Billing placeholders

Quick answer

Placeholders let you automatically insert billing period dates, workload quantities, and contact details into invoice line descriptions. Add them to a product, contract row, or invoice description, and Uku replaces them with the actual values when the invoice is created — so you never need to manually update “Accounting services for [month]” on every invoice.

Who can do this

• Any member with permission to create or edit products, contracts, or invoices.
• Permissions depend on your company’s billing settings. See Billing permissions and settings.

Available placeholders

Placeholder	What it inserts
`##{{invoice_previous_period}}`	Previous billing period (for example "December 2025")
`##{{invoice_period}}`	Current billing period (for example "January 2026")
`##{{invoice_next_period}}`	Next billing period (for example "February 2026")
`##{{quantity_as_time}}`	Billed quantity displayed as time (for example "2h 30min")
`##{{quantity_as_number}}`	Billed quantity displayed as a number (for example "2.5")
`##{{client_primary_user}}`	The client's primary assigned team member name

For prepayment invoices, ##{{invoice_next_period}} is especially useful — it automatically shows the upcoming billing period on the invoice.

How to add a placeholder

Placeholders can be added in the Product, Contract, or Invoice view.

1. Open the Product, Contract row, or Invoice line you want to edit.
2. In the description field, type the placeholder exactly as shown in the table above — for example ##{{invoice_period}}.
3. Save the product or contract row.
4. When Uku generates the invoice, the placeholder is automatically replaced with the real value.

Example

If a product description contains:

Accounting services for ##{{invoice_period}}

The generated invoice line displays:

Accounting services for January 2026

Troubleshooting

Placeholder text appears literally on the invoice instead of being replaced

Double-check the placeholder syntax. It must use the exact format ##{{placeholder_name}} with no extra spaces inside the braces. Copy and paste the placeholder from the table above to ensure accuracy.

The period shown on the invoice is wrong

Verify that the correct placeholder is used. ##{{invoice_period}} shows the current billing period; ##{{invoice_previous_period}} and ##{{invoice_next_period}} show the adjacent periods. Also confirm that the contract’s billing period is configured correctly.

Workload placeholder shows zero

##{{quantity_as_time}} and ##{{quantity_as_number}} pull data from tracked time entries. If no time has been logged against the relevant tasks for that billing period, the value is zero.

Screenshots