Invoicing and Billing
The BILLING area in Factor is where you prepare invoices from project work, manage expense billing, track payments, and handle adjustment types like retainers and deposits. It connects directly to the project budgets and time entries your team has already recorded.
Overview
Key Features
Prepare Invoices — Lists all projects that have billable work (uninvoiced fixed fee budget amounts, unbilled hourly time entries, or unbilled expenses). Select a project to start a new invoice.
Invoice Preparer — A step-by-step workflow for building an invoice, organized into tabs:
Info — Header details, dates, billing contact
Fixed Fee — Review fixed fee phases and expense budgets; enter amounts or percentages to bill
Hourly — Review individual time entries and choose to bill, defer, or write off
Expenses — Review and bill individual expenses
Adjustments — Apply retainers, deposits, or credits
Preview — Select an invoice template and review the generated document
View Invoices — View all invoices with status tracking. Search by invoice number, client, or project. Print, email, or send payment reminders for unpaid invoices, and review each invoice's email history.
Invoice Templates — Manage customizable document templates that control how project and invoice data appears on the resulting invoice document.
Expense Budgets — A cross-project view of your expense budgets, used to track pay when paid for subconsultants. For each budget it shows what vendors have submitted, what you've invoiced and received from the client, what you've paid vendors, and which vendor invoices are ready to pay. Use the Only show subconsultant budgets? filter to focus on subconsultants.
Employee Expenses — View individual expenses submitted by employees and track their status.
FactorPay — An optional feature that enables firms to email clients links to a payment portal where they can pay finalized invoices online.
FactorPay Transactions — View payments your clients made through FactorPay, including individual payments (with linked invoices) and deposits (showing which payments were included in each deposit).
Synced Transactions — A log of all transactions synced between Factor and QuickBooks Online. Shows sync status for each record and allows firm admins and bookkeepers to identify and troubleshoot broken or mismatched syncs without contacting support.
Invoice Lifecycle
Invoices progress through a defined lifecycle:
Draft — Fully editable. Line items, amounts, and dates can all be modified. Not synced to your accounting system. Can be printed with a watermark to distinguish from finalized invoices.
Finalized — Core financial data can no longer be modified, time entries are locked, and the invoice syncs to your accounting system if connected. You can print or email finalized invoices.
Voided — A canceled invoice. The audit trail is maintained, time entries are released for re-billing, and the void syncs to your accounting system. Voided invoices cannot be unvoided — a new invoice must be created.
You cannot create or finalize invoices against a closed project, except as part of the project closing process itself.
Invoice Email History
In BILLING > View Invoices, the Last Sent column shows the date each invoice was last emailed, or "Not Sent" if it hasn't been. The Delivery filter (All, Email, Print) and the Send Status filter (Any, Unsent, Sent, Failed To Deliver) narrow the list.
For any invoice that has been sent, click the blue History icon next to the Last Sent date to open "Invoice email history." It lists every email sent for the invoice, with:
Sent Date — payment reminder emails are labeled (Reminder)
Recipient
Sender — the person who sent it
Email Events — each event with its date, a status, and a note
The history is available to users with the View Invoices permission.
Email Events
Email Events show how each email was handled, with statuses such as processed, delivered, and deferred. These statuses are reported back to Factor by the email service that sends the invoice, based on the response from the recipient's email provider. Factor doesn't create these statuses itself; a delivered status comes from the recipient's email provider.
Invoice emails sent without a FactorPay payment link show these delivery statuses, any click events reported by the email provider, and any errors. Invoice emails that include a FactorPay payment link also record when the client opens the invoice from that link.
Errors
Bounce, blocked, and dropped events appear in red and mean the email did not reach the recipient. The note on the event shows the description recorded with it. If an email from an invoice's most recent send was bounced, blocked, or dropped, the History icon shows as a red warning triangle and the invoice appears when Send Status is set to Failed To Deliver. To resolve it, check that the client's email address is correct on their contact record and send the invoice again.
How Invoicing Connects to Other Areas
PROJECTS — Invoice amounts are tracked against project budgets. Fixed fee phases show remaining amounts; hourly phases show unbilled time.
TIME — Hourly time entries appear in the invoice preparer for selection. Once invoiced, they are locked.
Accounting — Finalized invoices sync to QBO if connected. Voided invoices sync the void.
FactorPay — Finalized invoices can be sent via email with a payment link for online payment.
Troubleshooting
Project Not Appearing on the Prepare Invoices Page
The Prepare Invoices page only shows projects with billable work. Check:
Project status — Only projects with an Open status appear. Projects with any other status will not show.
