Close the month in Sumhour

Month end is the page you open when the month closes. It shows every project with billable work that hasn’t been invoiced yet, how long it has been waiting, and what you can do about each one. It’s open to owners, admins and accountants. If it’s missing from the menu, an admin has turned it off under Workspace settings → “Modules”.

Pick the month

The page shows one month at a time. Use the arrows next to the month name to go back; you can’t go past the current month. For the running month the line beside it reads “Uninvoiced work as of” today. For a finished month it reads “Still unbilled, worked through” the month’s last day.

A past month is not a frozen snapshot. It shows work dated up to that day as it stands now: hours you have invoiced or written off since then are gone from it, and a changed % complete changes the fixed-fee figure. Open October in mid-November and you see what from October and before is still waiting today.

The four numbers at the top

Card	What it shows
Uninvoiced	Value of hourly work not yet on an invoice, with its hours. Earned fixed-fee work is added underneath. Fixed-fee and retainer hours aren’t in this card; you see them on their ledger rows.
Older than 60 days	The part of that value logged more than 60 days ago. It turns amber when it isn’t zero.
Unbilled cost	What all uninvoiced time cost you at each person’s cost rate, fixed-fee and retainer time included. The margin underneath is for hourly work only: hourly value minus hourly cost, if you billed all of it. When the ledger also has fixed-fee or retainer time it reads “margin on hourly work”.
Written off	Share of work written off in the last 90 days: written-off value divided by billed plus written-off value. Amber above 5%.

When clients are billed in different currencies, the money cards and the ledger’s total row show one figure per currency (“USD 9,000 + EUR 1,200”); Sumhour never adds currencies together. Cost is in your workspace currency, and the margin then covers the work billed in that currency.

The uninvoiced ledger

One row per project with open work. Hourly, fixed-fee and retainer projects appear; non-billable ones never do.

Time is sorted into age buckets by entry date: 0-30 days, 31-60, 61-90 and 91+ (an entry exactly 90 days old is in 61-90). Hourly rows show money in each bucket with the hours underneath. Fixed-fee and retainer rows show hours only, since those hours aren’t billed one by one. Anything in the 61-90 and 91+ columns is shown in amber.

Values come from the rate saved on each entry when it was logged. Changing a rate later never rewrites old rows. On wide screens there’s also a “Cost” column. The Uninvoiced tab in reports uses the same rule if you need the figures as a CSV.

Each row has actions:

“Draft invoice” opens the invoice builder for that client, through the same date.
“Adjust” opens a menu: “Write off time” appears when the row has uninvoiced hours, and “Write down the amount” on hourly and fixed-fee rows.
“Statement” on a retainer row opens the project’s retainer periods.

Write-offs and write-downs

Both remove money from what you’ll bill, in different ways.

	Write off	Write down
What happens to the time	Leaves the ledger for good and never reaches an invoice	Stays billable and goes on the next invoice as usual
What happens to the money	The value of those hours is gone	A fixed amount you choose comes off the next invoice as a negative line
Hours in reports and cost	Kept	Kept
Available on	Any row with uninvoiced hours, retainers included	Hourly and fixed-fee rows

Use a write-off for work you won’t charge for, like rework after a mistake. Use a write-down when the work gets billed but the client gets money off, like a goodwill discount.

Both open a drawer. Pick “Through” (entries on or before this date) and give a “Reason”; it’s required and goes on the activity log. A write-down also needs an “Amount”. Click “Write off this time” or “Book write-down”.

For a write-off, the box at the top shows exactly what that date covers: the hours, how many entries, their value at entry rates and their cost. Change “Through” and it recalculates; the button waits until it has. If nothing is uninvoiced through the date, the button stays off. Two write-offs, or a write-off and an invoice draft, made at the same moment never take the same hour twice.

A booked write-down shows “write-down pending” on the project row. The next draft for that project, with an end date on or after the write-down’s date, adds a line reading “write-down:” followed by your reason.

Undo an adjustment

The “Adjustments” list at the bottom shows every write-off and write-down with the date, project, kind, reason and amount. Kinds read “Write-off”, “Write-down · pending” or “Write-down · on invoice”.

The undo icon works until an invoice carries the adjustment. Undoing a write-off puts the hours back into the ledger. Once a write-down is on an invoice, you can’t undo it here. Removing that line from the draft, deleting the draft or voiding the invoice makes it pending again.

Fixed-fee projects and percent complete

A fixed-fee row has a “% complete” box. Type a whole number from 0 to 100 and click “Save”. Next to it, “earned, unbilled” shows:

fee × percent complete − the fee already on invoices for the project

“The fee already on invoices” counts fixed-fee lines only, on drafts and sent invoices but not voided ones. Hourly extras billed on top of the fee and negative lines such as write-downs don’t count. It never goes below zero. A project at 40% of a 10,000 fee with 2,500 already invoiced shows 1,500 earned and unbilled. That figure goes into the “Uninvoiced” card and the ledger total.

The percentage is yours to set. Sumhour doesn’t work it out from hours. The next draft bills the same figure month end shows:

The project has	The draft’s fee line
No % complete set (or 0%)	The full fee, minus the fee already on invoices
A % complete	Fee × percent complete, minus the fee already on invoices. At 40% of 10,000 with 2,500 invoiced, 1,500.
A payment schedule	One line per payment that is due; % complete doesn’t change it

Once the fee is fully billed, the line reads “fixed fee, billed on an earlier invoice” at zero, so its hours still have a home. Remove it if you don’t want it.

Retainers this period

If you have retainer projects, a “Retainers this period” table lists each active one, even when nobody logged time in the period, with the period the month’s date falls in, “Used / included” hours (included hours plus anything rolled over), “Overage” and “Retainer invoice”. A period with no fee invoice yet shows “Not invoiced”.

“Invoice retainer” drafts the fee invoice for the period. “Invoice overage” appears when the period went over and the project has an overage rate. It drafts the extra hours and locks that period’s entries. Both land in the normal invoice editor. How retainers carry hours over and handle overage is set on the project; see projects and clients.

Draft all invoices

“Draft all invoices” in the header shows how many invoices it will make. It makes one draft per client with hourly or fixed-fee work waiting, covering everything through the as-of date. A fixed-fee project joins only when it has a % complete or a payment due, so nobody gets a full-fee draft by accident. “Draft invoice” on its row still bills it. Each draft:

takes all of that client’s uninvoiced billable time, from the start,
groups time by project and task,
includes billable expenses,
is titled “Work through” and the date.

Retainer time is left out, because the retainer invoices bill it. Nothing is emailed. You land on the Draft tab of Invoices, where you check each one, edit lines and send them yourself. The confirm box before it runs says the same: “Nothing is sent; you review each draft.”