Recurring and time & materials billing

For ongoing work, you don't want to build a new invoice from scratch every cycle. Time & Materials projects bill against logged hours, and recurring billing can raise — and even send — invoices for you automatically.

On a Time & Materials project, your team logs time against tasks as they work.
Set a billing frequency (for example weekly or monthly) and a billing period in the project's billing settings.
At the end of each period, Handl gathers the billable time logged and turns it into invoice line items.
Choose how much detail appears on the invoice and in the client portal — from just hour counts, to fully itemised time entries by date or by task.
Turn on auto-generate so the invoice is created automatically each cycle, and auto-send if you want it emailed to the client without you needing to press Send yourself.

Pause billing for a while

If a client goes quiet, or you agree a break, you can pause a recurring billing item instead of cancelling it. While it's paused no invoices are created and nothing is sent.

Open the project and go to its Billing plan.
On the billing item, select Pause.
Choose how long: Resume on a date (pick a date after today) or Pause for a number of billing cycles (1 to 24). The dialog shows when the next invoice will be.
Optionally add a reason. It's shown in the activity log.
On a Time & Materials item, choose what happens to time logged during the pause: Bill it on the first invoice after resuming, or Leave it unbilled (you can bill it manually later).
Select Pause billing.

The item resumes by itself on the date you chose, or you can select Resume now any time. When you resume early you choose between Re-arm the next billing day (no invoice today) and Invoice now for the current period (creates a draft straight away). To change a pause, select Edit pause.

A paused item shows its resume date everywhere billing is forecast, including your cash flow forecast and the client's portal, rather than showing a payment that won't happen.

Good to know

If auto-send isn't turned on, invoices are still generated automatically each cycle, just left as a draft for you to review and send.
Time marked as non-billable (including all time on internal projects) is never pulled into an invoice.
You can adjust how much time detail your client sees on their portal separately from what appears on the emailed invoice itself.

FAQs

What happens if no time was logged in a billing period?
An invoice isn't worth sending if there's nothing to bill — check your billing settings if you expect an invoice that didn't appear.

Can I review an invoice before it's sent automatically?
Yes — leave auto-send off and Handl will still generate the draft for you to check and send yourself.

Can I pause recurring billing without cancelling it?
Yes — pause the billing item on the project's Billing plan and resume on a date, after a number of cycles, or whenever you choose.

Does recurring billing work the same way for retainers?
Retainers use the same underlying cycle engine but bill a fixed amount plus any overage — see "Retainers: automatic invoicing and overage billing."