Preparing Contractor Billing Data for Accounting Exports

Most agencies do not raise contractor invoices inside their time tracking tool. They prepare the figures there and then move them into accounting software. That handover is where small inconsistencies turn into real work, such as a contact name spelt two ways, a missing tax rate or a total that does not match the approved hours.

This article covers how to prepare contractor billing data so it can be exported and imported cleanly, with a particular note on Xero compatible files.

The single most important rule is that billing exports should only ever contain approved time and approved expenses. If draft, or submitted but unapproved, hours can slip into an export, sooner or later they will end up on an invoice. Filter by status before exporting, and check that the export preview confirms it.

JN Tempo exports follow the filters and date range you apply, and show a preview of what the file will contain before it is generated. Use that preview to confirm the status, period and contractor list are what you expect.

Accounting imports usually match on names and codes. If your client is called one thing in your time records and something slightly different in your accounting contacts, the import will either fail or create a duplicate contact. The same applies to account codes, tax rates and item codes.

If you bill clients in more than one currency, never let totals from different currencies be added together. Each invoice should be in a single currency, and your export should keep each currency's lines and totals apart. JN Tempo already totals amounts in different currencies separately in its filters and exports, which helps avoid this mistake at the source.

Check too that rates are stored with their currency. A rate of 500 means little on its own, and a placement that switches currency part way through needs to be handled as two separate billing lines rather than one.

Xero supports importing customer invoices from a file, using a template that sets out the columns it expects. The details of that template can change, so always download the current version from Xero Central before setting up a new export routine, rather than relying on an old copy.

In general, an invoice import needs to know who the invoice is for, the invoice number and dates, what each line is for, the quantity and unit amount, and how tax and accounts should be applied. Missing or mistyped values in any of these are the usual reasons an import is rejected.

Do a test import with a small file first. Check the draft invoices in your accounting software before approving them, and only move to larger batches once a small one has gone through cleanly.

Validated Xero compatible billing export files are part of the JN Tempo V2.0.0 rollout and are not yet listed on the live product site. These are files prepared for you to import, not a live connection to Xero, so you stay in control of what goes into your accounts and when.

They are designed to work with contractor billing, which is also being rolled out, bringing together approved hours with approver details, rates, currencies, totals and optional PO references. Until these reach your account, CSV exports for payroll and Excel exports of filtered timesheet data can be used to prepare figures by hand.

Most export problems repeat, so watch for the ones below each time you prepare a batch. On the last of them, JN Tempo leaves private notes out of exports unless an admin chooses to include them.

Write your export routine down as a short checklist, test it with one client, and keep a copy of every file you import alongside a note of when it was imported. That record makes it easy to trace any figure back to its source. To see how JN Tempo exports and the billing rollout fit your process, visit jntempo.jnhorizon.com.