Understand how money flows in AtomicSam
Learn how billing profiles, jobs, and invoices connect. This helps you set up billing correctly and get paid faster.
This guide explains how money and billing information move through AtomicSam. Understanding this structure helps you make the right choices when setting up your jobs and invoicing your clients.
AtomicSam separates client details, job-specific billing rules, and the work itself into distinct layers. This lets you handle different types of work for the same client with flexibility. You can have a fixed-price job and a time-and-materials job for one client, and invoice for both correctly.
Before you start
- You need permissions to view and edit clients, jobs, and invoices. These are typically available to staff members with Admin or Finance Manager roles.
- To connect to accounting software, you need Admin permissions.
The financial workflow
The flow from setup to payment follows a clear path. Each step builds on the last, ensuring that information is consistent and accurate when it's time to create an invoice.
- Client Billing Profile: This is the foundation. It stores the client's default currency, tax rates, payment terms, and contact information.
- Job Billing Mode: Each job has its own billing mode. This defines how you will charge for the work on that specific job.
- Quote: You can create a quote to get client approval on the scope and price before work begins.
- Time & Costs: Your team tracks billable time and expenses against the job.
- Invoice: You generate an invoice from the tracked time and costs, which are calculated using the rules from the job and billing profile.
- Accounting Export: You send the final invoice data to your connected accounting platform.
Set up a Client Billing Profile
The Billing Profile is the highest level of financial setup. It lives on the Client record. Every client needs at least one billing profile before you can create a billable job for them. A profile stores the client’s core invoicing details, such as:
- Default currency
- Standard tax rate
- Invoice payment terms (e.g.,
Net 30) - Invoice template
💡 Tip: You can create multiple billing profiles for a single client. This is useful if you work with different departments that have different billing addresses or purchase order numbers.
Choose a Job Billing Mode
After you set up the client, you create a Job. On each job, you must select a Billing Mode. This setting determines the rules for calculating the Job Total. The right choice depends on how you agreed to charge for the work.
| Billing Mode | What it does | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Time & Materials | You invoice based on hours worked and costs incurred. Each staff member's time is billed at their specific rate. | Jobs where the scope is not fully defined or is expected to change. |
| Fixed Price | You invoice for a single, predetermined price, regardless of the time or costs spent. | Jobs with a clearly defined scope and deliverables. |
| Non-Billable | You can track time and costs for internal records, but they will not appear on an invoice. | Internal work, pro-bono projects, or tracking sales and admin time. |
⚠️ Heads up: You can change the billing mode after a job has started, but be careful. Switching from Fixed Price to Time & Materials may require you to manually adjust time entries to make them billable.
Track time and add costs
Once a job is active, your staff members add time entries and costs. Time entries capture the hours worked, and costs capture any external expenses like software licenses or travel. These items are the raw ingredients for your invoice. AtomicSam marks them as billable or non-billable based on the job's billing mode and the rates you've set.
Generate an invoice
You create an invoice directly from a job. When you do, we pull in all unbilled time and costs. The invoice automatically applies the correct rates, taxes, and payment terms from the job and the client's billing profile. You can review and edit any line item on the invoice draft before you send it.
Good to know
- You can add time and costs from multiple jobs onto a single invoice for a client.
- Manually editing a rate or a total on an invoice does not change the default rates on the job or billing profile. The change only applies to that specific invoice.
- For Fixed Price jobs, the approved Quote amount often becomes the basis for the invoice total. You can still track time to understand profitability, but it will not affect the amount you bill the client.