Allocating time and external costs to existing invoices

If you're not using time billing, you can link time entries, bills, and expenses to existing invoices to track which work and external costs are already covered by those invoices. By linking time entries and costs to your existing invoices, you can write them off as billed, making your billed time reporting more accurate.

1. Plan availability and add-ons

The time and external cost allocation feature is available as follows:

• Current plans:
  • Included by default in the Enterprise plan.
  • Available as a paid add-on in the Core, Growth, and Performance plans.
• Legacy plans:
  • Included by default in the Ultimate plan.
  • Available as a paid add-on in the Essential, Standard, and Pro plans.

Learn more about managing add-ons and our Plans & Pricing. 

2. Managing time and external cost allocation permissions

To use the time and external cost allocation feature on your site, your site admin must do the following:

1. First, ensure this feature is included in your plan or added as an add-on.
2. Then, grant the time and cost allocation right to specific permission sets by enabling the "Link time entries, bills, and expenses to existing invoices" permission. All users assigned to these permission sets will then be able to link and unlink time and external costs to existing invoices.

Learn more about managing permission sets.

3. Linking time entries, bills, and expenses to an invoice

To link the time entries, bills, and expenses to an existing invoice on your site:

1. Open the project whose time and external costs you want to allocate and navigate to the Time tab.
2. Select the time entries you want to allocate by ticking the checkboxes next to them.
   • If you’re using activity confirmation on your site, you’ll need to confirm the time entries before you can link them to an invoice. 
3. Click the Link to invoice button.
4. Select the invoice from the dropdown field.
5. If you wish to also allocate bills and expenses to that invoice, enable the Include bills and expenses toggle. This will redirect you to the additional cost screen, where you can tick the checkboxes for the bills and expenses you want to allocate to this invoice.
6. Click the confirmation button to finish the linking.

After you’ve linked the items to the invoice, they're updated accordingly in various views in Scoro:

• In the invoice detailed view, the linked items will appear under the Allocated time entries, Allocated bills, and Allocated expenses sections accordingly.
• In the Time tab in the project detailed view, the linked time entries are marked as Billed, represented by the green billing icon.
• In the bill and expense lists, the linked bills and expenses are marked as Charged in the respective list view. Hover over the invoice icon to view the invoice number, or click on it to open the invoice detailed view.

4. Unlinking the allocated time entries, bills, or expenses

To unlink the time entries, bills, and expenses you allocated to an invoice:

1. Open the detailed view of the invoice you allocated the items to and scroll down to the Allocated time entries, Allocated bills, or Allocated expenses section (depending on what items you want to unlink).
2. Tick the checkbox on the left of the time entries, bills, or expenses you’d like to unlink. Alternatively, you can tick the very top checkbox to select all items in that section.
3. An additional bar with bulk actions will appear – click the Unlink from invoice button.

Once unlinked, the items revert to their previous state before allocation: time entries are marked 'Unbilled', and the status of bills and expenses reverts to the previous state.

5. Frequently asked questions

Can I allocate the bills and expenses directly to an existing invoice without linking the time entries?

At the moment, you can only link bills and expenses to an existing invoice while linking time entries.