Recurring Debt/Credits and Automated Invoicing

Studiometry has the ability to automatically create billable items and also automatically generate invoices for projects. Together, you can have automatically generated billing cycles.

I. Recurring Debt/Credits

Items that should be periodically billed for on set intervals (such as monthly server fees, equipment rentals, etc) can be created in Studiometry as recurring Debt/Credits. You can set up the amount, time interval, work type, and various other fields that will be automatically populated with the item actually recurs. 

To create a recurring item for a project:

1. Select the project in Studiometry’s main window, and navigate to the Work & Expenses section.
2. Click the gray plus (+) button underneath the work list to create a new work item
3. In the window that appears, select Recurring from the Type popup menu. You can create other types of recurring work items as well, but this is Studiometry’s default recurring type.
4. While still within this window, you can set the period (monthly, yearly, etc), the creation type (the Debt/Credit type that the recurred item will be created as), and the amount and beginning dates.
5. Press OK and you will see that the recurring item has been added to the work list and will have a recurring icon next to it.

This is a "placeholder" to show that there is a recurring item on the project. The recurring item itself is not a billable item, it simply remains on the project and then creates billable items when it recurs. 

Studiometry periodically checks all recurring items to see if they should "recur" to create a billable item. If a recurring item is schedule to recur, a new billable item will be created with the entered amount and description and be given the selected creation type from step 4 above. 

You can see below the expense item that was created on the project automatically. 

In this example, each month the Recurring item will create a new, billable expense item on the project based on its settings. 

 II. Automated Invoicing

Studiometry can also automatically generate invoices for your projects. To do this, you can create one or more Invoice Schedules that will create invoices for projects that have unbilled work and match the customizable criteria you set in the schedule.

To create a new invoice schedule:

1. Select Window Menu > Invoice Management Window
2. In the window that appears, go to the Automated Invoicing tab
3. Click the plus (+) button in the bottom right of the window
4. Enter a Schedule name, period, and start date
5. You can then filter which projects will be automatically invoiced in the bottom half of the window. If you select All Projects, any project with unbilled work will be included. You can also filter by project status or category, or simply select specific projects.
6. Once you've set up the filters and dates, press OK to save the schedule

Now that you're back in the Automated Invoicing tab of the Invoice Management Window, you can see all of your invoice schedules and enable/disable them using the checkbox on the leftmost column.

Studiometry will periodically check if invoices need to be automatically created, but remember that for an invoice to be automatically created, a project must match the following criteria:

• The project must be Live.
• The project must have billable work that has not been added to an invoice. Recurring items (the "placeholders" from above), active timers, estimated items, etc do not qualify as billable.
• The project must match any filters set for the invoice schedule.

 When an automated invoice is created, Studiometry will create a notification to let you know where the invoice was created and the amount of the invoice.