Projects
Clients and projects can be structured with as few or as many levels of sub-projects as appropriate. You control which projects employees may charge to and which exist for purposes of organization.
You may define sets of tags for projects. For example, you could tag projects by service line or region. Then you may group and aggregate by tag in reports.
Any project at any level may have a budget. A budget is the sum of change orders (not a single number). Budgets may exist for the life of the project or a finite period of time, such as a fiscal year.
Project managers may generate reports but only for their projects. Multiple project managers may share access to a single project. Two-headed ogres like this.
Completed projects are archived out of sight but not deleted.
Timecards
The Lucid timecard editor presents a unified user interface for charging labor, expenses and mileage. Searching for project numbers is easy. Also, once you charge to a project number, Lucid will remember for the future.
Employees may annotate their timecards line by line. You may attach the notes to invoices or keep them internal. Employees can search their timecards for certain projects or notes. Always be ready to justify yourself to your clients!
Timecards follow an orderly lifecycle from creation through finalization through approval to invoicing. The lifecycle constitutes a digital chain of custody. More…
| Finalization |
Employees may not edit their timecards once finalized. Administrators may not edit timecards until finalized. Administrative edits are logged. |
| Approval |
Timecards may not be invoiced until approved. Editing a timecard unapproves it. |
| Invoicing |
Invoicing locks the relevant lines on timecards. Timecards may be unlocked by rolling back the invoice. |
Billing
Lucid is a complete solution for time and materials billing. Lucid invoices labor, expenses and mileage from timecards as well as line items for credits, fees and goods sold.
Lucid also supports fixed fee billing. Employees may charge labor to fixed fee projects on their timecards, so you can track costs, but the labor will not be billed to clients.
Lucid supports granular billing rates. You can renegotiate rates with one client without affecting other clients, or for one project without affecting other projects. You may bill labor at different rates and under different titles depending on any combination of the employee, client, project and type of service rendered. Billing rates are defined over time periods so historical rates coexist with current rates. More…
Billing rates cascade and override down the project hierarchy. For example, you could:
- define a default billing rate for an employee
- define a billing rate for that employee for a specific client. It will override the default rate.
- define a billing rate for that employee for that client for a specific project. It will override the first two rates.
Invoices are generated according to programmatic templates. These templates are vastly more powerful than mail-merging. They can conditionally show/hide or summarize content, fetch data from other systems, etc. Lucid installs with a flexible default invoice template. We program additional templates as needed to handle your billing scenarios.
Lucid reports on accounts receivable. Remittance may be logged against individual invoices so you can track which invoices are paid in full, short, unpaid or overpaid.
Payroll
Lucid is a partial payroll solution. Lucid calculates overtime and reimbursible expenses. Our clients typically export these figures to another system (Rippling is popular) for withholding, regulatory compliance and check cutting.
Lucid calculates overtime across comprehensive criteria:
- per-day overtime for states such as California and Colorado
- overtime exempt activities such as holidays, paid time off and sick leave
- alternate work weeks
- hourly exempt (for 1099s) and salary non-exempt status
API & SQL
Lucid shares raw data via a read/write REST API. Your systems integrator can get data into and out of Lucid. We will work with your systems integrator to add endpoints as needed.
Read-only SQL database access for high performance reporting is also available.
Secure
All Lucid traffic is over TLS. Passwords are salted and hashed. Form input and API calls are shielded against SQL injection. Access is controlled at the function level.
The open secret of data security is that breaches are overwhelmingly caused by negligence. Players big and small fail to follow industry best practices because the work is invisible to clients. They'd rather ship more features. On the other hand, we write security logic before feature logic.
Real Time
Lucid is always current. You will never have to wait overnight for reports to update.
Lucid uses sophisticated partial caching for computationally expensive calculations. When something changes (e.g. a billing rate), Lucid immediately recalculates only what's necessary.
Portable
You own your data. You can download a backup archive of your data any time.
We believe in our product and service. We make Lucid easy to leave so you feel safe to try.
DISCLAIMER: All data in these screen captures is fictional. Lucid Billing LLC has no affiliation with any county, city or business alluded to nor the Warner Brothers character Wile E. Coyote, patron saint of engineers. No road runners were harmed. They never are.