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 introductory 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.
You cannot activate your project if:
You have not assigned any production or disbursement costs
You have not assigned any production jobs — this can be either pre-production, a a shoot or a video delivery.
There is a lot of project information that is included in the confirmation email. Producers are advised to spend some time setting up their projects as best as they can before confirming. Time spent setting up a quality project saves time down the line, and ensures that nothing is missed - leading to a much better experience for both the client and our team.
For more information on this, you should have a look at the VisDom Production Team’s Project Confirmation Checklist.
When you are ready to confirm and activate your project, simply click on the button and send the confirmation email.
Who receives the confirmation email?
The confirmation email will automatically choose all of the project contacts to receive the confirmation email. You can deselect any of these, though you must keep at least one of them. You will also be able to add any additional emails to the Cc and/or Bcc fields.
Additionally, the project’s producer and relationship manager will be automatically included, alongside an administrative email address that exists to catch and keep a record of all confirmation emails sent.
What else can I change in the confirmation email?
You can edit the email Title, should the need arise.
You can also edit (and style) the small personal message that will be included in the body of the email.
Both the title and personal message come with default content, so editing these is completely optional and down to your personal professional choices.
What information does the confirmation email share?
The confirmation email presents a significant compilation of details that have been prepared across the project.
The project Relationship Manager
The project Producer
The total number of videos deliveries (if there are any)
plus the allowance of change requests
The total number of shoots (if there are any)
The totals of some of the pre-production deliverables (if included)
Script
Storyboard
A summary of the total project price, including:
How much of their production credit has been used
GST
The total amount that will be invoiced
Invoice conditions:
When the invoice will be sent
The length of the payment terms
Who will receive the invoice
A link to project on Client Hub — takes them directly to their project on the Client Hub
A link to pay the invoice immediately — takes them directly to the invoice tab within the project on Client Hub. This will only work if the user is an Admin or Accounts contact for the client.
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. Prices in the VMS should always be added ex GST - GST is automatically calculated in the confirmation email and subsequent invoices.
If this project has been created from a sale through Hubspot, then you should find that your project starts with a single price value, with possibly one additional disbursements value. You can leave these values 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 this is entirely between you and your client’s requirements.
Caution: Be careful when adding new production or disbursement costs to your projects. Always ensure that any additional costs will be understood by the client.
While the clients cannot see your price breakdown, if they are an Admin or Accounts user they can see the current total project price from the Client Hub.
Add 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:
Go to the blue plus.
Choose “Add Production Cost”
Give your production cost a good, clear name
Add the value and hit “save”.
These are easily edited or deleted by clicking on their pencil edit icon. However, if it has been invoiced only the accounts team can make further adjustments and you must contact them.
Note: You must round your values to the nearest dollar when adding costs.
Add a Disbursement
A disbursement covers any agreed costs incurred from a third-party in the course of delivering the project.
We have ten recognised disbursement types. When you add a disbursement to the project, you must choose one of these categories:
Model/Talent
Studio
Drone
Voice-over
Travel
Venue Hire
Gear Hire
Music/Stock Purchase
CAD/TVC Delivery
Props
To add a new disbursement to your project:
Go to the blue plus.
Choose “Add Disbursement Cost”
Give your disbursement a good, clear name
Select the disbursement type
Add the value and hit “save”.
Your chosen disbursement type will be clearly flagged in the total project price summary. There is no need to include this within the disbursement name. You would be better served to provide the supplier and any short product specifics.
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 accounting goes to pay 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?
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.
Credit packs will only show themselves in contexts where your project’s Contact(s) have the appropriate permission to use those credits — either they are the owner or they are from the appropriate office.
Applying credit
To 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 subsequently change the amount of credit used for this invoice. To update this figure requires some backendfancy accounting footwork and you will need to contact the Accounts rteam. or VMSX Tech Support. This should be avoided, as it means your client has been sent an unexpected invoice and is probably not very happy about it.
If additional project costs require a new invoice to be generated, then more credit can be drawn from a credit package, but credit cannot be returned.
If credit is used to settle 100% of the Total project price, an invoice will not be sent. Should the client still require a copy of this invoice, you can download a copy from the Invoices summary view and share it.
The client can also download it from the project’s invoice information on the Client Hub, if they have Admin or Accounts permissions.
As soon as you save any value of credit used, you will no longer be able to choose the “50/50” invoice term.
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.
Smaller companies that wish for a company-wide pack can be managed by ensuring all of their contacts are assigned to the same “office”. Most of the time, this will be true without extra effort on our part.
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 who the invoice needs to be sent to in order to prevent any 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.
Invoice term | What does it do? | When is this available? |
100% on order submission | Sends the invoice immediately on project confirmation. In reality, this may take up to 2 days, by the time it completes the invoice processing cycle. | Always. |
After key deliverable | Sends the invoice after your project has sent its first key deliverable. (See note below for the definition of “key deliverable”.) | Always. This is selected by default, unless the client has a preferred option in their company profile. |
50% upfront 50% completion | Sends an invoice immediately on project confirmation for 50% of the invoice-able amount. The remaining amount will be invoiced on completion of the first key deliverable. | This option is not available if production credit has been used. |
Fortnightly | Sends the latest invoice-able amount, once every fortnight. Useful only for ongoing projects. | This is only available if the client’s Office profile has an accountant contact and they have chosen “Fortnightly” invoices in the Office preferences. |
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.
Note: It is not possible to confirm and activate a Project without either a Pre-production item or a video deliverable. There will always be a key deliverable trigger event for the invoice.
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.
Note: You can change this secondary contact at any time, but you cannot change the Accountant contact form within the project.
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
If you change, add, or edit any of your Invoice recipient details, you must remember to hit the blue “save” button
Invoices tab
The summary of Invoices presents and monitors the admin of 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 the next invoice.
Follow-up invoices are covered by the 50/50 and fortnightly invoice terms, but you can also manually request a follow-up invoice from the Accounts team.
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 here:
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?
Watch this brief video walkthrough of how the client can use the Client Hub to manage their own invoices and payments.
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 or an invoice is overdue.
The Invoices tab is only visible to client contact with Admin or Accounts permissions.
The client has a few different views of their invoice information:
The Overview shows the current Total project price. Whenever we add or remove Production and Disbursement costs, the updated project price is immediately reflected here for the client.
We are currently considering providing the client with the option here to see your Production and Disbursement costs breakdown. Do you think this is a good idea? Tell us what you think.
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 Packs
The client can separately purchase and manage their pre-purchased credit packages from the Client Hub, outside of their 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 “officecompany-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.
Info: To read more about processing new credit package orders, see the Creating new projects page.