Introduction

The Invoices space is the project’s accounting hub. This is where we:

• summarise the production costs and disbursements

• manage our client’s production credit

• set the invoice details;

• confirm and activate the project; and

• monitor all invoices generated and sent to the client

As discussed on the Introduction to VMSX & Starting New Projects page, you will need to consider and confirm many of the details here when you are first setting up a new project. 

Confirming and activating your project

After creating your project and setting up some details, you will need to send and activate your project before you can start delivering any pre-production or videos. This ensures that we have formally confirmed the client’s budget and scope before commencing work on the project.  

The first time you access this Invoices tab for a project, at the top you will see the yellow alert bar with the “Send & Activate” button. This will remain visible until you have activated the project. 

Activating your project is as simple as clicking this button and sending the confirmation email. However, you first need to check all of the Invoice details — ensuring they match what you and the client are both expecting.

We cover all of the elements and options from the Invoices tab below.

Overview

The Invoices space is divided into two main views: the Overview and Invoices summary. You can toggle between them using the left-hand menu column.

The Overview manages all of the project elements that lead to the invoice:

• A breakdown of the project price

• Any credit applied, thereby reducing the price

• The invoice recipient and terms

The summary of Invoices presents and monitors the admin of every invoice that has been triggered by this project.

Total project price

This is the only place where you can manage the project price. Irrespective of the delivery details provided elsewhere within the project, each separate price element here can be individually added, labelled, edited, or removed. 

You have total flexibility for how you determine and/or break down the price of your project. However, the project confirmation email will only present the total price figure (+ GST) alongside any production credit deductions.

If this project has been created from a closed deal through HubSpot, then you should find that your project starts with a single price value, with possibly one additional disbursements value.

• You can leave the price value untouched, or

• You can replace them with a more specific breakdown of production and disbursement costs, or

• Adjust them if the scope of the project changes after the project has been handed over to you.

How you choose to handle the price is entirely between you and your client’s requirements.

If there are any disbursements, you must provide an accurate breakdown of these costs. This assists our Accounts team to match-up your project expenses with their own records.

Adding a Production Cost

A production cost is the price we have charged for any Visual Domain services rendered. For example: editing (2 hours), a storyboard, and a 3-hour shoot with one DoP and a Director. 

To add a new production cost to your project: 

1. Go to the blue plus. 

2. Choose “Add Production Cost”

3. Give your production cost a good, clear name

4. Add the value and hit “save”.

After creating them, these are easily edited or deleted by clicking on their pencil edit icon.

Adding a Disbursement

A disbursement covers any agreed costs incurred from a third-party in the course of delivering the project. 

We have plenty of recognised disbursement types.

• Model/Talent

• Drone

• Voice-over

• Travel

• Venue Hire

• Gear Hire

• Music/Stock Purchase

• CAD/TVC Delivery

• Props

• Other

• Studio

• Transcription

• Freelance Crew Hire

• Captions

• Hair & Makeup

• Accommodation

• Catering

When you add a disbursement to the project, you must choose one of these categories.

To add a new disbursement to your project: 

1. Go to the blue plus. 

2. Choose “Add Disbursement Cost”

3. Give your disbursement a good, clear name

4. Select the disbursement type

5. Add the value and hit “save”.

Do I have to provide a detailed breakdown of all production costs? 

No, you don’t. 

However, your goal must always be to deliver within the project’s budget and you may find this feature useful for better managing your team’s time and resources.

Even though clients do not normally have visibility of the cost breakdown, this information should be valuable to your own understanding of the project’s scope, where you should be spending your time, and may hopefully lead to more accurate quotes in the long run.

From the system’s perspective, the data harvested from accurate production costs will prove valuable when trying to appreciate where we can better focus our production resources and investments.

Do I have to include all disbursement costs?

Yes, you do.

We want to be able to match-up all of our own invoiced expenses to project deliveries. When VisDom Accounts pays third-party invoices, they refer to these disbursement entries for confirmation. Without these entries, a question will be raised. 

The data harvested from accurate disbursement costs will prove valuable when trying to appreciate where we can better focus our production resources and investments.

What if I don’t know all of my disbursement costs?
What if I don’t know what my project breakdown will be?

Disbursement and production costs can be added at any time during the Project’s delivery. Especially if the invoice has not yet been sent.

If it can be achieved, it is certainly in the client's (and the Project Manager's) best interest to have all the costs understood upfront. This helps with budgeting and helps to avoid nasty surprises when costs may not have been properly communicated to the client and a potential follow-up invoice may be on the way.

Paid with credits

This value represents how much of the project will be paid for by the client’s pre-purchased production credits. The figure is drawn from the information supplied in the Credits Available section lower down on the Invoices page.

Total invoiced

This value represents what has already been invoiced for this project. 

For example, if an invoice has already been sent after project confirmation, then any further production costs and/or disbursements added (in consultation with the client) will start to accumulate towards a new invoice. 

The “Amount remaining to be invoiced” will factor in all previous invoices already sent for this project.

Credits available

In the Credits Available section, you will see a list of all prepaid credit packages that your client owns, if there is any credit remaining.  

You will always know upfront when a client has production credit to use. Whether or not the credit is used for your project is between you and the client, but you can now confidently lead with the suggestion prior to the invoice being sent.

Credit details

For each credit package, you will know the following details:

• Credit ID — relevant to our Accounts team

• Package name 

• Owner —  can be owned by either the office or the individual contact associated with the project.

• Expiry date — the final date by which the client needs to use this credit. 

• Available credit

• Credit used — a number field, ready to be updated with any credit value applied to this project.

Applying credit

The Client Hub allows our clients to settle their own invoices using their production credit packs. If your contact has Admin or Account permissions, then they will be able to access and use the same credit packs that you can see.

