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6.8. Bill a Client Project: Fixed-Price Milestones, T&M Caps, Deposits, and Progress Billing
Set up billing on an AlgaPSA client project with a guided wizard — fixed-price milestones, time-and-materials budget caps, deposits, and progress billing — and track budget against actual as the work runs.
Project work is where MSP margin is won and lost. A fixed-price rollout that slips two weeks, a time-and-materials engagement that nobody capped, a deposit that was collected but never deducted from the final invoice — each one is a margin problem that only becomes visible when the invoice is raised, which is far too late.
Projects gain a Billing view alongside Kanban and List. It holds the commercial terms of the project and tracks them against the work as it happens.
Opening the Billing view
Open any project and switch to Billing using the view selector at the top right, next to Kanban and List.
If the project has no billing terms yet, a guided wizard sets them up. The wizard asks how the project is sold — fixed price, time and materials, or a mix — and then collects only the fields that model needs.
Fixed-price projects
A fixed-price project is billed against milestones. Each milestone names a trigger, an amount, and a status.
Figure 1: A $48,000 fixed-price rollout billed across a deposit and four phase-completion milestones.
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Milestone | The billing event, named for what the client receives |
| Trigger | What causes it to become billable — a date, or a phase completing |
| Amount | The value of that milestone |
| Status | Invoiced, Ready, or Pending |
| Invoice | The invoice it was billed on, once raised |
Triggers can be a date or a project phase completing. Phase-based triggers are the useful ones: when the Network remediation phase is marked complete, its milestone moves to Ready without anyone watching a calendar.
Deposits
A deposit is a milestone with the DEPOSIT marker, billed up front and deducted from final. AlgaPSA tracks the deduction, so the closing invoice nets the deposit off automatically rather than depending on someone remembering it was taken eight weeks earlier.
Allocation check
Beneath the milestone list, AlgaPSA confirms that the schedule allocates 100% of the contract value — "✓ Schedule allocates 100% of contract value" — and totals the milestones. A schedule that adds up to less than the contract value is money you will never invoice; one that adds up to more is a conversation with the client you do not want to have.
Use Add milestone or deposit to extend the schedule and Edit terms to change the headline price or invoicing basis.
Time on fixed-price work
The Delivery economics panel states the rule plainly: "Time on fixed-price projects is tracked at cost — never billed." Technicians still log time against the project, and that time drives cost and margin, but it never reaches an invoice line. Hours logged, labour and materials cost, and projected margin are shown together, so a fixed-price project that is running hot is visible while there is still time to react.
Time-and-materials projects
A T&M project bills the work that happens, optionally under a not-to-exceed cap.
Figure 2: A T&M project with a $28,500 hard cap and notifications at 80% and 100%.
Budget cap
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Cap amount | The not-to-exceed value for labour and materials |
| Notify at (%) | Comma-separated thresholds that raise a warning — for example 80, 100 |
| Hard cap (write down) | When enabled, labour and materials beyond the cap are written down automatically |
The hard cap switch is the difference between a cap that warns and a cap that binds. With it on, work past the cap is written down as it is logged, so the invoice can never exceed the number the client agreed to. With it off, the cap notifies and the overage remains billable — appropriate when your agreement allows a change order.
Notification thresholds are where the value is. A warning at 80% gives a project manager time to raise a change order; a warning at 100% is an apology.
Phase rate overrides
Phase rate overrides let a specific phase bill at a different rate, or re-map its services entirely. Use them when one phase of a project is genuinely different work — after-hours cutover at a premium rate, or a subcontracted specialism billed at a pass-through rate.
Budget vs actual
Both models carry a Budget vs actual panel that breaks the project value into what has been invoiced, approved, is ready to bill, and remains — with a bar that makes the shape obvious at a glance.
On the project header, two progress bars track the same thing from different angles: Budget in hours (214.0 of 320.0 hours) and Billed in currency ($19,200.00 of $48,000.00). A project 67% through its hours but only 40% billed is not necessarily in trouble, but it is worth a look.
The Project Billing review tab
Individual project screens are the wrong place to run a billing cycle. The Invoicing Hub gains a Project Billing tab that collects ready milestones and deposits across every project.
Figure 3: Ready milestones and deposits awaiting approval across all projects.
The tab shows project, client, description, amount, the trigger that made it ready, and — importantly — days waiting. Milestones that have been ready for a fortnight are unbilled revenue sitting still.
Select rows and use Actions to bulk approve or hold. Approving raises the invoice; holding leaves the milestone ready but keeps it out of this cycle, which is the right answer when a client dispute is open or a phase was signed off prematurely.
Find it at Billing > Invoicing > Project Billing. The tab carries a count badge so an unworked queue is visible from the Billing dashboard.
What the client sees
Clients with portal billing access see a read-only billing summary on their projects: the agreed basis, what has been invoiced, and what remains. They do not see cost, margin, or your internal write-downs.
This tends to reduce billing queries rather than increase them — a client who can see that three of five milestones are invoiced does not email to ask.