What is a milestone?

A milestone is one scheduled payment that makes up part of a project's fee. Each milestone has three parts:

• Milestone: a name your client will recognize on an invoice, such as "Deposit" or "Design sign-off".
• Amount: how much this payment is worth. It must be more than $0.
• