In services, your hours are your revenue. Yet in many firms they are still copied from a timesheet into an invoice at the end of the month. That takes days, and every handover is a chance for a missed or wrong line. If you want to link hours to invoicing, first decide what exactly gets linked.

Where it goes wrong in practice

The problems are almost always the same:

  • Hours are logged late or incompletely, so the invoice goes out weeks later.
  • The rate sits in the project system, the agreement in the contract and the invoice in the accounting package. Three sources, three versions.
  • Billable and non-billable are judged differently by the project lead and by finance.
  • A correction after the fact means retyping, or a credit note nobody can trace back to the project.

Three choices to make up front

1. What is the source of the hours? Pick one place where hours are recorded and derive everything from it. If projects and hours live in Salesforce, nothing has to cross a system boundary. If your team works in an external project tool, the integration itself becomes something you have to maintain.

2. How does an hour become an invoice line? Define which rate applies (per person, per role or per project), what is billable, and whether you invoice monthly, per milestone or for a fixed amount. Without those agreements you only automate your existing arguments.

3. Who may correct afterwards, and how? An approved timesheet that still changes is the rule, not the exception. Make sure a correction stays visible on the invoice and does not lead to a second, separate administration.

From hours to invoice in Salesforce

The Billing Platform creates invoices from Salesforce, as PDF and in your own branding. For service firms that means invoices based on hours, a fixed amount or contract terms come from the same environment as the projects and the customer relationship. For an example at an agency, see the Follo Agency case: invoices based on billable consultancy hours can be corrected afterwards through tailored invoice templates, without rebuilding the accounting records.

The industry page Salesforce for Professional Services describes how sales, delivery, time registration and invoicing come together in one process.

Then: on to the accounting system

An invoice is only finished once it is in the books. If you use Exact Online, Influx for Exact Online synchronises customers, invoices and payment statuses between Salesforce and your accounting. You set per object which data flows in which direction. Finance keeps the books, and sales sees in Salesforce which invoices are still open.

Start with the process, not the tool

The quickest win rarely comes from extra functionality. It comes from a clear agreement on source, rate and correction, and from removing the retyping between steps. Want to know what that looks like for your organisation? Get in touch and we will look together at your current route from hour to invoice.