From quotation to collected invoice, in one flow
A services company does not sell goods; it sells time and a promise — and both get lost between a Word file, a contracts folder and a spreadsheet where someone tracks hours. NG One ties the whole chain together: the quotation knows its contract, the contract knows its advances, the invoice knows what remains of what was agreed, and dunning arises from due dates rather than from memory. A timesheet hour, a travel expense and a subcontract all carry the project dimension into the same posting the trial balance comes out of — so margin per project is a query against the ledger, not a monthly spreadsheet that never quite agrees with it.
- Quotation → contract → invoice
- Advances and final settlement
- Recurring invoices and subscriptions
- Open items, dunning, interest
- Timesheets and project margin
- Lead-to-cash and project-to-cash
What a services company pays for today
Problems that do not look expensive until they add up at year end — and by then they are lost revenue, not cost.
The quotation is in Word, the contract in a folder, the invoice in a third system
The quotation is written in a document, emailed, and that is where its trail ends. The contract lives in a folder on a drive, the amendment in another folder, and the invoice is created in a system that has never heard of the quotation. When someone asks how much of the contract has been invoiced and what is left, the answer is assembled from three sources and two opinions — and the client, as a rule, has their own version of the same account.
The advance is taken and the final invoice forgets to deduct it
The advance invoice is written by hand, VAT on the advance is calculated separately, and then the final invoice goes out without the deduction — or with one that does not agree with the ledger. The customer noticing is the better outcome; the worse one is nobody noticing, so the advance is cleared months later, manually, with an explanation nobody can verify.
Hours are entered at month end, from memory
A consultant fills in the spreadsheet on the last day of the month, covering four weeks back. The numbers are round because memory is round. Project profitability is then calculated on those numbers and the next project is priced on them — so the company wonders why a project that “went well” returned nothing. An hour not recorded when it happens is not data but an estimate.
Sixty identical invoices on the first of every month
Maintenance, licences, subscriptions, a monthly contract fee — someone retypes all of it on the first, for two days. When a contract price changes or a line is added, the change must reach every invoice by hand. The error does not happen because the work is hard but because it is boring, and boring work is the most expensive work a person does.
Collection starts when the cash is needed
A reminder goes out when someone remembers or when cash runs short. The statement of open items is done once a year before stocktaking, and that is when you discover the balance has disagreed with the client for three quarters. Interest is not charged because it is “awkward”, and a set-off is agreed by phone and posted by hand. For a services company with no stock, the receivable is the only asset — and it is managed worst of all.
How NG One answers
Six answers to the five problems above. All of them run on the same partner, the same contract and the same general ledger — which is what makes them answers rather than modules.
Opportunity, quotation and contract in one chain
CRM Lite carries opportunities and activities (call, email, meeting, task) attached to the partner and the document, with a timeline in Partner 360. An opportunity leads to a quotation, the quotation to an order, and every document knows its origin and its version — so “what exactly did we promise, and at what price” is a query rather than archaeology through email. The service price list is effective-dated, so a quotation from six months ago still reconstructs the price it carried then, instead of the price someone remembers.
Advances that clear themselves on the final invoice
The advance invoice, VAT on the advance and the deduction on the final invoice are part of one flow, not three separate acts someone must remember. The final invoice knows which advances were received against that contract and clears them, and the posting comes from the rule effective on the document date. Alongside: credit notes, foreign-currency invoices, and the SEF channel that sends and receives e-invoices in UBL 2.1 — the same document that feeds the EEO and EPP VAT records from which POPDV and the PP PDV return are produced.
Recurring invoices as automation, not as a ritual
A monthly fee, maintenance or a contract line comes out of a rule: the system creates invoices on schedule, applies the price list effective for that period, and either leaves them as drafts or issues them — depending on how the rule is set. Amending the contract changes future invoices, not past ones. Every run is reported to the Automation Center, so there is always a record of what went out without a human hand and under which rule; a customer who changed terms or terminated stops the generation and becomes a task rather than a silent error.
Collection that starts before the cash runs short
Open items by due date; the statement of open items as a document with send-and-response history; automated dunning by level as a DRAFT a person confirms; statutory and contractual interest at the rates that applied in each period; and set-offs, assignments and cessions as full documents with postings. Imported statements match by payment reference, amount and partner; an unmatched line stays with its reason rather than in a suspense account. The cash-in projection runs on each partner's actual payment behaviour and states how many items it rests on and how wide its range is — an estimate dressed up as a measurement is worse than none.
Timesheets, and margin you can see while the work runs
An hour is recorded when it happens — by project, phase and task, with the manager's approval and a billable/non-billable split — and posted to the project dimension. The budget by phase and cost type compares plan against actual during delivery and warns before the overrun rather than after it. Profitability leaves the same general ledger as the trial balance and always agrees with it: dimensions sit on the line from the first posting, so the parallel record that would diverge from the books never exists in the first place.
Subscriptions, rental and service contracts
A subscription is a model, not a recurring invoice with a fixed amount: plans, mid-period plan changes, proration, renewals. Rental tracks the item at the customer site, the periods, the return and charging by time or usage. Service and helpdesk carry contracted response and resolution times, escalations and SLA measurement — on the same workflow kernel that already carries approvals and tasks, over the same customer who is also billed in the same system. Regional systems generally lack this in the core; foreign systems have it, but without SEF and POPDV next to it.
From quotation to a settled claim
The Atlas draws this chain as lead-to-cash with a project-to-cash branch. Six steps, one partner record, one ledger underneath all of it.
- Step 1
Opportunity and quotation
A conversation becomes a document. The quotation knows its version and its price, and the activities around it stay with the partner.
