Every number an invoice needs is already in Ceum by the time you sit down to write one: which client the work was for, which tasks you did, how long each took, and what you charge per hour. This is how to have Ceum assemble them for you instead of retyping them.
There are two ways in — from the task list and from the time tracker — and they end in the same place: the new-invoice form, already filled in.
Before you start
One rule governs the whole thing: a task is billable through a project that has a client. Ceum finds the client by following the task to its projects and the projects to their clients. A task in no project, or only in projects with no client, has nobody to bill and will be left out.
The rate works the same way, from the most specific level upwards: the project's hourly rate, or failing that the client's, or failing that the default on your brand and billing info. If no level sets one, the line arrives with the price blank for you to type.
From the task list
Open Tasks, tick the tasks you want to bill, and choose the invoice action in the toolbar that appears above the table.
If every selected task belongs to one client and none had to be left out, you go straight to the invoice form. Otherwise a dialog opens first.
The action is dimmed when nothing in the selection can be billed at all; hover it and it tells you why.
Like every other way of creating an invoice, this one counts against your plan's invoice limit. At the limit the action greys out and the click takes you to your plan instead of the form.
The dialog
The dialog exists to make one decision — which client to bill — and to show you what will and will not appear on the invoice.
- Bill to picks the client. Only clients your selection actually reaches are offered. Changing it re-sorts the rows.
- Every selected row is listed, including the ones that will be left off. Those are greyed out with the reason written next to them: no client, no task, or belongs to another client. Nothing disappears quietly.
- The summary at the bottom counts the lines that will be created, their total hours, and — when every line has a price — what the invoice will come to. If any line still needs a price from you, no total is shown rather than one that is about to change.
From the time tracker
Open Time tracker, tick the entries you want to bill, and use the same invoice action.
One difference: entries are grouped by their task. Ten entries against three tasks become three invoice lines, each with its hours added up — an invoice line bills a piece of work, not a stopwatch reading. That is also why an entry linked to no task cannot be billed: with no task, there is no client to bill it to.
If an entry is linked to more than one task, its full duration counts towards each of them. That is deliberate — it is the same arithmetic the per-task totals elsewhere in Ceum use — but it means the lines can add up to more hours than you actually sat there. Check the dialog's per-row hours before confirming.
What the form is filled in with
- Client, with its email and address copied in, exactly as picking the client by hand would.
- Project, but only when every billed line shares one. A selection spanning several of a client's projects leaves it empty, which is correct — the invoice is not about one project.
- Currency, resolved once for the whole invoice through the same project → client → brand chain.
- One line per task, with the task name as the description, the tracked hours as the quantity, your resolved rate as the unit price, and the amount as the two multiplied. Each line keeps its link to the task it came from.
A task with no tracked time arrives at a quantity of 1 and no hours, ready for you to put your own numbers in. So this works for fixed-price work too: select the tasks, get a line each, type the amounts.
What you still have to fill in
The invoice number — Ceum does not number invoices for you, because numbering is an accounting decision that differs by country and by habit. The form opens with the cursor in that field for exactly this reason. Check the due date too; it defaults to today.
One thing to watch
Changing the client or the project on the form afterwards clears the task links on every line — those tasks belonged to the old client's projects, so keeping them would be wrong. Re-picking the same client or project changes nothing and is safe. If you do need to switch, it is quicker to go back and start from the right selection.
Where to go next
From tracked work to a paid invoice picks the story up from here: branding the invoice, sending it, and marking it paid.