If you find that you are being asked to sort this out for them, you can also apply production credit to your project. Just type the value of the credit into the Credit Used field. You can type any value into a package’s Credit Used field and the project’s Total amount left to be paid directly beneath will immediately recalculate. 

You can experiment with any combination of credit across all of the available packages. Once you are ready, click the blue “Save” button. At this point, each credit package will update its Available credit value, and the project itself will recalculate its Amount remaining to be invoiced.

Even at this point, you can change the value(s) of the Credit Used and re-save to recalculate everything.

However, after an invoice has been issued, you will not be able to change the amount of credit used for this invoice. To update this figure requires some back-end accounting footwork and you will need to contact the Accounts team.

If additional project costs lead to a new invoice being generated, you will not be able to apply any more production credit without the assistance of the Accounts team.

Alternatively, using the Client Hub your clients can settle any of their invoices themselves with their remaining production credit balances.

Permissions

Not everyone from your client’s company can access the company’s credit packages.

The credit packages that we offer have two possible levels of access:

• Office — this is owned by the company, but assigned to a specific office. Available to be used by anyone assigned to that same office in the VMS and on Client Hub.

• Individual — this is owned by one person only. Unless that individual is a contact project, the credit pack will not show on VMSX.

There is no credit pack setting that can make it available across the client’s whole company. This is designed to support larger companies, where each office or department will have their own budgets. 

• You can only apply credit from packs that are already showing within the project. Their appearance in your project indicates that your contact(s) have the appropriate permission to use that credit.

• The clients can track their own credit packs, but they are displayed independently of the projects. Client contacts with Admin or Accounting permissions can apply credit pack value to the project for themselves.

Invoice Details

The invoice details dictate when the invoice will be sent, and to whom — most of the time, this will be a contact from their own Accounts team. Ensure you check with the client who they need the invoice to be sent to. This will prevent delays in payment.

Payment terms. 

How long does that client have to pay the invoice? 

The VMSX will pull the client’s preference from their Office profile, however you have the freedom to change this per project. The default value is 14 days.

Invoice terms

These terms define when the VMSX will alert our Accounts team that this project’s invoice is ready to send. Accounts will process the invoice, and then seek the producer’s approval before sending.

There are four possible terms for you to choose from, but two of them are only available under specific conditions.

Key deliverables — For the purposes of triggering an invoice, the first “key deliverable” is considered to be the first video delivered. If no video deliverables have been added to the project, then the invoice will be sent on the date of the first filming shoot. If there is no shoot scheduled and no video deliverables, then the VMSX will trigger the invoice on delivery of the first pre-production job.  

Invoice recipient

The default contact for our invoices is the client’s registered Accountant.

Sending to the client

If you leave the “client” option selected, the accountant contact will receive the invoice. You can optionally add one more CC secondary contact to receive this invoice. To do this, use the Invoice Contact search field to find and select from any of the client’s registered contacts in the VMSX database.

If there is no registered accountant contact, you will need to add a primary contact to receive this invoice.

Sending to a third party

If you need to send the invoice to a third-party accounts person, you can select this and provide the requisite information here. You will need their:

• Entity name

• Entity contact name

• Entity contact email address

Summary of Invoices

The invoices tab on the left of Invoice page shows and monitors the admin for every invoice that has been triggered by this project. 

If any costs are added to the project after the first invoice has been sent, then these will accumulate towards a new invoice.  In most cases, this next invoice will be sent during the very next invoice run from our Accounts team. The only exception to this rule is when a project is already on a fortnightly invoice cycle.

Invoice details breakdown

• Invoice ID — our Accounts team’s reference number

• Scheduled date — when the invoice will be sent to the client

• Due date — when the client is due to settle the invoice

• Price (excl. GST) — corresponds to the “amount to be invoiced” in the Overview. 

• Status — reflects one of the the following:

  • To Be Invoiced

  • Invoiced

  • Paid

  • Overdue

• PO # — Purchase order number, for the client’s reference. You can add the client’s PO number to the invoice here. The client can also do this for themselves using Client Hub. 

• Actions — After the invoice has been generated, you will be able to download a copy of it here for sharing with the client, should this be needed.

The client has a couple of other options under their own invoice Actions:

• Pay Now — client can use Xero to pay their invoices with credit card or direct debit.

• Use Credits — client can self-apply any of their available product credit to settle the invoiced account.

What does the client see?

The Client Hub presents an Invoices tab for each of the client’s projects. A small red dot will appear on the Invoice tab when a new invoice has been delivered.

The client has a few different views of their invoice information:

• The Overview shows the current Total project price alongside any balance already paid with credit and the Total left to pay. Whenever we add or remove Production and Disbursement costs, the updated project price is immediately reflected here for the client.

• The Unpaid Invoices offers a view similar to the VMSX invoices summary, with the additional options to Pay Now or Use Credits.

• Paid With Credit is only visible to the client when production credit has already been applied to their project. This view shows when the credit was applied, how much was used, and which pack it came from.

Production Credit

The client can purchase, manage, and use their pre-purchased credit packages from the Client Hub.

Using production credits

If a Client Hub user has Admin or Account permissions, their special access to the project’s Invoice tab allows them to settle the invoice using any production credits that project has access to.

The client can only draw from one single credit pack to do this. Unlike our options in the VMSX, the Client Hub does not allow the client to use multiple credit packs for one invoice.

Production Packs menu

Outside of the projects, the Production Packs menu can always be accessed from the settings menu on the top-right of the Client Hub page. Select “Credits”.

From here, the client can: 

• assess the status and remaining credit for any “office-wide” or individual credit packs they personally have access to.

• assess any expired credit packs.

• Submit an order to purchase new credit packs for themselves. Their Relationship Manager will confirm and process the order for them as soon as possible.