Advances and Retainers in Project Operations

Below is how you can setup Advanced and Retainers – and what is this in simple terms?

Pre-Bill the Customer upfront.
Reconcile the Billing amount before the next Billing cycle.
If under-utilized or till the Amount, 0 is billed on.
If over-utilized, the overage is billed to the customer on the Invoice created on Contract.

Setup Contract for Retainer Schedule

On the Contract for a combination of T&M and Fixed Price Contract Line, here’s how I setup the Retainer Schedule –

Here are the Line Items on the Project Contract tied to the same project.
And on the Contract, you have Advanced and Retainers Setup already.
Here, you have the option to Setup the schedule.
When you click on Setup a retainer schedule, it’ll ask you to fill out the details. You can either select and End Date for the Retainer of no. of Retainer Invoices to be created.
But, the message isn’t shown till you realize it after you enter both.

And when I tried to enter this – it gave me an error.
So, I just kept the End Date
And it’ll create the Schedule for me.

Now, this is set.

Now, the Retainer Schedule is ready, let’s Invoice and confirm the Invoice –

I can select the Retainer line and click on Ready to Invoice.
Once this is ready, I can create the Invoice from the Contract.
Once the Invoice is created, you’ll see that the Advances and Retainers section shows the Invoiced line item.
Now, you confirm this Invoice.
Once the Invoice is confirmed, this amount is available to be used on the Contract.

Now, this amount is available for us to consume on the Project. Let’s pre-date the Time Entries to see how the Available Amount is consumed –

These are my time entries. And I’ll submit them.
The Project Approver approves them so that Actuals are created which can be made as Ready to Invoice.

Now, the Unbilled Sales will be made as Ready to Invoice.
Now, as usual – Invoice will be created without doing anything to the Contract Retainer setup.
Now, the Pro-forma Invoice will be created and the Amount is seen on the Line Items of what was Ready to Invoice but the Invoice amount itself will be 0.
If you scroll to the bottom of the Invoice, you’ll see the Balance remaining due to this Invoice.
Now, you confirm the Invoice.
And once the Invoice is Confirmed, the Used Amount on the Contract’s Retainer schedule will be updated.

If you over use the balance, the upcoming Invoice will have less amount to be billed based on what’s available.