For work billed by time, the recorded time is what the customer is billed for. Turning timesheets into invoices is how recorded time becomes money owed. This piece is about it in Odoo.
Time-billed work
Some work is billed by the time it consumes: time-and-material billing, where the customer is billed for the genuine hours spent. For such work, the recorded time is, directly, the basis of the bill: the customer is billed for the time recorded against their work. So for time-billed work, turning the recorded timesheets into an invoice is the step that makes the work into money owed.
How timesheets become invoices in Odoo
In Odoo, because Timesheets, Project, and the Sales and billing side are connected, the recorded time can flow into invoicing. Time recorded against a project's tasks, for a project billed by time, becomes the basis of the invoice to the customer: the invoice bills the customer for the time recorded against their work. The business does not have to separately gather the time, work out the bill, and create an invoice by hand; the connection lets the recorded time flow into the invoice. Turning timesheets into invoices is the connected system carrying the recorded time through to the bill.
Why the connection matters
The connection between recorded time and invoicing matters because it makes time-based billing accurate and efficient. Accurate, because the invoice is based on the genuine time recorded against the work, not on time reconstructed or estimated, so the customer is billed for the genuine hours. Efficient, because the recorded time flows into the invoice rather than the billing being a separate manual exercise of gathering time and computing a bill. For a business that bills work by time, turning timesheets into invoices through the connected system is what makes time-based billing genuinely work.
The role of recording and approval
Turning timesheets into invoices depends entirely on the recorded time, which means it depends on the time being recorded genuinely and on the recorded time being right. This is where the discipline of recording time honestly and promptly, and the check of approving time, matter directly: the time that becomes the invoice should be genuine and reviewed, because it is what the customer will be billed for. A business billing by time should ensure the time recording is faithful and the approval is a genuine check, because turning timesheets into invoices means that recorded time becomes money the customer is asked to pay.
The takeaway
Turning timesheets into invoices in Odoo is how, for time-billed work, recorded time becomes money owed: the time recorded against a customer's work becomes the basis of the invoice to them. In Odoo, because Timesheets, Project, and billing are connected, the recorded time flows into the invoice, which makes time-based billing accurate, billing the genuine recorded hours, and efficient, no separate manual gathering and computing. It depends on the time being faithfully recorded and genuinely approved, since the recorded time becomes what the customer is billed. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.