Invoicing
Set your bill-from details once, then generate a clean invoice from an engagement's tracked time and expenses.
Once time is tracked and priced, ProjectPacer turns it into an invoice you can hand to a client.
Set your details once
In Settings → Invoicing, enter your bill-from details — your name or company, address, and any defaults. They print on every invoice, so you fill them in once. These are the defaults: on any single invoice you can edit the bill-from block (and the billing period) right on the document without changing what's saved — handy when one client needs a different sender line, or when a monthly period should start on the Monday after the 1st.
An invoice generated before you've filled in bill-from details will be missing them. It's a two-minute, one-time step — and it needs a role that can manage workspace settings.
Generate from an engagement
Click Invoice on an engagement to open its invoice history — the invoices you've saved for it — then New invoice to start one. Invoices are built from the engagement's billable time and expenses, not from loose entries.
ProjectPacer assembles line items from tracked time at the resolved rates, plus any billable expenses on the engagement. By default that's the whole engagement to date; set the billing period to scope it to a window — bill just July, or start the period the Monday after the 1st. The tracked time and billable expenses re-pull for the dates you choose (a fixed fee or milestones aren't time-based, so they're unaffected).
You edit the invoice as the finished document — the same layout that prints. Click any field to change it, edit a line's description, quantity, or rate in place, drag lines to reorder, and add or remove lines. Choose how tracked time is itemized — by person, by task type, a single line, or by entry (one line per tracked entry, with optional Date, Person, Task, and Task type columns you turn on). Then Save invoice to keep a copy in the engagement's history, open it as a PDF to send, or export a CSV for QuickBooks or Xero to drop into your books.
Line items use the same resolved rates as the rest of the app and respect an engagement's not-to-exceed cap — so what you invoice matches what you'd expect. Time with no bill rate behind it is left off, so unpriced work doesn't land on the invoice.
Your invoice history
Save invoice keeps a copy on the engagement — a list of everything you've billed, newest first, with its number, issue date, what it covered, and the amount, plus a running invoiced to date total. Reopen one to re-download its PDF or export it again; delete one you don't need.
Saved invoices are a history, not an accounts-receivable ledger. ProjectPacer has no way to know what a client has paid — that lives in your accounting system — so invoices don't carry a paid, sent, or overdue status.
It starts from how you bill
The builder opens already set up for the engagement's billing model, so the common invoice is usually one click away — and a chip and one-line note at the top tell you what it picked and why:
- Prepaid or non-refundable retainer — bills the retainer fee. Time stays off; turn it on to add overage on top.
- Fixed fee — bills the agreed fee. Time is tracked for margin but isn't billed.
- Milestone billing — bills the milestones marked complete.
- Time & materials (capped or not) — bills all tracked time and expenses, up to the cap where one is set.
Every section is a toggle, so nothing is locked in — the model just sets the starting point. If you switch on both a fee (or milestones) and all tracked hours, ProjectPacer warns you, since the fee already covers those hours.
Export to QuickBooks & Xero
Besides the PDF, an invoice exports as a CSV ready to import into your accounting system. In the invoice builder, choose Export for QuickBooks or Export for Xero — each gets that platform's own format: one row per line item, grouped by invoice number, with US MM/DD/YYYY dates and no currency symbols. A discount exports as its own negative line.
Xero requires an account code matching a revenue account in your chart of accounts for the import to succeed — enter it on the Xero export step (tax type is optional; Xero applies a default when it's blank). QuickBooks instead lets you map the columns and confirm the date format on upload. Each step links to that provider's official import guide.
Tax isn't written as a line item — the accounting system applies it (Xero from the tax type, QuickBooks from the customer's tax setting), which is how these imports expect it.