- Opportunities and activities in Partner 360 (CRM Lite)
- Quotation with version and validity period
- Service price list with validity dates
- Opportunity → quotation → order, with links to origin
- Step 2
Contract and advance
What was agreed becomes an obligation on both sides. An advance is not a separate world but a line in the same chain.
- Contract with lines and an invoicing schedule
- Advance invoice and VAT on the advance
- Electronic approval of the decision with an audited trace
- Credit limit and 45/60-day terms on the partner
- Step 3
Delivery
What gets done gets recorded — with a project dimension, so that margin exists while the work runs, not only after it.
- Project with phases and a work breakdown structure
- Tasks, resources and visible booking conflicts
- Timesheet: the hour when it happens, not at month end
- Project costs and travel orders on the project dimension
- Step 4
Invoicing
The invoice comes out of the contract and out of what was delivered, not out of a spreadsheet maintained beside it.
- Invoicing by milestone, by schedule or by consumption
- Recurring invoices on schedule (automation)
- Deduction of received advances on the final invoice
- E-invoice through SEF, in UBL 2.1
- Step 5
Collection
Collection is a process with its own levels and its own documents. The system prepares, a person confirms.
- Open items by due date, currency and dimension
- Statement of open items with send-and-response history
- Dunning by level as a draft, and interest calculation
- Set-offs, assignments and cessions as documents
- Step 6
Profitability
In the end one question matters: did the project earn. The answer comes from the ledger, not from a spreadsheet.
- Revenue and cost per project and client from the ledger
- Plan versus actual by dimension, during delivery
- Cash flow and controlling over the same postings
- Cash-in projection and collection risk per partner
The spaces that carry this solution
A solution is neither a separate product nor a separate licence. It is the same system seen from one angle, and these business spaces carry most of the work this page describes.
Sales and customers
From opportunity to cash, in one chain with nothing retyped.
30 capabilitiesProduction and operations
Engineering data, planning, shop floor, quality and projects in one flow — with a product cost that is not assembled after the fact.
30 capabilitiesFinance and compliance
Serbian statutory accounting, dimensions and VAT — in the core, not bolted on.
30 capabilities
Questions about this solution
Scope, boundaries, and the rules this entry point works by.
What does a services company get, without a single work order or a single shelf in a warehouse?
All of lead-to-cash and all of project-to-cash. On one side: quotation → contract → advance → invoice → collection → dunning, with CRM Lite (opportunities and activities with a Partner 360 timeline), recurring invoices as automation, statements of open items, interest, set-offs, credit limits and statement import with auto-matching. On the other: a project with phases and a work breakdown structure, tasks and resources, timesheets, budget and controlling. Underneath both: the general ledger with dimensions, the VAT engine with EEO and EPP records feeding POPDV and the PP PDV return, the SEF channel in both directions, and payroll with PPP-PD. Invoicing and measuring time spent are not two systems reconciled monthly — they are one record and one ledger.
How are advances and final settlement handled?
As one chain rather than three separate acts. The advance invoice arises from the contract or the order, VAT on the advance is calculated under the rule effective on the document date, and the final invoice knows which advances were received against that contract and deducts them automatically. The posting is visible in the posting preview before confirmation, so the error is caught before it becomes a correction. When an advance clears partially or across several invoices, the link stays on the document — which is the difference between clearing that can be explained and clearing that is remembered.
Why are timesheets tied to dimensional posting?
Because project profitability only means something if the hour is posted to a dimension that exists in the general ledger. An hours record that lives beside the books diverges from them within the first quarter, and then you have two numbers and no answer. In NG One a timesheet hour carries the project, the phase and the task, the billable/non-billable split and the manager's approval, and on the posting it carries the project dimension — the same one the invoice, the travel order and the subcontract carry. That is why margin per project and the trial balance never drift apart: they are the same data seen along two cuts. Dimensions sit on the line from the first posting precisely because they cannot be added later without reposting history.
Do you have subscriptions, and are they the same as recurring invoices?
We have both, but they are not the same thing — and that distinction is the source of many misunderstandings. A recurring invoice is automation inside invoicing: a schedule from the contract or the order, an effective-dated price list, automatic issuing or a draft, and a record in the Automation Center of everything that went out without a human hand. A subscription is a model: plans, cycles, mid-period plan changes, proration, pausing, add-on granules. Most services companies need the first, companies with genuine subscription revenue need the second, and many need both over the same customer. We ask which one you need in the first meeting, because “subscription” is a word under which everyone means something of their own.
Does the system send dunning letters on its own?
Not without your decision, and that is deliberate. A rule watches due dates and prepares dunning by level, but the result is a DRAFT a person confirms, edits or rejects — all three outcomes are equal and all three stay in the trace. The reason is not technical but commercial: a reminder sent to the wrong customer at the wrong moment costs more than every hour the automation would save. Unattended sending exists only where the rule is deterministic and explicitly enabled. The automation KPI meanwhile shows how much the system prepared on its own — with a number from your tenant, not from a brochure.
How long does implementation take for a services company, and what does early enrolment bring?
A services company is among the shortest implementations, because there is no stock, no work orders and no warehouse: what gets set up is partners, the service price list, contracts with their invoicing schedules, open items, and a chart of accounts with the dimensions you intend to measure margin along. The implementation runs through analysis, migration, parallel running and go-live — on your contracts and your collection, not on demo data. Enrolling by 1 September 2026 carries a 40% discount on the solution price established by an analysis of your scope, against a 10% reservation deposit. The value of enrolling early is not only the discount but the order of events: your advance schedule, the way you invoice by milestone and your dunning levels enter the configuration before you lock it, not after.
Related solutions
Test NG One against your own contract and your own collection
Book a working review for services and projects. We walk your flow from quotation to collection, your advance schedule, your recurring invoices, your dunning levels and the dimensions you measure margin along — on your documents, not on demo data.