Invoices in Rocketlane can include work from one or more projects. When multi-budget is enabled, invoice line items are also associated with the relevant budget within each project.

This helps finance teams and project managers bill work by budget, review budget-level invoice totals during invoice creation, and generate invoice PDFs that show or hide the budget breakdown based on what the customer should see.

When to Use

Use multi-budget invoicing when:

• A project has multiple budgets that need to be billed separately.
• A single invoice needs to include work from multiple budgets.
• You want invoice line items grouped by project and budget.
• You need to bill time entries, expenses, fixed fees, subscription periods, or ad hoc charges against specific budgets.
• Your finance team needs budget-level visibility while creating or previewing invoices.
• You want invoice PDFs to include a budget breakdown.

How Multi-Budget Changes Invoicing

When multi-budget is not enabled, invoice line items are associated with a project.

When multi-budget is enabled, each invoice line item is associated with:

• A project
• A budget under that project

This means a single invoice can include multiple projects and multiple budgets. Each selected budget carries its own line items and subtotals during invoice creation.

Each selected budget can also have different line items based on the work billed against it. For example, one budget can include time entries and expenses, while another budget on the same invoice can include fixed fees or ad hoc charges.

What You Can Bill Against a Budget

Invoice line items can come from different sources.

When multi-budget is enabled, each line item must be associated with the correct budget under the project.

For example, if a project has separate Implementation, Training, and Support budgets, the invoice line items should be assigned to the budget they consume from.

For standard invoice line item fields such as description, quantity, unit price, amount, tax, and total, refer to this article.

Create an Invoice for a Multi-Budget Project

Invoice creation follows the standard invoice creation flow, with an additional budget selection step when multi-budget is enabled.

To create an invoice for a multi-budget project:

1. Go to Invoices.
2. Click Create invoice.
3. Select the project or projects to invoice.
4. Select the budget under each project.

When multi-budget is enabled, projects appear with their budgets listed beneath them. Rocketlane preselects the default budget for each project. If a project has more than one budget, select the budget you want to bill before continuing.

5. Select the work to bill.

You can include supported billable items such as time entries, expenses, fixed fees, or subscription periods. The available items are filtered and grouped based on the selected budgets.

6. Review and modify line items.

Each project has its own line item grid. If the project includes multiple selected budgets, line items are grouped by budget.

7. Review the project and budget totals.

The summary section shows totals by project and, where applicable, by budget.

8. Choose whether to show or hide the budget breakdown.

Use Hide budget breakdown if you want the invoice to show a single project total instead of separate budget subtotals.

9. Preview the invoice.

The invoice PDF follows the same budget breakdown setting selected during invoice creation.

10. Create or send the invoice.

For the full standard invoice creation flow, including invoice details, Bill To, From address, notes, attachments, preview, and saving as draft, refer to this article.

Budget Breakdown on Invoice PDFs

When budget breakdown is shown, the invoice PDF includes budget-level subtotals under the relevant project.

When Hide budget breakdown is selected, the PDF collapses the budget split and shows a single project total instead of separate budget subtotals.

Use the budget breakdown when the customer should see how invoice amounts are split across budgets. Hide the breakdown when the customer should only see the project-level total.

For other invoice PDF settings, default notes, addresses, and invoice essentials, refer to this article.

Viewing Budget Details After Invoice Creation

Budget breakdown is most visible during invoice creation and preview.

After an invoice is created, the invoice detail page focuses on the overall invoice details, such as status, invoice fields, approval, payment records, and email activity.

To review budget-level invoice information after creation, use invoice list views or reporting areas that include budget-level invoice rollups.

Invoice list views can show budget names and include budget-based filtering when multi-budget is enabled.

For general invoice list page metrics, filters, saved views, payment statuses, and outstanding balances, refer to this article.

Payments, Write-Offs, and Budget Rollups

Payments and write-offs are recorded against the whole invoice.

Rocketlane does not create a separate payment or write-off record for each budget on the invoice.

Budget-level financial values are calculated from the invoice total. Rocketlane prorates invoice-level values, such as invoiced amount, paid amount, written-off amount, and outstanding amount, based on each budget’s share of the invoice total.

This means:

• The invoice remains the source of truth for payment and write-off records.
• Budget-level values are derived from the invoice totals.
• Voided invoices are excluded from these rollups.

For steps to record payments, write off invoices, void invoices, or delete invoices, refer to this article.

Revenue Recognition and Invoicing

Revenue recognition is calculated separately from invoicing.

Creating, paying, crediting, or writing off an invoice does not automatically update revenue recognition for the budget. Revenue recognition follows the budget’s revenue configuration and is not directly driven by invoice line items.

Invoice Statuses in Multi-Budget Invoices

Multi-budget does not change invoice statuses. Status is tracked at the invoice level, not at the budget level.

A multi-budget invoice has one overall status, even when it includes several projects and budgets.

For example, an invoice that includes three budgets does not have separate statuses for each budget. The invoice moves through the standard invoice lifecycle as a single invoice.

For invoice status definitions and lifecycle details, refer to this article. For actions available in each status, refer to this article.

Invoice Approvals in Multi-Budget Invoices

Multi-budget does not change invoice approval behavior.

Approvals are requested, reviewed, and completed for the invoice as a whole. They are not requested separately for each budget on the invoice.

For approval chains, approval workflow setup, automated approvals, and manual approval requests, refer to this article.

Invoice Custom Fields in Multi-Budget Invoices

Multi-budget does not change how invoice custom fields are configured or filled.

Invoice custom fields remain invoice-level fields. They are not configured separately per budget.

The multi-budget-specific field behavior is the ability to show or hide the budget breakdown during invoice creation and PDF generation.

For creating invoice custom fields, supported field types, and display-on-invoice behavior, refer to this article.

Permissions for Multi-Budget Invoices

Invoice permissions are controlled at the project level.

Budget membership does not determine whether a user can create, view, approve, void, or manage invoices. A user’s invoice access depends on their role and invoice-related permissions for the project.

For details on invoice access, creation, approvals, status management, payments, write-offs, invoice control, billing events, and invoice settings permissions, refer to this article.

Tax Codes in Multi-Budget Invoices

Multi-budget does not change the tax code setup or tax calculation behavior.

Taxes continue to apply at the invoice line item level. If tax codes are enabled, line items can use the configured tax code behavior, regardless of which budget the line item belongs to.

For tax code setup, tax components, invoice display options, default tax codes, and tax calculation behavior, refer to this article.

Billing Logged Work vs. Adding Ad Hoc Lines

Most invoice line items come from work already recorded in Rocketlane, such as time entries, expenses, fixed fees, or subscription periods.

These items carry their original amount and description. After they are billed, they are excluded from other invoices, helping prevent the same item from being billed twice.

Ad hoc lines are different. They are manually entered and do not come from an underlying source item.

Use ad hoc lines when you need to add a one-off charge to the invoice.

When multi-budget is enabled, ad hoc lines must still be assigned to the correct project and budget.

Credit Notes for Multi-Budget Invoices

If a multi-budget invoice needs to be corrected after it is issued, use credit notes instead of editing the invoice directly.

Credit notes are created from a source invoice and help reverse all or part of an already issued invoice while preserving an audit trail. For multi-project invoices, credit notes reflect the project-level grouping of the source invoice.

For creating credit notes, applying credits, credit note limits, and credit note lifecycle, refer to this article.

Billing Schedules and Events

Billing schedules and billing events can generate invoices based on dates, task status changes, or project status changes.

When working with multi-budget projects, ensure that the invoices generated from billing schedules or events are reviewed for the correct project and budget breakdown before sending them to the customer.

For billing schedule setup, billing events, templates, date-based events, task-based events, project-based events, timezone control, and invoice conditions, refer to this article and this article.