Let’s say that you own a business where you’re paid for the services you offer. You have to let your customers know the exact number of hours spent on each service so that they can pay you accordingly. However, there’s always some confusion during invoicing time. This is due to either the client disagreeing with the worked hours you’ve submitted, or a lack of proper communication.
Zoho Invoice has come up with the Client Approval feature to help you in this situation. This is an exclusive feature for the Timesheet module in Zoho Invoice.
Why do you need Client Approval for time entries?
Mike owns a design company that’s designing posters for an upcoming campaign. On an approximate calculation, Mike promises his client that he will complete the work in 52 hours and the client can pay him for that amount. Due to some technical issues, the work gets delayed and certain tasks take more than the usual time to be completed. As a result, the total amount on the invoice is a tad more than what was decided earlier. The client refuses to pay for this, since there is no official record of delay.
Things would have been smooth if Mike had used Client Approval. He could have sent the time entries for his client’s approval and added the reason behind the delay in the comments section. Mike and his client could have discussed the delay in the comment section and come to an understanding of what happened. This would have prevented the confusion while invoicing.
How does this feature help?
Accurate time entries
The recorded time entries are submitted to your clients so they can see the total time spent on the task, the project for which it was recorded, and the date. With this data, the client gets a clear idea of what happened at the user’s end, avoiding unnecessary complications in the future.
Easy discussion
You and your clients don’t have to email or call each other whenever there’s something to discuss. Just use the comments section to exchange messages.
Proof of conversation
Your comments within the product and the client portal provide official proof of what was discussed, which can be used later if there’s any confusion about payments for the invoices.
Submitting time entries for multiple projects
If you have started multiple projects for the same client, all of their time entries can be grouped together under one client approval and sent to the client. This saves a lot of time by handling all the time entries for a single client under one roof.
How do I set it up?
Setting up the Client Approval feature doesn’t take more than a minute! If you’re a new user who would like to try this feature or an existing user who’d like to try it for your existing time entries, head over to our help document to learn the steps. If you’re using Zoho Books, read our help document to know how it works there.
If you require any assistance with this feature, you can write to us, call us, or have a live chat with our representatives.
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