Agency unbilled work review: what needs an invoice?

A time entry marked unbilled can mean several things: a missed charge, work covered by a retainer, or an extra revision nobody authorised. Before the weekly billing review, you need to know which explanation fits each item and what evidence supports it.

An agency unbilled work review brings together Asana delivery tasks, Harvest time and invoice references, and Xero invoice records. Compare them with the agreed scope to produce a short exception queue: what happened, what is still unclear and who needs to decide. Start with one project and compare the result with the review you already do.

Keep the native invoice workflow where it works

Harvest's Xero integration can copy invoices sent from Harvest into Xero. Time entries do not sync independently; they travel as invoice line items. That existing connection may already meet your needs if the task is simply avoiding duplicate invoice entry.

Add an exception review when the unanswered question crosses delivery and commercial scope: an additional landing page, repeated revision rounds or work logged against the wrong project. First check Harvest reports and your existing project review. A clear manual checklist may be sufficient for a small workload.

Start with the agreement and exact project links

Supply the customer-approved scope baseline, its version and effective date. Record included deliverables, revision allowances, exclusions, billing milestones and how changes are authorised. A completed Asana task proves a delivery status, not permission to charge the client.

Map the Asana project ID to the Harvest client and project IDs, then the Xero contact and invoice references. Prefer recorded cross-system identifiers. Similar names can suggest a match for review but should never silently join two projects. Deduplicate Asana tasks by ID because a task can belong to multiple projects.

• Keep each approved change linked to the relevant deliverable and approval evidence.
• Record the agreed billing model, rate source and currency before calculating an amount.
• Put unclear task-to-time links in a mapping queue instead of assigning them by guesswork.

Separate billing gaps from scope and delivery issues

Treat Harvest's billed flag as one piece of evidence. Compare any invoice reference with the corresponding Harvest and Xero records, invoice status, service period and line descriptions. Check whether a draft already includes the work before proposing another invoice. A missing match is a question to investigate.

For time-and-materials work, review eligible hours against approved rates, rounding rules and the billing cutoff. Hold running or unsubmitted time for review rather than including it in chargeable totals. For fixed-fee work, compare agreed milestones with invoices; extra hours alone do not establish an extra charge. For retainers, check included capacity, period, rollover and overage terms.

• Possible billing gap: approved chargeable work with no matching invoice evidence.
• Scope decision: additional work without sufficient change approval.
• Delivery concern: rework or budget overrun within the agreed fee.
• Covered or deferred: included work, a future milestone or an agreed write-off.

Show what the review could actually see

State the work-date window, timezone, invoice search window and retrieval time. Invoices can precede or follow delivery, so choose a wider invoice window using the project's billing schedule. Revisit late time entries after the cutoff rather than treating one weekly snapshot as final.

Read every required page and record permission failures, missing fields and stopped retrievals. An incomplete Asana task list or Harvest time page cannot support a clean result. Check Xero invoice detail where summaries lack line information. Label the run incomplete and withhold a no-exceptions conclusion until coverage is resolved.

Give the owner a decision pack with evidence

Each row should contain task and time IDs, the supplied scope clause, invoice references, classification, uncertainty, proposed next step, assigned owner and next review date. Keep amounts separated by currency. Delivery managers validate work and scope; finance validates invoice treatment. Customer approval remains necessary where the agreement requires it.

With configured connections and validated matching rules, OrgSDK can provide the local project for executing reusable tested actions and storing evidence and run history. Your external AI client handles the reasoning and conversation. A local review draft still needs human approval; it does not create invoices, change provider records or send customer messages.

Hypothetical example

Hypothetical example: a website project's weekly review

These invented records illustrate classification, not customer results. The approved fixed fee includes two revision rounds; a separate monthly retainer covers routine maintenance.

The review creates three explainable decisions. It does not convert all twelve hours into an invoice.

Common questions