Billable work — The project must have uninvoiced fixed fee amounts, unbilled hourly time entries, or unbilled expenses. If everything has been billed, it won't appear.
Permissions — You may not have billing permissions. Contact your administrator.
Over the Not-to-Exceed Amount on an Hourly Phase
If selecting "Bill All" on hourly time entries exceeds the not-to-exceed budget, Factor will show an error. To resolve:
Write off entries — Select Write Off on individual entries to reduce the total below the budget.
Bill partial amounts — Adjust the billable amount on an entry to a smaller number. This only affects the invoice, not the employee's timesheet.
If billing rates don't divide evenly into the amount you need to bill, you can create a special billing role (e.g., "Invoice Adjustment") with a rate that makes the math work — set it up in SETTINGS > Lists. Factor still tracks the full value of all logged time for profitability reporting, even for written-off entries.
Writing Off Time
Time can be written off a few ways. If you are billing fixed fee, then the value of time that surpasses the amount you bill to the fixed fee phase is automatically written-off.
For hourly phases, you can either write the time off from the project or while invoicing.
If you want to write off time directly from the project, to close out the project for instance, go to the Project Overview tab and click on the "Time Written Off" tile at the top of the page to see unbilled time entries and write them off. This action can be undone by flipping the switch to show written off entries, and flipping them back to bill later.
If you want to write off time while invoicing, start a new draft invoice from the Prepare Invoices page under BILLING and on the Hourly tab, choose which time entries you want to write off. You can also bill partial hours to only write off some of the time for a particular time entry. When entries are written off from the invoice creator, they are locked and are no longer editable, just like when billing an entry. This cannot be undone without voiding the invoice.
Can't Change the Billing Level (Parent vs. Child Phase)
Once you begin invoicing a project at either the parent or child phase level, that level is locked. You cannot switch between the two without voiding all previous invoices where billing was applied.
Voided Invoice Can't Be Unvoided
Voided invoices cannot be restored. You'll need to create a new invoice. Time entries from the voided invoice are released for re-billing. If QBO is integrated, the void in Factor automatically voids the receivable in QBO.
Can't Create an Invoice for a Closed Project
You cannot create or finalize invoices against a closed project. Reopen the project by changing its status back to Open first.
Time Entries or Expenses Were Saved When I Closed Without Saving
This is expected behavior. When you close an invoice without saving, no invoice record is created. However, any expenses or time entries added or modified through the Hourly and Expenses tabs of the invoice preparer are saved independently of the invoice itself.
Invoice Is Missing Sections
Invoice templates only show sections that have content. If a project has no fixed fee phases, the phase summary won't appear. If no hourly entries were billed, that section won't show. The same applies to expenses and adjustments. Your firm may also have multiple templates with different layouts and visibility.
Client Cannot Find the FactorPay Payment Link
When FactorPay is enabled, payment links are sent as part of the invoice email — when you email an invoice from the View Invoices page, the email includes a Pay Now button with a unique URL for that invoice. If a client didn't receive it:
Verify the invoice has been finalized — payment links are only available for finalized invoices
Confirm FactorPay is enabled for that project
Check that the client's email address is correct on their contact record
Ask the client to check their spam folder
Re-send the invoice email from Factor to generate a new payment link
Client Cannot Pay — No Payment Method Available
Check the project-level settings and verify at least one payment method (ACH, credit card, or both) is enabled for that project. If the project inherits firm defaults, verify the firm-level settings have at least one method enabled.
Payment Not Appearing in Factor
Payments are applied to the invoice immediately when submitted. If a payment isn't showing:
Check BILLING > FactorPay Transactions for recent activity
Verify you're looking at the correct invoice — payments are linked to specific invoices
Remember clients can only pay one invoice at a time
If QBO is integrated and the payment appeared there, it may be a display or refresh issue in Factor — try refreshing the page
Disbursement Not Reaching Bank Account
Funds are disbursed nightly to the bank account configured during the Payrix merchant application. Expected processing times:
Credit card — 2–3 business days
ACH — 4–5 business days
If deposits aren't arriving, verify the bank account information from the merchant application is correct. The secondary descriptor you configured (e.g., "Factor Pay") helps identify disbursements in your bank statements. For bank account changes, you may need to access your Payrix account or contact Factor support.
The FactorPay Transactions area in BILLING shows which payments were included in each deposit, making reconciliation straightforward.
For issues related to refunds, disputes, or chargebacks, contact Factor support directly — these are handled on a case-by-case basis.
When to Contact Support
Contact Factor support with:
The client name and invoice number(s) involved
The date the payment was expected
Any error messages or screenshots
Whether the issue is on the client side (payment portal) or the firm side (transactions not appearing)