Time and Billing

Even if you don’t bill hourly for accounting services, you should still track your time.  Knowing where time goes = knowing what’s profitable. Track time your way in Canopy and make smarter decisions. Tracked time on tasks and subtasks can be used in our data analytics to help you see profitability by client and staff utilization. It can also help you see which of your service items are most profitable.

Automating invoices and collecting payments in Canopy is easy. Set recurring payments, save payment methods to the client profile, and require deposits in an engagement. A great practice management system will help you eliminate AR so you can stop chasing payments. After all, you’re not a bank. You need to be profitable.

Canopy’s Time & Billing module allows you to track time on each client interaction and apply that time to create one-time or recurring invoices. These invoices can be shared directly to your clients in the client portal. Canopy also offers a Payments option where you can not only track time, create invoices, but also collect and process payments within Canopy. These payments can be sent directly to their client portal and you can manage them within Canopy. Additionally, take out the manual follow-up process with your clients by implementing automatic invoice reminders. All of these items and more can help you collect payments from your clients faster.

Canopy has profitability reports, realization reports, utilization reports, WIP, and more—all prebuilt and ready to go.

Unlike some software, Canopy doesn’t only sync contacts from Quickbooks. No other competitor offers the ability to sync contacts, service items, invoice to Quickbooks Online. Our complete integration makes the bank reconciliation process the simplest on the market when working with Quickbooks Online. Learn more here.

The WIP report within the Time & Billing module will allow you to see all outstanding billable time that you need to make a billing decision on. Time will be grouped by contact and there are a multitude of filter options to narrow things down. We are also providing a calculation on the chargeable rate for the time logged for each contact. There are two invoicing options you can take with time entries. The first is to add time entries as visible line items on invoices and they will drive the amount of the invoice. The second option is to instead just link time to an invoice. In this case the time won’t have any impact on the amount of the invoice, but will be used in other reports, such as profitability.

Check, cash, and alternative payments can be easily marked and recorded in Canopy as payment types accessible from the payment method menu.

Canopy practice management software introduced Progress Billing: Retainers to offer accounting firms a modern, flexible billing foundation. This billing framework supports modern pricing models like fixed fees, retainers, milestones, and hybrid models, allowing firms the flexibility of traditional and emerging time and billing methods. Canopy progress billing works by requiring firms to collect payment upfront via a single retainer invoice. Time and expenses are then automatically applied against that retainer balance as the professional services are delivered, providing real-time balance tracking and project-level tracking.

If Work in Progress (WIP) exceeds the budget, the firm has a few options, similar to handling normal invoices. A firm can write down the overage to match the Canopy retainer amount. Alternatively, a separate new invoice could be issued to the client for the overage if the firm wants to collect it.

Clients pay a Canopy retainer invoice the same way they pay traditional invoices. Payment options include the Client Portal, Quick Pay Link, mailing a check, or paying a firm in person via Card, Check, or Cash.

A Canopy retainer invoice covers work to be performed in the future, while a traditional invoice covers work that has already been completed. Unlike a traditional invoice, a Canopy retainer invoice only requires a description and an amount; service items are added to the Progress Bill later.