Billing overview — how Uku's billing module works

Quick answer — Uku's Billing module covers the full revenue cycle: creating products and contracts, generating and sending invoices, tracking payments, correcting errors with credit notes, finding missed billing, and syncing with your accounting software. Activate the module in Settings & Apps, then work through the setup steps below.

Who can do this

• Billing is available on the Team plan and above. The feature must be activated in Settings & Apps > Billing.
• Company Owners and Company Admins can activate and fully configure the Billing module, manage all products, contracts, invoices, and billing settings.
• Company Members can access billing features based on the permission toggles in Settings & Apps > Billing > Settings. See Billing permissions and settings for the full breakdown.

What the Billing module covers

The Billing module handles every step of getting paid for your work:

• Products — define your pricing units (hourly, fixed, per-piece, combined, disbursements, additional services) and reuse them across all client contracts and invoices.
• Contracts — recurring fee agreements per client that automatically generate invoices on schedule.
• Invoices — create manually or auto-generate from contracts; manage the draft-to-paid lifecycle; send by email or export to accounting software.
• Invoice templates and formatting — control PDF layout, logo, column grouping, numbering sequences, and email subject lines.
• Credit notes — reverse or partially correct a sent invoice without voiding it.
• Tax and VAT — tax codes, VAT rates, reverse charge, per-client overrides.
• Missed billing — find tracked time and completed tasks that were never invoiced; reclaim or carry them to the next billing period.
• Client budgets — set spending caps per client or per topic; get alerts when work approaches the limit.
• Accounting integrations — import products, tax rates, and client data from Xero, QuickBooks, Merit Aktiva, e-conomic, and others; export invoices back when sent.

Where to find Billing

Path: Main navigation > Billing

Also: Client profile > Financials tab (per-client invoices and contracts)

If Billing does not appear in the main navigation, it has not been activated yet. Go to Settings & Apps > Billing > Activate.

Setup sequence for a new account

1. Activate Billing — Settings & Apps > Billing > Activate.
2. Connect accounting software (optional) — import products and tax rates from your accounting system. See accounting integrations.
3. Create products — Settings & Apps > Billing > Setup > Articles. At least one product is required before you can add contract lines or invoice rows.
4. Configure tax and VAT — Settings & Apps > Billing > Setup > Taxes. Set default VAT rates and any special rules (reverse charge, zero-rate).
5. Set up contracts for your clients — open a client profile > Financials > Contracts > Add contract.
6. Review billing permissions — Settings & Apps > Billing > Settings. Decide which Company Members can create, edit, or send invoices.
7. Configure email delivery — connect a company email account in Settings & Apps > Emails, then enable it under Billing > Settings if you want to send invoices from your own domain.
8. Set up invoice templates — Settings & Apps > Billing > Invoice templates. Edit the PDF layout and email body for each invoice type.

Topic guide — where each article lives

Topic	Article
Permissions and company settings	Billing permissions and settings
Creating and sending invoices	How to create and send invoices
Invoice statuses, approvals, bulk actions	Invoice lifecycle and bulk actions
PDF layout, email templates, numbering	Invoice templates and formatting
Correcting a sent invoice	Credit notes and corrections
Tax codes, VAT rates, reverse charge	Tax and VAT setup
Products — all types	How to create products
Client contracts and templates	How to set up contracts
Missed billing and unbilled work	How to find and manage missed billing
Client spending limits	How to use client budgets
Parent-company billing	How to set up billing under a parent company
Per-client accounting integration	How to connect a client to accounting software
Send invoices from your own domain	How to send invoices from your own domain
Invoice language per client	How to send an invoice in the client's language
Prepayment invoices	How to create a prepayment invoice

Invoice lifecycle at a glance

Every invoice moves through these statuses:

1. Draft — auto-generated or manually created; still editable.
2. Approval — optional stage; invoice is pending review before being finalised.
3. Created — finalised; no longer editable without voiding.
4. Sent — delivered to the client by email or exported to accounting software.
5. Paid — payment has been registered.

Voided invoices appear in the Cancelled tab. To reverse a sent invoice without voiding it, create a credit note instead.

Troubleshooting

Billing does not appear in the navigation

The Billing module must be activated before it appears. Go to Settings & Apps, find the Billing card, and click Activate. Only Company Owners and Company Admins can do this.

Invoices are not being generated automatically

Check that the client has an active contract with the correct billing frequency and that time has been tracked against billable tasks for the current period. For fixed-price tasks, the task must be in a non-virtual state — recurring tasks that are still in their "virtual" future period do not appear in billing until their start date.

Invoice emails are not delivered

Check the email account configuration in Settings & Apps > Emails. Uku shows a warning banner when delivery fails. Make sure the custom domain email toggle in Billing settings points to an active connected account.

Tracked time is not appearing on invoices

Verify that time entries are marked as billable and that the tasks are linked to the correct client contract and product. Also check Billing > Missed billing — time that was not picked up during invoice generation appears there.