What the Unbilled Report Shows
The exact fields depend on Costpoint configuration and reporting requirements, but an unbilled report can organize financial activity by project, contract, customer, employee, transaction type, accounting period, or billing status. The objective is to distinguish costs that have already been billed from eligible activity that remains available for billing.
- Project and contract information: Identifies the contract or project associated with unbilled activity.
- Transaction amounts: Shows labor, materials, expenses, indirect costs, or other relevant charges.
- Billing status: Helps identify activity that has not yet moved into an invoice.
- Accounting periods: Provides timing information for analyzing when costs were incurred and when billing may occur.
- Customer context: Connects unbilled transactions with the customer or contract responsible for payment.
How Costpoint Unbilled Reporting Works
Unbilled reporting generally starts with transactions recorded against projects or contracts. Eligible activity is accumulated according to configured billing rules and contract requirements. Before an invoice is produced, finance teams can review the unbilled population to identify transactions that are ready for billing and investigate amounts requiring additional review.
The report can therefore act as a bridge between project accounting and invoicing. When unbilled activity is reviewed before a billing run, finance teams can verify that relevant labor, expense, and other transactions have been captured and appropriately classified.
For transaction-level accuracy, teams may also examine an Expense Report when employee expenses contribute to project costs. This helps connect the underlying expense documentation with the project and billing information appearing in Costpoint reporting.
Unbilled Revenue and Financial Reporting
Unbilled activity is closely related to Unbilled Revenue, which represents revenue earned or recognized under applicable accounting rules before the customer has been invoiced. The distinction between unbilled costs, earned revenue, and invoiced amounts is important when preparing financial statements and analyzing contract performance.
Finance teams should reconcile the unbilled report with project accounting, contract terms, revenue recognition policies, and billing records. An unbilled balance does not automatically mean that every amount should be invoiced immediately; eligibility depends on the underlying contract and transaction characteristics.
For example, a project may accumulate $125,000 of eligible labor and materials during a billing period while invoicing occurs after a milestone or customer approval. The unbilled report provides visibility into that $125,000 before the corresponding billing event occurs.
Billing Controls and Validation
Unbilled reporting is also useful for checking the quality of information that will eventually feed an invoice. Finance teams can review whether transactions contain the correct project, contract, account, labor category, and other coding attributes before billing.
The chart of accounts is particularly relevant when invoice capture, extraction, validation, matching, GL coding, approval, and posting depend on accurate accounting classifications. Correct coding helps ensure that project transactions are represented consistently in both accounting records and downstream billing information.
Report Validation provides a broader framework for checking whether a report contains accurate, complete, and logically consistent information. Applied to unbilled reporting, validation can include reconciling totals, reviewing unusual balances, confirming reporting periods, and checking that relevant transactions are included.
ERP Integration and Invoice Processing
Costpoint unbilled information is most useful when it remains connected to the organization's broader ERP and finance workflows. Organizations evaluating deltek and other ERP environments can consider how integration, migration, clean-core architecture, and extensions affect the movement of project and billing information.
Once eligible activity is identified, invoice processing can move the transaction through capture, extraction, validation, matching, GL coding, approval, posting, and related billing activities. Keeping these stages connected helps finance teams maintain traceability between the original project transaction and the resulting invoice.
From Unbilled Activity to Cash
Unbilled reporting focuses on activity before invoicing, but the downstream objective is to convert eligible billable work into recognized invoices and ultimately collected cash. After an invoice is issued and a customer payment arrives, cash application supports matching payments with invoices, processing remittances, handling unapplied cash and deductions, and posting receipts.
This creates a continuous financial workflow: project activity is recorded, eligible amounts become visible in unbilled reporting, invoices are generated, and receipts are subsequently matched to those invoices. Monitoring each stage can improve visibility into billing status and expected cash realization.
Best Practices for Costpoint Unbilled Reports
- Review regularly: Examine unbilled balances by project, contract, and period so eligible activity can move through billing on schedule.
- Investigate aging: Identify transactions that remain unbilled across multiple periods and determine the applicable contract or accounting reason.
- Validate coding: Check project, account, labor, expense, and contract classifications before billing.
- Reconcile totals: Compare report balances with project accounting, billing records, and relevant revenue information.
- Monitor billing readiness: Separate immediately billable activity from amounts awaiting milestones, approvals, or other contractual conditions.
Summary
Costpoint Unbilled Report provides visibility into project and contract activity that has been recorded but has not yet been invoiced. It helps finance teams review billable costs, validate transaction coding, analyze unbilled revenue, investigate aging balances, and connect project accounting with billing. When combined with disciplined validation, ERP integration, invoice processing, and payment reconciliation, the report supports stronger billing visibility and more informed financial reporting and cash planning.