this information to the AL if that's a different person to the PM. How to create an invoice starting in Productive is found under this link.

2. When a milestone is reached, the PM gives a signal to HoF that it should be invoiced, along with key information [2]. A milestone can either be a proper milestone for fixed price projects, or it can be a period of work for T&M projects. Also for deposit payments. HoF doesn't invoice anything until a signal comes from the PM.

3. HoF prepares an invoice and sends to PM for approval.

4. Once approved by the PM, HoF sends the invoice to the customer. If it's via email, add the PM in CC.

5. HoF notifies PM when an invoice is paid.

Formalities to observe

• [1] Information to be included on each deliverable:

  1. Who our responsible AL and PM are.

  2. Who the customer is.

  3. Customer’s currency preference: EUR/GBP/USD. This implies which bank will be on the payment instructions on the invoice: Erste/Revolut/Transferwise.

  4. The due dates for invoices.

  5. Amounts.

  6. Method of invoice delivery, including addressee.

  7. Customer PO (purchase order), or similar designations that the customer may have requested to be included with our invoices, if any.

  8. What the payment milestones are and based on the project timeline when these are expected to be invoiceable.

  9. The cost centre for accounting purposes for the project.

• [2] Key information to be included in each “invoicing signal”:

  1. Amount

  2. (in case of T&M projects) a report of the hours to invoice. Which is suitable for forwarding to the client. This should also be stored in Drive. Suitable means:

     1. Reasonably well documented worklogs. No need to write a description on each worklog, just apply some common sense, the litmus test is “can the client understand what we did here?”.

     2. No profanity, jokes & co. in the worklog descriptions.

     3. In a language that the customer understands.

  3. The Payment Target for the invoice (e.g. net-7)

  4. Line item(s) for the invoice.

  5. Date of Performance (Leistungszeitraum). For T&M projects, this has to be exactly correct with respect to the hours being invoiced. You can’t write “August” and then include hours from September.

• This procedure applies to all invoices regardless of type: milestone, T&M, deposit, maintenance, final payment, recurring billing, etc. They must all be issued by the HoP and checked by the PM of that project.

• If an invoice becomes overdue, we follow the Late Payments Protocol

• When the PM realises that payment milestones change for a project (either amount or date) then PM should immediately update HoF with the new information.

• If HoF doesn't get an "invoice is ready to send" send signal, but expected a project to reach a milestone, then HoF should follow up with HoP for clarification.

• Date of Performance (Leistungszeitraum) should be exactly correct on the invoices. There's no law against writing date of performance on the invoices as say 01/08 until 12/09.