Continuous service (ongoing)

Many IT companies, accountants and product-based companies supplying services based on monthly, quarterly or annual contracts, i.e. subscriptions. Customers are invoiced at a fixed monthly rate, regardless of the time spent completing the task in question.

Invoicing these contracts is not a demanding job per se; it can be solved using one of many financial systems supporting subscription invoicing.

The main challenge is once again revenue; for a company measuring revenue based on departments, teams or employees, forecasting and revenue recognition need to take into account the fact that every period of the agreement cannot take in more than the invoiced value of the period as revenue.

In practice, many companies need to manually recognise revenue for work – a time-consuming and high-risk process. Also, the key figures are highly imprecise for the current accounting period, as the adaptation to periodic budgets is only performed in connection with bookkeeping.

In TimeLog
In TimeLog, the Continuous service contract covers this scenario. This contract type is characterised by a continuous payment plan at fixed intervals and usually no end date.

Using the same model as for creating recurring events in calendar systems, the user creates a payment plan, e.g. first day of each month. In time, new periodic payments are automatically added to the payment plan. Each period is considered a separate fixed-price project, where all registered hours and expenses share the invoiced value of the period.

You choose how much of the invoiced value flows to work, expenses and travel expenses.