How TimeBill is organized

Everything in TimeBill revolves around projects: a project is where you track time, collect costs, and generate invoices from. Once you know what the handful of building blocks are and how they feed into each other, every other help article falls into place.

The building blocks

• Customer: the person or company you bill. Customers live in the dedicated Customer Management window and hold the name, address, and contact details printed on invoices. Add a customer once and reuse it across any number of projects. See adding and managing customers.
• Project: the container you see in the sidebar, grouped into Active and Archived sections. Each project has a Wage Type of either Hourly Rate or Fixed Rate, and is assigned one customer.
• Task: a unit of work inside a project, listed on its Tasks tab. Tasks carry optional priorities and deadlines, plus a billing state that tracks whether the work has been invoiced yet.
• Time entry: the raw record of worked time, attached to a task. Entries are created by the live timer (Start Tracking / Stop Tracking) or through the Add Manual Time sheet, and can be edited afterwards.
• Cost item: an extra charge on a project's Cost Items tab, such as materials or expenses. Items come from the shared Cost Item Catalog, so you define them once and add them to any project with an adjustable quantity.
• Your Details: your own company profile with name, address, logo, and payment details. It is opened from the button at the bottom of the sidebar and provides the seller side of every invoice. See setting up your company details.
• Invoice: generated from a project with Generate Invoice. Every exported invoice is archived automatically in the Invoice Vault, a searchable window where you preview, share, print, re-export, and track payment.

How everything connects

Each project is linked to exactly one customer, but one customer can have many projects. Tasks belong to a project and hold its time entries, so a project's total time and earnings roll up from the work you track.

When you click Generate Invoice, TimeBill builds the line items for you: the project's unbilled work (the tracked time on hourly projects, the agreed amount on fixed-rate ones) plus its cost items. You never type line items by hand. After the export, those tasks flip from Unbilled to Billed, and when you later mark the invoice Paid in the Invoice Vault, the tasks it billed become Paid too. The sync works in both directions, as explained in how billing states work.

When a project is done, archive it. Archiving is non-destructive: all tasks, time entries, cost items, and archived invoices are kept, and you can unarchive at any time.

The intended workflow

1. Once: click Your Details at the bottom of the sidebar and fill in your company and payment information, then click Save.
2. Per client: open Customer Management and click Add Customer.
3. Per project: click Add Project, pick a Wage Type (Hourly Rate or Fixed Rate) and rate, then click Assign Customer in the project footer.
4. Day to day: add tasks, track work with Start Tracking or Add Manual Time, and add cost items as expenses come up.
5. Billing: click Generate Invoice; the finished invoice lands in the Invoice Vault, where you send it out and later use Mark as Paid.
6. Wrap-up: click Archive to move the project to the Archived section with everything intact.

Make it yours

TimeBill doesn't force this order. You can start tracking on day one and add the customer just before billing. The only hard rule is that Generate Invoice stays disabled until the project has a customer assigned and your company details are set up. When you're ready to go hands-on, follow the quick start, then dive into tracking time and creating your first invoice.