CLIENT MONEY
Know What the Client Agreed to Pay, What They’ve Paid, and What Still Remains.
What a client agreed to pay, what they have actually paid, and what is genuinely late are three different questions. Most spreadsheets answer them with one number, which is how a client ends up chased for money they already sent.
Start With What Was Agreed.
Every Engagement carries a Client Agreement: the value, the currency and the payment terms. It is the commercial commitment the work is being delivered against, and everything else on this page is measured relative to it.
From that, a payment schedule. A deposit and a balance, monthly instalments, everything on completion, or a split you define yourself. The schedule is what makes Due Now and Overdue answerable, rather than a matter of somebody remembering what was arranged in an email in March.
Then Record What Actually Happened.
A Client Payment is a record of money that arrived: how much, when, in what currency, against which Engagement. It exists whether or not it matches the schedule, because what actually happens rarely matches the plan exactly.
Filing a payment against specific schedule items is a separate step, and a useful one, but it is not what makes the money real. Bikabo will suggest applying oldest first and let you change it before you confirm.
Payments that have arrived but not been filed yet are surfaced as a prompt to go and file them, not as a balance. It is a job to do, not a number to worry about.
Received, Outstanding, Due Now and Overdue.
Four figures that get collapsed into one constantly. Keeping them apart is the difference between knowing what a client owes and knowing what to chase this week.
Received
Every cleared payment recorded against the Engagement
Money that has actually arrived, whether or not anyone has filed it against a schedule item yet.
Outstanding
Agreed Value - Received
What is still owed on the Agreement overall. Money that has arrived is not owed, regardless of the paperwork state.
Due Now
Schedule items whose date has arrived and are not yet settled
Not the same as Outstanding. A client can owe a large amount overall with nothing due yet.
Overdue
The portion of Due Now that is past its date
A subset of Due Now, never something to add to it.
Overpayments Become Credit, Not Confusion.
When a client pays more than they owe, the surplus is recorded as Client Credit: real money of theirs that you are holding. It does not show up as a negative outstanding balance, which would be arithmetic rather than meaning.
Refunds are recorded as their own event, linked to the payment they reverse. The original payment is never deleted, so the history still shows that money came in and then went back.
Agreements Change. Their History Should Not.
Scope grows, terms are renegotiated, a client adds a phase. Record the new agreed value and the original stays beside it, so you can still see what was agreed at the start and what changed since.
Work your team logs as Additional Work never raises the agreed value by itself. Whether extra work becomes extra money is a conversation you have and then record, deliberately.
Profitability and Cash Position Are Different Questions.
Both are worth knowing. Neither answers the other, and blending them is how a business is surprised by its own bank balance.
Profitability
Agreed value against team cost. It says whether the Engagement is worth delivering, whether or not anyone has paid yet.
Cash Position
Client cash actually received, net of refunds, minus team cash actually paid. It says what has moved.
An Engagement billed in one currency can be delivered by a team paid in another. Bikabo converts using rates you configure, snapshotted onto each transaction when it is recorded, so editing a rate later never rewrites what is already on the books. A transaction in a currency with no rate configured is recorded as it happened and left out of converted totals rather than converted at a guess.
What the Client Sees.
Client Money in the portal is off by default. Turn it on for the business, then choose per Engagement whether the client sees nothing, a summary, or the full payment schedule.
What reaches a client goes through a path that explicitly lists what is allowed out, which is why the margin and cost figures sitting in the same record can never arrive there by accident.
And Where Invoicing Picks Up.
The Agreement says what is owed. The schedule says when. An invoice is the document that asks for it, and a payment is the money that answers.
Instalments you have already agreed become invoices without retyping anything, and payments recorded against an invoice flow back into the same Received figure this page is built on.
Questions About Client Money
No. The Agreement is what you and the client agreed the work is worth. An invoice is a document asking for a specific amount of it. One Agreement can produce several invoices, and an Agreement with no invoice raised yet is still a real commitment.
No. A schedule says when amounts are expected. A Client Payment is a record that money actually came in. Reading a schedule as income is the single most common way a service business ends up short of cash while looking profitable.
It becomes Client Credit rather than a negative balance. Credit is money received in excess of the obligation, which is a real thing you may owe back or set against future work. It is not the same as money you have simply not filed yet.
Yes, and the original payment stays exactly where it was. A refund is recorded as its own event linked to the payment it reverses. Financial records here are never edited away.
Record the new agreed figure. The original stays on the record beside it, so the history of what the client agreed to, and when, is preserved rather than overwritten. Extra work your team logs never changes the agreed value on its own.
Bikabo records what you were paid. It does not run your bank feed, does not reconcile your accounts and is not accounting software.
Whatever you allow. Client Money in the portal is off until you turn it on, controlled once for the business and again per Engagement, where you choose between nothing, a summary, or the full payment schedule.