Billing from Deltek Vantagepoint? Test project invoicing on periods you already closed.

Once a project's billing terms are set, Vantagepoint does the arithmetic. The hours go into the loop around it: a biller runs drafts for the period, project managers mark them up, hours get held or moved, fees to date get changed, and the biller runs the drafts again until they read right. Only then are they accepted as final.

For the test, AI works from copies of a closed period: each project's billing terms, the labor and expense lines with their billing status, and the drafts your billers printed, where they kept them. It writes up the invoice each project should have sent, with a note on every change from the draft and the reason for it. Vantagepoint is never touched. Your reviewer compares every write-up with the final invoice on file.

The fee method on the Fees tab. Each project's terms name one: Overall Percent Complete, Cumulative Unit or Fee, Current Unit or Fee, or Percent Complete by Phase, set up as a share of the fee or as a fixed amount per phase. Fee to Date and Percent Complete move together, so typing one rewrites the other. The method also decides where earlier billings live. Fee billed to date that is entered by hand goes in one Prior Fee Billing total, or, under the phase methods, phase by phase in the Billed-to-Date column of the Fee Billing Phases grid. The write-up names the method it found and the billed-to-date figure it started from.

A status code on every line. Labor and expense lines carry a billing status: B for billable, H for held, R where part of a line was held or released, T for a line moved to another project, phase or task, and F once it has been billed. A write-off reads W until its invoice posts and X after. A line marked for deletion reads D until a billing run removes it, then O. Read only the hours and amounts and you bill held time and miss transfers. So the test reads the status column in your export and lists each H, R and W line beside what the final invoice did with it.

Billing groups. A client with several projects can get one invoice through a billing group: a main project and its sub-projects, all of the same charge type. With Consolidate Printing on, the main project's terms calculate the whole invoice. With retainage and interest set to Group, only the main project's settings count, and whatever the other projects' terms say is ignored. A project that bills cleanly on its own can come out differently inside its group, so the write-up names the group and the terms each project actually billed under.

Templates, backup and pre-invoices. Each project's invoice prints on a template built in the Invoice Template Editor under Settings > Billing, so one client's format is a template, not a habit. On the Billing Backup tab, Print Supporting Documents can be checked for AP vouchers and disbursements, expense reports and units, so uploaded receipts print with the invoice and ride along in the emailed PDF, though a biller can pull one document off one invoice in Interactive Billing. Some contracts get pre-invoices instead: requests for payment with templates of their own, which Vantagepoint keeps out of the general ledger. Leave Process Pre-Invoices checked on a project and the next run makes a pre-invoice, not an invoice. The write-up lists the backup each invoice should carry and flags any project still set to pre-invoice.

What your reviewer watches. Deltek's own checklist for invoices that need approval runs from a draft run in Batch Billing, through Interactive Approvals and Draft Invoice Approvals, to a final run that accepts the drafts, then a separate posting of the invoice file in the Transaction Center. Your reviewer, usually the billing lead or a project accountant, checks that each write-up used the fee method and terms the project really has, kept held and pending write-off lines off, carried the right backup, and landed on the final invoice's total, or said plainly why it didn't.

If the write-ups meet the success criteria, your next billing periods get the same treatment for about 30 days, built from the exports your billers already pull.

A person on your team approves or corrects every write-up before anything changes in Vantagepoint or reaches a client. Changes go in the way your billers make them today, in Interactive Billing or your draft approvals, and the final run, posting and sending stay with your team.