From timesheet to paid invoice.
No spreadsheet in between. The money side of a consultancy is a chain: a budget was priced, time was logged against it, a schedule fell due, an invoice was raised, and one day it was paid. Bitmap holds every link of that chain as a record connected to the next, so finance sees what delivery sees, on the same day.
The problem with month-end
In most consultancies the money side runs on a lag. Delivery knows how a project is going; finance finds out at month-end, when somebody exports the timesheets, opens the proposal to remember what was agreed, and works out what can be invoiced. The invoice goes out a week or two after the work, the cash arrives a month after that, and the question "how much have we been paid for that we have not yet delivered?" is answered, if at all, from a spreadsheet only one person understands.
None of that is anybody's fault. The information needed to invoice lives in three systems and a person's head, and month-end is the first moment all of it is in one place.
Bitmap moves that moment to the day the project is set up. The payment schedule is written when the terms are agreed. Timesheets land against the same budgets the schedule was priced from. When a schedule falls due, the invoice is ready before anybody asks for it, and the deferred income position is a report rather than a reconciliation.
What Bitmap does about it
Not a finance system, and not a replacement for your accounts package. The part between delivery and the ledger that nobody else covers.
Up front
A payment schedule on every project
The deposit, the milestones or the monthly amount, with a raise date for each, written when the terms are agreed. A reminder goes out before each one is due, to the channel you choose.
On the day
Ready to Invoice
Due schedules gather in one place, grouped by client, with the amount already worked out. Raise one draft per client, adjust a line description or a date at raise time, and it is gone.
In Xero
Drafts raised there, status followed back
With Xero connected Bitmap creates the draft invoice in Xero against the right contact and account codes. Approval, payment, voiding and deletion come back through a webhook, with an hourly reconciliation for anything missed.
Without Xero
Manual invoicing that still connects
Raise the invoice in whatever you use today and record its number, date, due date and amount in Bitmap. The schedule, the project and the reports connect to it in exactly the same way.
Every day
Deferred income
What has been invoiced but not delivered, per project and for the business, today or at a date you choose. Released automatically when a project completes and its last activity is behind it.
For the accounts
Financial accounts and codes
Charge schedules to a financial account and invoice against the chart of accounts codes you expose from Xero. The finance team's view and the delivery team's view are the same records.
Everything that can be invoiced today, in one list.
Ready to Invoice is the payment schedules whose raise date has arrived, grouped by client. Each shows the project, the amount and the account it is charged to. Raise the invoice and the schedule is marked, the invoice exists and the reports move, in one action.
Every invoice, and where each one is.
Draft, sent, paid, overdue, voided: each invoice with its number, client, amount and dates, and the project it came from. An invoice voided or deleted in Xero is flagged here, and its schedules can be rolled back to Ready to Invoice so nothing falls through.
What you have been paid for and still owe.
The deferred income report is per project: revenue recognised, time funded at the budgeted day rate, time used, and the balance valued in money. Pick a date in the future and it reads the resource plan, so the quarter-end position reflects what is booked, not just what is done.
The schedule is the forecast.
Payment schedules across every project, with the raise date, the amount and whether each has been raised, are the revenue forecast for the months ahead. Nobody rebuilds it; it is what the projects already say.
What finance sees that it did not before
Deferred income, at any date
For each project Bitmap knows what has been invoiced, the day rate the budget was priced at, and the time logged and planned. From those it computes the time funded, the time used and the income still to be delivered, today or at any date you pick. The forward view reads the resource planner, so the figure for the end of next quarter reflects the plan and not just the past.
Revenue that follows the schedule
Payment schedules are charged to a financial account, and the chart of accounts codes you invoice against are exposed from Xero once. Finance sees the work the way the accounts see it, and delivery sees it the way the budgets do, and the two are the same records.
An invoice you can trace back to the day
Every invoice knows which payment schedule raised it, which project that belongs to, and which timesheet entries were logged against the budget behind it. "What was this for?" is a click, not an email thread.
Notifications along the way
Each step in the chain tells the people who need to know, in Slack or by email, without anybody writing the message.
A schedule is coming due
A reminder ahead of each raise date, so the account lead can check the work is where it should be before the invoice goes out.
An invoice is ready, raised or paid
One message when a schedule lands in Ready to Invoice, one when the invoice is raised, and one when Xero says it is paid.
A project is running out of time
When a budget's remaining time crosses the line you set, the project manager hears before the client does.
See month-end take an afternoon.
Start a free trial and set up one project with its payment schedule. Or book a demo and we will walk through the whole chain with your own numbers.