Billing, rate cards, and time banks
Rate cards per client, billing policies that decide whether a kind of work is paid, free, or drawn from a retainer, and a billing run that turns a closed period into a client timesheet as PDF, HTML, and CSV.
The problem
Turning a month of work into something a client can be billed for is a day of work per month for many small firms: export the hours, apply the right rate per person, remember which agreement covers support, count what is left in the retainer, and assemble a document the client accepts. When the client disputes a line, there is no trail.
How SAQ solves it
The rules live with the client, not in someone's head. A rate card, a billing policy per kind of work, and time banks are configured once. When a period is closed, a billing run for one client and one period prices every eligible entry, draws from banks, records every allocation in an append-only structure, and renders the timesheet from that snapshot. Void a run and everything it did is reversed, visibly.
What you get
- Consultant categories
- A default per person, an override per project membership. Snapshotted on every time entry.
- Rate cards
- Hourly rate per category per client, effective-dated, in the client's currency. Project overrides beat the client card.
- Billing policy
- Kind → paid, free, or a named time bank. Set at workspace, client, project, or ticket level, resolved at the run. "Support draws from the retainer, bugs are free, development is paid" needs no code.
- Billing mode
- Per period (time and materials) or on close (deliverable billed when the ticket is done), per project with a per-ticket override.
- Time banks
- Recurring or prepaid, optional project scope, carry-forward cap, borrowing cap, overage charged or free, validity dates. Append-only ledger; the balance is always the sum of the rows.
- Rounding
- Per client: none, 6, 15, or 30 minutes, rounded up per entry at the run, with corrections rounded cumulatively so money is conserved.
- Billing run
- One client, one closed period, in order. Missing rates or descriptions block the run and are listed. Committed in one transaction; documents render from the committed snapshot. Voidable as a whole.
- Client timesheet
- Combined or per project, PDF, HTML, and CSV, numbered and immutable. Emailed from your workspace mailbox to designated billing recipients, and downloadable by billing contacts.
- Documents page
- Every produced artifact with checksum and delivery status, for the users allowed to see it.
Key benefits
- Month-end billing preparation in minutes per client
- Retainers you can explain to the client line by line
- Free work made visible, so the client sees what they got for nothing
- Rates and history that never change retroactively
- A timesheet in the client's language, without a document editor
Typical use cases
- Support retainer. The client has 10 hours a month, unused hours carry forward up to 5, support kinds draw from the bank, overage is charged at the rate card. The timesheet shows opening balance, credit, consumed, overage, and closing balance.
- Fixed-scope project with free bug fixing. The project overrides the client policy so bugs are free on this project only.
- Deliverable billed at completion. The project is in on-close mode; hours accumulate as work in progress, visible to the client as "not yet billed", and bill in the first run after the ticket closes.
Why this is simpler
SAQ stops where the accounting system starts. It does not do invoices or VAT, so it does not need an accounting integration to be useful. What it does, it does with the rigour of a ledger, because a client timesheet is a financial document even when the invoice is produced elsewhere.
FAQ
Billing questions
Does SAQ send invoices?
No. A billing run prices the time, applies time banks, and produces a client timesheet with charged, retainer-covered, and free hours. Invoicing, VAT, and accounting stay in your accounting system, which is where they belong. Invoice documents and accounting integrations are planned for a later version.
What is a time bank?
A pool of hours a client has bought or is entitled to per period, such as a support retainer. It is recurring (so many minutes every period, with optional carry-forward and borrowing) or prepaid (one pool consumed until empty). Billing policy decides which kinds of work draw from it, and the ledger is append-only, so balances can always be explained.
How are rates set?
Every workspace user has a consultant category (junior, consultant, senior, architect, or your own), which can be overridden per project. Every client has a rate card per category, effective-dated, with optional per-project overrides. The rate is resolved and stored when the run bills the entry, so later changes never rewrite history.
What does the client receive?
A timesheet per period, combined across projects or one per project, in the client's language, as PDF, HTML, and CSV. It lists charged hours by category with rate and amount, then ticket by ticket with the reviewed billing description, retainer-covered hours, free hours, the time bank balance, and work in progress not yet billed. Entry notes and raw ticket titles are never included.
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