Project-based billing connects your invoices to the projects they bill against, lets you set a dollar budget per project, and surfaces realization metrics so you can see how the time you tracked compares to the work you invoiced. You can do this on any FC plan as long as you have an approved Billing application in Billing > Settings.
Submit Billing Application First
The project Billing tab appears only after your firm has been approved for Billing in Financial Cents. If a project's Billing tab shows a marketing splash titled Bill projects with full context, not guesswork instead of the dashboard cards, finish the Billing application from Billing > Settings and revisit the project.
Link an Invoice to a Project
You can attach 1 or more projects to any invoice. The invoice's value is split across the attached projects in the Realization table.
Navigate to Billing > Invoices and click + Invoice (or open an existing draft invoice).
Select the client and fill in the invoice fields as usual.
Scroll to the Associate Projects to this Invoice section and click Select project. Pick the project this invoice should bill against.
To attach another project to the same invoice, click Select project again. The same invoice can be split across multiple projects.
Complete the rest of the invoice and click Save or Send.
You can also link a project from an existing invoice's detail page. Open the invoice, look in the right-hand sidebar for the Associated Projects panel, and click + Add project.
Set a Dollar Budget for a Project
Setting a dollar budget on a project tells Financial Cents what you expected to bill so it can compute realization (hours tracked vs amount budgeted vs amount actually billed).
Open the project.
Click the Billing tab on the project page.
In the Hourly Billables vs Dollar Budget card, click the Dollar Budget value to enter inline edit mode.
Type the dollar amount and confirm.
The new budget shows in the Hourly Billables vs Dollar Budget card and feeds the realization metrics below it.
Read the Project Realization Table
After linking invoices and setting a budget, the Billing tab on the project page shows 3 areas:
Hourly Billables vs Amount Billed card: total Hourly Billables for the project (sum of tracked time × billing rate) compared to total Amount Billed (sum of invoiced amounts).
Hourly Billables vs Dollar Budget card: total Hourly Billables compared to the Dollar Budget you set on the project.
Project Realization table: 7 columns of detail per project.
The Project Realization columns are:
Hourly Billables: total tracked time × billing rate, in dollars.
Amount Billed: total amount across invoices linked to this project.
Write +/-: the write-up or write-down (Amount Billed minus Hourly Billables).
Realization: Amount Billed as a percentage of Hourly Billables. 100% means you billed exactly what you tracked.
Labor Cost: total labor cost on the project.
Gross Profit: Amount Billed minus Labor Cost.
Margin: Gross Profit as a percentage of Amount Billed.
ℹ️Heads up! Labor Cost, Gross Profit, and Margin are available on the Scale Plan as part of the Detailed Billing Reports feature. The column headers are visible on every plan, but the values in those 3 columns are hidden if your firm is not on the Scale Plan.
Below the Project Realization table, the Associated Invoices section lists every invoice linked to the project. Use the + Invoice dropdown in that section to create a new invoice already associated with the project, or to associate an existing one.
How the Realization Numbers Update
The Project Realization numbers refresh automatically when:
You link a new invoice to the project (from the Create Invoice form or from the invoice's Associated Projects sidebar).
You record time on a task that belongs to the project (tracked time + billing rate feed Hourly Billables).
An associated invoice changes status (sent, paid, voided, refunded).
You do not need to manually refresh the Billing tab.
When to Use Project Based Billing
Project based billing pays off when you want a direct, per-project answer to did we bill what the work was worth? It works well for:
Fixed-fee engagements where you need to confirm you delivered within the budget you quoted.
Recurring monthly bookkeeping where each month's project should land near the same dollar figure.
Renewal prep where realization data from the past year helps you reset prices for the next engagement.
Firms that used to track this in a spreadsheet or rely on memory at renewal time get the same picture inside Financial Cents.