Billing requirements influence more than invoicing in Unanet. For government contractors, project and task structure decisions affect funding visibility, cost and revenue reporting, charging controls, and daily workflows. Aligning setup with contract requirements and the needs of accounting, contracts, and project management can reduce manual intervention and improve oversight.
Highlights
- Project Structure. Billing requirements help determine whether separate projects or tasks best support contract funding, reporting, and management needs.
- Reporting Visibility. Separate projects require careful report selection and rollups to provide a complete view of costs, revenue, and project performance.
- Funding Updates. Task-level funding requires manual updates when modifications change the amounts allocated to labor, travel, or other elements.
- Charging Controls. Time and expense settings should direct employees to the correct project or task, supporting accurate billing and reporting.
- Team Coordination. Accounting, contracts, and project management should review setup decisions together and reassess them as contract requirements evolve.
Creating Invoices that meet Contract requirements is a necessity for all government contractors. However, it is a disservice to the Project Manager and executives if the billing requirements are not considered when defining the project structure, reporting requirements and other controls. Understanding how the billing type impacts revenue recognition and factors that influence the burn rate and other key metrics makes a significant difference in the reporting accuracy. The project structure helps to ensure compliance with the Invoicing and impacts how data is entered and reported on from a contract compliance perspective.
Consider Contract and Billing Requirements Before Project Setup
When reviewing a new contract to determine how to best setup the necessary components in Unanet, there are a few items to consider. First, there is the contract itself. The contract is designed to track funding, value, modifications and provisions. If you have a contract an IDIQ, you’ll likely setup multiple contract that are linked to that IDIQ master contract over time. For Delivery Order or Definitive Contracts, you’ll likely create one Unanet contract and then allow multiple projects to link to that contract that contain the different variables that are funded and managed in that contract.
The Billing requirements are a large part of the overall consideration when setting up Projects in Unanet. You can invoice a single Project, or you can roll together multiple Projects into one Invoice. If you are invoicing for a contract that has multiple Option years, a Project can be set up for each option year, and they can all be invoiced together under the same Invoice heading.
However, there are times that the Billing requirements identify the need to further delimitation. A common example is separate funding lines for labor vs. travel. This article will focus on that example, but this also applies to many other areas of contract management, including billing and management of Subcontracts, ODCs and changes to project scope.
Separate Projects or Tasks for Different Billing Requirements
Let’s consider a scenario in which labor is billed on a time and materials basis, but the travel is billed as cost plus a G&A burden. In this example, the labor and expenses must be setup differently, and Unanet offers two solutions. One solution is to have separate projects – one for labor and one for travel. Projects are linked to a contract, and any funding modification entered at the Project level within the contract will flow down to update the corresponding labor or travel project. The Billing types can be different, resulting in accurate billing methodologies. The two projects can be Invoiced together in one invoice for the client based on the Invoice setup. One drawback of this methodology may be in the reporting. Clients will need to carefully include the correct projects and roll up at the correct level to see the accurate reporting for cost and revenue, and other important metrics.
The second option is to create one Unanet project and separate the labor and travel by task. The billing types can be different, resulting in accurate billing methodologies, and the Invoice will include the labor and travel tasks together by default. This results in a smaller number of projects and potentially fewer assignments for staff to be authorized on projects. However, any modifications entered at the contract level will update the project, so if funding is specified for labor and/or travel, that would need to be entered manually at the corresponding task. The reporting is simplified with this method for the revenue and cost by project.
Address Gaps in Funding, Reporting, and Charging Controls
When misalignment does occur, there may be some issues to address. As mentioned previously, if Unanet tasks are used to separate elements and identify different billing methods, any funds associated with those task lines must be entered manually after the overall project funding is added. If there are separate projects created, standard reports should be carefully run to ensure the multiple projects are included when reviewing revenue, cost and other project management metrics. Both methods do require special attention to the settings to allow time and expenses charges so that users enter their data on the correct line when entering their timesheet or expense reports. And lastly, the invoice setup must be reviewed with special attention to the contract requirements and invoicing needs to ensure clean billing.
Coordinate Setup Decisions and Review Them as Contracts Evolve
It is recommended that all Unanet clients have a strong internal process for reviewing the projects and contracts before setting them up in Unanet, and aligning the contracts, accounting and project management teams to ensure the project setup supports the needs of the customer as well as the needs of the internal team. The contract review should include the billing requirements and process to ensure that the correct billing types and separation between different billing types is achieved. The teams should also identify where current workflows rely heavily on manual intervention and determine if the setup can ease any of those areas. It is also recommended that these teams periodically assess the project setup to determine if it still supports billing, reporting, and control needs as the contract evolves.
