Multi-project billing

Bill a large development made up of many individual lots as a single community — one consolidated claim and one invoice per run — while still tracking the contract and revenue for each lot separately.

When to use this

Use multi-project billing when you deliver one development as a community of lots — for example a residential estate, a multi-dwelling site, or a staged development — and the customer wants one invoice that covers work across many lots, rather than a separate invoice per lot.

Each lot keeps its own contract and its own stage schedule, so you still see the numbers per lot. What changes is the billing step: instead of claiming each lot on its own, you claim the whole community in one go from a single worksheet.

Multi-project billing uses stage billing for the lots — each lot is billed at fixed milestones (Deposit, Base, Frame, Lock-up, Completion, and so on). If you need % complete billing against a schedule of values, use progress claims instead.

Prerequisites

  • Project Financials installed and configured — see Install & configure
  • A head project for the development, with its lots set up as sub-projects beneath it
  • Each lot has an estimate, so its contract value can be calculated — see Estimating
  • The community's billing stages are agreed (the set of milestones and the percentage of each lot billed at each milestone)
  • Permission to create contracts and claims (varies by role)

How a community fits together

A multi-project community has three layers:

  • The head project is the development as a whole. It carries the switch that turns on multi-project billing, and it holds the community's single, consolidated view.
  • Each lot is a sub-project beneath the head. A lot has its own contract and its own billing stages, so its value and revenue are tracked individually.
  • The community contract is created automatically on the head project. It is the thing you bill against — every approved lot rolls up into it, and it produces the one consolidated claim and invoice.

Walkthrough coming

A step-by-step Scribe walkthrough for this task is being recorded. Track its status in the Scribe register (internal).

Setting up a community

  1. Open the head project for the development.
  2. Turn on Multi-project billing on the project.
  3. Save. The system creates the community's consolidated contract for you and links it to the head project. At this point the community contract exists but has no value yet — value arrives as you add and approve lots.

Adding lots to the community

  1. Create each lot as a sub-project beneath the head project (your normal lot-creation process).
  2. As each lot is created, it automatically receives its own contract, sharing the community's agreed billing stages. You don't set the stages up per lot — they're copied from the community so every lot bills against the same milestone structure.
  3. Each lot's contract value is calculated from that lot's estimate and spread across the shared stages by their percentages.

A lot in a community bills through the community, so it does not get its own separate "Create Proposal" or sales-order step — that's expected. The lot joins the community when you approve it (next).

Approving a lot to join the community

Approving a lot's contract is what joins it to the community.

  1. Open the lot's contract. Because it's part of a community, it shows a single Approve button.
  2. Click Approve. The lot joins the community: its stage values roll up into the community contract, and its estimate folds into the community's consolidated figures.
  3. Repeat for each lot as it's ready. Approving more lots adds them to the same community — the community's stage totals are always the sum of every approved lot.

Billing the community

When milestones have been reached across the community, you bill them all from one place.

  1. From the head project, open the Create Claim (Multi-Project) worksheet.
  2. The worksheet shows one row per lot, with a column for each billing stage. Each cell shows the amount for that lot at that stage, and whether it has already been claimed.
  3. Tick the lot/stage cells you want to bill in this run. You can mix and match — for example, Deposit on every lot, plus Frame on the two lots that have reached it. The Total updates as you select.
  4. Enter the claim Date and Due Date, then click Save.

The system produces one consolidated invoice for everything you ticked, records the claim, and marks those lot/stage cells as billed.

Billing across multiple runs

You bill a community progressively, the same way you'd bill stages over the life of a normal stage-billing job — just across many lots at once.

  • A cell that has already been billed is locked — its selector is removed so the same lot/stage can't be billed twice.
  • In each later run you simply tick the newly reached lot/stage cells and save, producing one more consolidated invoice for that run.
  • You can add and approve a new lot after billing has started. It joins the community and its stages appear as billable cells, without disturbing anything already invoiced.

What success looks like

  • Turning on multi-project billing creates the community contract on the head project.
  • Each lot has its own contract sharing the community's billing stages, with a value derived from its estimate.
  • Approving a lot rolls its stage values into the community; the community's stage totals equal the sum of all approved lots.
  • The multi-project claim worksheet lists every lot with a column per stage, and all un-billed cells are selectable.
  • Saving a claim produces exactly one invoice for the selected cells, and those cells become locked against re-billing.

Gotchas

  • Multi-project billing is a stage-billing model. Lots are billed at milestones. If you need % complete against a schedule of values, use progress billing instead.
  • A lot joins the community when it's approved — not before. An unapproved lot won't appear on the consolidated claim worksheet.
  • Lots don't get their own proposal / sales-order buttons. This is intentional — a lot bills through the community, not on its own.
  • Already-billed cells are locked. To reverse a billed lot/stage, raise a credit/adjustment — don't try to un-tick it.
  • Approve the community's lots from the lot contracts, not the head. The head project's community contract is the consolidated roll-up; you drive approvals from each lot.
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