General
Branding. Upload a Company Logo, which appears on invoices and quotes, and a Signature, which appears in the bottom right of invoices. Both take PNG or JPEG up to 2 MB. Company and tax. Set your currency, your Default VAT Rate, which is 18% unless you change it, and your firm’s VAT Number. Banking and address. Your Bank Details appear on invoices so clients know where to pay, and your Company Billing Address appears as your firm’s address. Click Save Settings when you are done.Changing the VAT rate affects new invoices only. Existing invoices keep the rate they were created with.
Set up email sending
Before Arkata can email invoices, quotes or receipts, your address has to be verified as a sender.- In Settings > Billing > General, find Set up email sending.
- Click Send verification email.
- Open the email that arrives and click the one-time verification link.
The address verified is the one you sign in to Arkata with. Until it is verified, the Send buttons for invoices, quotes and receipts do not work.
Invoices
Invoice numbers are set by Arkata and cannot be changed here. See Invoice numbering.
Quotes
Service catalogue
Your service catalogue is a saved list of the things you charge for, grouped into stages. Pick from it when building quotes and billing stages instead of retyping the same service and price.- Click Add Stage to create a group, such as “Design & PA Submission”.
- Add services to a stage. Each has a service name, a pricing method of fixed price, hourly rate or percentage, a default rate and a default VAT rate.
- Tick Reimbursement for costs you recharge at cost with 0% VAT, such as a PA application fee. These are pass-through costs.
- Rename a stage in place or delete it. Deleting a stage that has services offers Also delete all services in this stage; otherwise its services move to your default stage.
Changing the catalogue does not change quotes or billing stages you have already made.
Timeline Billing
Link each billing stage to the timeline sub phase that finishes it, and nobody has to open the Billing tab to say work is ready to bill. When that sub phase is ticked, the stage is set to Ready to Invoice and Partners are notified.1
Pick a project type
The buttons across the top switch between project types, named as on the Projects page. Each type has its own timeline, so each is linked separately. The number next to a type tells you how many of its sub phases are already linked.
2
Link a sub phase
The list shows that type’s sub phases, grouped the way they are on the project timeline. Click Link stage next to one and pick a stage from your service catalogue. The chip then shows the stage it feeds, in a colour so you can spot it at a glance. Remove link takes it off again.Each billing stage links to one sub phase per project type. A stage already linked shows that sub phase’s name in the list; picking it moves the link to the new sub phase. Stages with no link are set by hand on the Billing tab.
3
Save
A bar appears at the bottom as soon as you change something, telling you how many unsaved changes you have. Click Save changes, or Discard to put everything back.
What the robot icon means
A robot icon next to a sub phase means Arkata ticks that sub phase itself when the matching authority email is filed, so a stage linked to it can become ready to invoice with nobody lifting a finger. Hover the icon to see which email does it. Today that covers the decision notice for a project type’s approval phase, the BCA clearance email and the DPA decision email.The rules in short
A billing stage can only be marked ready this way if it is linked to a stage in your service catalogue. Pick stages from the catalogue on quotes and on a project’s Billing tab, and Arkata flags any stage that has no link.
Expense categories
The categories your team picks from when recording expenses. Add a category, rename it in place or delete it, and mark the ones you usually recharge as billable to client. Billable categories count towards Billable to Projects on the Expenses page, and the rest count as Overhead.Next steps
Create and send invoices
Where these defaults get used.
Track expenses
Where your expense categories get used.
Billing stages
How a stage becomes ready to invoice.
Project timeline
The sub phases your team ticks.