Project billing modes and fixed fees

Projects have one billing mode:

• Hourly: completed billable time is priced at saved billing rates. Individual entries can be non-billable.
• Fixed fee: the client owes the agreed fee; tracked hours never add hourly charges.
• Non-billable: no time is chargeable to the client.

All modes incur contractor costs at saved pay rates.

Set project billing

Owners and admins open a project, select Billing, choose a mode, and enter a USD fee for fixed-fee projects. Review the impact before saving. Changes apply to all past entries and the active timer, with no date cutoff. Durations and saved pay rates stay intact. Returning to Hourly makes historical entries billable; individual entries can then be corrected. Existing projects default to Hourly.

Costs and profitability

Project/client summaries use lifetime figures and count each fixed fee once. Fee less cost and margin to date include tracked labor, including running time. They exclude future work and expenses and do not indicate collected payments. Period hourly analytics do not count the fixed fee in every period. The green dollar icon marks hourly-billable entries; fixed-fee time is included in the fee instead. Client viewers never receive contractor pay or margins, and retain their existing completed hourly-billable-time visibility.

Fixed-fee invoices

In project/client Billing or Invoices, explicitly select the agreed fee. It is independent of the hourly time period and can be invoiced with zero tracked hours. This version supports one fee, not deposits or milestones. Mercury invoices are created without emailing them; review and send in Mercury. Invoice history reports creation status, not payment status.

Reservations prevent duplicate invoicing. Ambiguous provider failures retain reservations for review; sandbox reservations do not consume live eligibility. Changing modes does not rewrite invoices. Conflicting prior invoices/reservations block further project invoicing pending reconciliation; external invoice adjustments remain separate actions.

REST and agents

Create project accepts optional billingMode (hourly, fixed_fee, non_billable) and fixedFeeCents. Fixed fees require a positive integer USD amount in cents, at most 2147483647; other modes require an omitted or null fee. A $12,000 agreement uses 1200000 cents. Creation requires an owner/admin key with projects:write, assigns the creator, and must not be retried automatically after an uncertain response.

List projects returns billingMode without project fees or contractor rates. Start timer preserves its existing billable request field, but fixed-fee/non-billable projects always return effective non-billable time. Explicit corrections requesting billable time on those projects are rejected. MCP uses the same rules. Existing project modes are changed through the authenticated admin web interface.