Billing plan and cash position

The project's Billing plan tab lists its billing milestones: those copied from the award, those you add and those that come from approved change orders. Each one is Planned, then Due, then Invoiced when its certificate is issued, then Paid when the certificate is fully received.

When a milestone falls due

A milestone falls due when:

• its Task is completed (checked every morning);

• its Date comes;

• its change order is approved (see Variations);

• or you select Mark due.

When your company turns on Bill from the billing plan in Process settings, a milestone falling due joins the contract's open certificate, or opens a draft certificate already measured at the milestone's share: its percentage of the bill of quantities, on the items of its task when it is mapped to one, never beyond an item's quantity. Check the measurement and adjust it before you submit. If the contract has no bill of quantities to measure, the accountant role gets a task to raise it. The project manager and the accountants are told.

Add a milestone

Select Add milestone: its name, amount, and what makes it due (a task, a date, or by hand).

Map a milestone to its task

Gate G4 asks for every billing milestone to have a task, and for that task to have planned dates. In the Task or date column of a Planned or Due milestone, choose the task from the list; it is saved at once. Choose No task to clear it. A milestone triggered by a date or by hand keeps its trigger: the task is what the schedule and gate G4 read. An Invoiced or Paid milestone keeps the task it has.

You need Projects - Manage the Billing Plan for this. The Billing plan card on the project's Overview tab offers the same choice to a user who can manage the project.

Cash position

The Cash position card shows what the project has Collected (certificate receipts and advances), its Cost to date and the Net, with Subcontractors paid and the Outstanding receivable. Select Set limit to be warned when the net falls below minus that amount; the card then shows Below the limit, and the project manager and the General Manager are told once a week.

Common questions

Why is cost used, not payments? Supplier and payroll payments are not recorded against projects, so the cost to date stands for what the project has spent.