Supporting the Full Project Lifecycle in Unanet
Once billing requirements are reflected more effectively in project setup and reporting, the next step is looking at how those decisions carry through the full life of the project. From initial setup through execution and closeout, each phase depends on structure, visibility, and coordinated management. Unanet is a powerful tool for supporting the project lifecycle, and its flexibility offers great opportunities to streamline areas to reduce manual intervention.
Redstone Government Consulting, Inc. (Redstone GCI) assists government contractors with reviewing contract requirements, evaluating project structures, configuring billing, and developing reports that support accounting and project management. Our Unanet consultants also provide workflow reviews and staff training to help teams reduce manual intervention and maintain consistent processes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Why do billing requirements matter when setting up projects in Unanet? They help determine how labor, expenses, and funding should be organized. Those decisions also affect reporting and where employees charge their time and expenses.
- Should different billing types always use separate projects? No. The article describes two options, separate projects or separate tasks within one project. The choice depends on billing requirements, funding management, and reporting needs.
- Does updating project funding also update individual task funding? No. In the task-based setup described here, funding assigned to labor or travel tasks must be updated manually when project funding changes.
- Who should participate in project setup decisions? Accounting, contracts, and project management should review the requirements together. Each team needs information that the project structure should support throughout the contract.
Kristiane Smith serves as a Senior Managing Consultant in Redstone Government Consulting’s Unanet Consulting group, where she supports government contractors in implementing, optimizing, and governing Unanet ERP and CRM environments to strengthen compliance, reporting accuracy, and operational control. With nearly two decades of experience working directly with Unanet customers across implementation, system administration, and enterprise training, Kristiane brings a deep, practical understanding of how system configuration and process design affect audit readiness, billing integrity, and contract performance. Kristiane specializes in translating complex system and business requirements into disciplined, defensible solutions that support compliant project accounting, internal controls, and cross-functional alignment between finance, contracts, HR, and operations. Her background spans full-cycle implementation leadership, enterprise user enablement, and executive advisory support, allowing her to guide clients beyond basic functionality toward sustainable, audit-ready system environments that support the realities of government contracting. At Redstone GCI, Kristiane works closely with government contractors to implement and optimize Unanet ERP and CRM environments that support compliant financial operations, accurate reporting, and effective project execution. She provides hands-on consulting across discovery, configuration, data migration, testing, training, and post-implementation optimization, partnering with finance leaders, contracts teams, project managers, and executive stakeholders to ensure systems align with regulatory expectations and operational goals. Prior to joining Redstone GCI, Kristiane held senior consulting and leadership roles delivering Unanet solutions in regulated environments. She led full-cycle implementations and advised organizations on system design that strengthened project accounting, billing integrity, and internal control maturity. Her experience includes direct operational system ownership as an ERP and business operations lead, where she served as Unanet ERP and AIM system administrator. In that role, she oversaw security and configuration governance, improved cross-functional workflows across accounting, HR, procurement, and project management, and supported leadership with system-based reporting aligned to DCAA expectations. Earlier in her career, Kristiane spent more than a decade at Unanet in progressive leadership roles, including Principal Sales Engineer, Senior Sales Engineer, and Director of Unanet University. As Director of Unanet University, she led the strategic development of enterprise training and certification programs for customers, partners, and internal teams. She implemented scalable learning platforms and built structured curricula focused on system configuration, compliance-aligned workflows, and best practices for finance and operations teams, helping standardize how organizations adopted and governed the Unanet platform. Across her career, Kristiane has supported Unanet implementations for organizations ranging from small professional services firms to large government contractors. Her experience includes designing and supporting integrations with platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics SL, QuickBooks, Sage, and MAS products, as well as providing business process consulting across project cost accounting, budgeting and forecasting, invoicing, contracts management, earned value management, and expense management. This combination of consulting leadership, operational system ownership, and enterprise training experience enables her to bridge technical configuration with real-world execution. At Redstone GCI, Kristiane applies this depth of experience to help Unanet clients build systems and processes that are not only efficient, but compliant, auditable, and aligned with the operational demands of government contracting.