Reports & Invoices
Understand Invoice Amounts and Billing Cycles
Understand how tracked duration, billing cycles, rate and currency history, rounding, and saved period coverage determine ZMorning invoice totals.
How does ZMorning calculate an invoice amount?
ZMorning multiplies the tracked duration covered by the invoice by the employee's applicable hourly rate, then rounds the monetary result to two decimal places. The invoice keeps the resulting period, hours, rate, currency symbol, and amount as a billing snapshot.
Understand the calculation
Tracked duration
Count covered slot time
Six complete ten-minute slots represent one billed hour.
Applicable rate
Use the rate for that work
Rate history determines which saved hourly rate applies at each point in the invoiced period.
Invoice amount
Duration × hourly rate
One billed hour at a rate of $24.00 produces an amount of $24.00.
Know which tracked time contributes
- Automatic desktop slot
- Contributes its represented ten-minute interval when it overlaps the invoice period.
- Manual slot
- Contributes in the same duration calculation without task or project attribution and without automatic keyboard, mouse, or screenshot evidence.
- Slot outside the period
- Does not contribute to that invoice.
- Slot crossing a billing boundary
- Only the portion overlapping the invoice period contributes to that invoice.
Understand billing-cycle boundaries
Regular generation waits until the complete configured period has closed. The first tracked work establishes the starting point used for Daily and Weekly periods; longer cycles align to calendar boundaries.
| Billing cycle | Period boundary | Plan availability |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | One calendar day beginning on the applicable tracked-work date. | Pro |
| Weekly | Seven consecutive days from the initial tracked-work anchor; it does not have to run Monday through Sunday. | Free and Pro |
| Monthly | The first through the last day of the calendar month. | Pro |
| Semiannual | January through June or July through December. | Pro |
| Annually | January through December of the calendar year. | Pro |
Apply rate and currency history
ZMorning records changes to the employee's billing assignment. Work before the effective change keeps the previous rate and currency; work after it uses the new values.
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1
Review the existing assignment
Confirm the current hourly rate, currency, billing cycle, and weekly contract hours before editing.
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2
Save the updated values
ZMorning records the exact effective time when any of those four billing-assignment fields changes.
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3
Close earlier unbilled work
If eligible earlier work is not covered by an invoice, saving can create one or more closing Pending invoices under the previous settings.
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4
Use the new values going forward
Later tracked duration uses the updated rate, currency, and cycle without repricing the saved earlier invoice.
Understand hours and money rounding
Billed hours
Saved to two decimal places
For example, one complete ten-minute slot is approximately 0.17 billed hours when displayed as a decimal.
Money
Rounded to two decimal places
ZMorning uses midpoint-to-even rounding for the stored amount rather than always rounding a midpoint upward.
Charges are calculated cumulatively across adjacent duration under the same pricing history. The amount for a later interval is the difference between the cumulative rounded total before and after that interval. This keeps adjoining periods consistent with the charge for their combined duration.
Know what a generated invoice preserves
A newly generated invoice saves the billing result rather than recalculating it from the employee's current settings whenever the PDF is opened.
Exact From and To boundaries and the billing-cycle value used for generation.
Rounded billed hours and the hourly rate applied to that invoice segment.
Currency symbol, rounded amount, initial Pending status, and later status or payment-method changes.
- Changing the employee's current rate does not reprice a saved invoice.
- Changing an invoice to Paid, Pending, or Cancelled does not recalculate its hours or amount.
- Cancelling an invoice does not make its covered period available for automatic generation again.
- Older invoices without a saved rate can show an Effective Hourly Rate derived from their saved amount and billed hours.
Correct tracked time before it is invoiced
A generated invoice is a coverage snapshot. Later changes to the underlying Today records do not automatically edit that invoice.
Delete billed time later
The invoice remains unchanged
Removing a covered slot reduces live time totals but does not reduce the saved invoice. If saved billed hours then exceed the remaining tracked duration, ZMorning can stop later automatic generation and show a coverage warning.
Add time to a covered period later
The invoice is not expanded
The existing invoice keeps its saved hours and amount. Its coverage also prevents another automatic invoice from overlapping the same period, so late time is not folded into that record automatically.
Understand why generation can skip or stop
- No tracked duration
- A closed period with no overlapping stored slot time produces no invoice.
- Missing or zero hourly rate
- The time remains recorded, but ZMorning cannot create a positive-rate invoice and flags the account for review.
- Existing overlapping invoice
- The covered employee and period are skipped to prevent duplicate billing.
- Incomplete legacy coverage
- An older invoice without usable From and To boundaries can prevent a safe closing invoice when billing settings change.
- Saved hours exceed remaining tracked time
- ZMorning requires coverage review before generating additional invoices for that employee.
Troubleshoot invoice amounts and periods
- The amount is lower than tracked hours × the current rate
- Part of the work can use an earlier rate, or some time can fall outside the invoice's exact From and To boundaries. Review the saved invoice period and rate.
- The Weekly period is not Monday through Sunday
- The first tracked-work date establishes the initial seven-day anchor. Later weekly periods continue from that sequence.
- A Pending invoice appeared after editing employee details
- A change to hourly rate, currency, billing cycle, or weekly contract hours can close eligible unbilled work under the previous assignment.
- The PDF says Effective Hourly Rate
- The older invoice did not save an explicit rate. ZMorning derives the displayed rate from its saved amount divided by its saved billed hours.
- Cancelling an invoice did not generate a replacement
- Status does not change period coverage. The cancelled record continues to prevent overlapping automatic generation.
- Later invoices stopped after a time deletion
- The latest invoice can now claim more billed hours than remain in its period. Review the invoice and underlying records before expecting further automation.
Common questions
Do weekly contract hours affect the invoice amount?
No. Invoice amounts use covered tracked duration and the applicable hourly rate. Weekly contract hours are used for Productivity and overtime comparisons, not for pricing time.
Does a Weekly billing cycle always run Monday through Sunday?
No. The first tracked-work date establishes the initial seven-day anchor for that employee and employer. Later Weekly periods continue from that sequence.
Does changing an hourly rate reprice earlier work?
No. ZMorning preserves billing-assignment history. Saving a change can create a closing Pending invoice for earlier unbilled work, while later work uses the new rate.
Does ZMorning convert invoice currencies?
No. The saved currency supplies the symbol or label attached to an amount. ZMorning does not retrieve exchange rates or convert earlier amounts when the currency changes.
Will deleting tracked time update an existing invoice?
No. A generated invoice keeps its saved period, hours, rate, currency, and amount. Deleting covered time later can create a coverage inconsistency that stops additional automatic invoices until it is reviewed.
Does cancelling an invoice allow ZMorning to generate it again?
No. Status does not remove invoice coverage. A Cancelled invoice still prevents another automatic invoice from overlapping the same employee and period.