Prepaid hours

Who can do thisBilling designationAccount role with billing

Open the customer and find the Prepaid hours card. Everyone can see it. Only people who may manage this customer's billing see Grant hours, Void and Adjust. The card needs cost to be on.

Grant hours

1. Click Grant hours.
2. Pick the Rate. Only rates usable for this customer are listed.
3. Enter Hours, sold in quarter hours.
4. Set Valid from (today by default) and an expiry date, or leave it blank for no expiry.
5. Add Your reference and a Note if useful.
6. Check the Locked-in price: the customer buys at this price and spends the hours later, whatever the rate does.
7. Confirm.

"No rate is available to this customer yet." means you must assign and price an active rate for the customer first.

Read a block

• Status: "Available", or why it cannot be used: cancelled, "Expired" (from the day after the expiry date), "Fully used", or "Not usable: that rate is not priced for this customer".
• For an expired block with hours left, when the rest goes, for example "Rest written off on 2026-10-29".
• Valid from, Expires or No expiry, and the Bought at price.
• "used, not yet billed" and the balance: the projected use by registered, unbilled time.
• "Held by entries awaiting confirmation or approval": credit reserved by unsettled entries.
• Movements: Granted, Used, Returned, Adjusted and projected rows. Older blocks fold behind View all grants.

Void or adjust a block

• Void this credit block with a Reason stops further use. Billed use is not reversed. It cannot be undone.
• Adjust this block's balance takes Minutes (+ or -) and a required Reason, and shows Balance after. Adjustments correct the record and need not be in quarter hours. Adjusting an expired block does not make it usable again.

How prepaid is matched

• A block covers only entries at its rate, dated within its validity. Work done inside the window stays covered even when billed after expiry. A block is usable through its expiry date; new work dated after it cannot use the block.
• Entries are taken oldest first. For each one, the block that expires soonest is used first; blocks without expiry come last.
• Each entry draws whole quarter hours. A 7-minute entry draws 15 minutes and covers 7, shown as "15m drawn, covers 7m".
• If one block runs out mid-entry, the rest comes from the next eligible block.
• From registration onwards the same calculation runs as a projection, so the card, the ticket's prepaid left and the Billing page all show the expected cover. The real draw happens at Mark billed and equals the projection.

Expiry and write-off

Once a day, Helpdesk writes off what is left on a block 14 days after its expiry date, on every desk where time registration and cost are on.

• The 14 days are a grace period. Time dated inside the block's window keeps its cover, also when it is registered late, during the grace.
• The write-off leaves alone whatever unbilled time dated inside the window still uses. It shows as a movement on the card.
• The write-off and a bill run never spend the same minutes. If a block was written off or changed after you previewed a bill run, the bill run says so instead of billing on old figures.