ZEIT.IO is a platform for the automatic billing of project times. Up to now, ZEIT.IO has been used primarily for time & material projects. These are projects that are billed based on the effort involved. For such projects, an hourly rate or daily rate is agreed with the customer, and the effort incurred is invoiced after an approval process. This also works very well with our auto-outgoing invoice feature, which creates and sends the outgoing invoice immediately after approval.

Even though the majority of our customers mainly work on time & material projects, there are always cases where a customer wins a fixed-price project and would also like to handle it on ZEIT.IO. This option is now available. Fixed-price projects can be mapped on ZEIT.IO!

If you now create a new project, you can select the project type "Fixed price".

If the project type "Fixed price" is selected, the margin calculation in the project also changes. Time & Material projects always start with a margin of 0 EUR and the absolute EUR margin increases with each booked time. This is because each booked time unit has an purchase price and a sales value and the difference between the both corresponds to the margin. You can find more details on how the margin calculation works for Time & Material projects here.

Fixed price projects, on the other hand, always start with a margin of 100%. If you create a fixed price project with a budget of 100,000 EUR, the margin at the beginning is exactly 100,000 EUR because there are no expenses/costs at the start of the project. If times or expenses are booked to the project, the margin is reduced accordingly. If, for example, the freelancer Max Mustermann is registered as a member with a purchase price of 100 EUR/hour and he books an hour on the project, the margin is reduced by 100 EUR to 99,900 EUR. If he books a total of 10 hours on the project, the margin drops accordingly to 99,000 EUR.

With this construct, you can therefore map the use case that you charge the customer a fixed price, but you yourself purchase the services provided on an hourly basis (or daily basis). The margin in the project is updated with each booking. This means that you always have the margin in view.

Now you may have a case where you charge a fixed price to the customer and you also want to award the costs to a subcontractor as a fixed price. We can also cover this case!

When you create a new project, you can enter different budgets. Now there is also a budget for fixed price packages in the project.

A fixed-price package is a work package with a precise specification, a deadline and a fixed purchase and sales value. You can create as many fixed-price packages as you like in the project. However, the total sales of all fixed-price packages must not exceed the budget (fixed-price packages) entered.

Once you have created the project, you will now find a new item for "Fixed-price packages" in the side menu on the left. If you click on it, you will see all the fixed-price packages in the project. For a new project, the list is of course empty.

You can create a new fixed price package here by clicking on the button "Create new fixed price package". This will open the following form:

Here you can create a new fixed price package by defining a unique title, the item description on the outgoing invoice, a specification, purchase price, sales price, deadline and a supplier.

The specification should be a detailed description of the service to be provided. The purchase price is the price you pay your subcontractor. The sales price is the price you bill your customer for the same package. The sales price is of course never visible to the subcontractor/supplier!

In the dropdown for suppliers, you can select a supplier to whom this package should be assigned. This subcontractor/supplier is then responsible for processing this package. Only suppliers who are already members of the project and have an active supplier contract appear in the dropdown. If the list is empty, that's fine. Then you first have to add a supplier to the project. If suppliers already appear in the dropdown, you select one and click "Save", then the supplier will be informed via email that a new fixed price package has been assigned to him/her. The email will also contain a link to the fixed-price package.

If you have created a few fixed-price packages and some have already been approved and invoiced, the project could look something like this:

In the overview table you can see which package is assigned to which user and in the status column you can see the current status of the respective package. Once the assigned supplier has requested approval for a package and it has been approved, the package can no longer be edited.

The approval process for fixed price packages works very similarly to booked time. The supplier who is assigned one or more packages can see the packages assigned to them in the project in the project detail view. Here are the instructions for fixed price packages for freelancers. The supplier, or freelancer, can request approval for a fixed price package at any time.

To do this, the supplier must click on the "Request approval" button in the corresponding line. This opens a dialog in which you can optionally upload a PDF and leave a comment before finally requesting approval. The optional PDF file can, for example, be proof from the customer that the package was actually accepted. After the approval request, the approved persons in the project are informed by email that a new proof of performance is waiting for approval. Similar to booked times, the approved persons can view the submission and then comment on it, reject it or approve it!

This new feature naturally works together with the credit note procedure and also with automatic outgoing invoices. If the supplier participates in the credit note procedure, then a credit note is issued for each approved fixed-price package. And if auto-invoicing is activated in the project, then an outgoing invoice is automatically created for each approved package.

Here you can find an explanatory video on the topic.

In addition to project times and expenses/travel costs, fixed-price packages can now also be mapped on ZEIT.IO. The approval process, the credit procedure and auto-invoicing also work together with fixed-price packages. This means that our customers can eliminate additional Excel files.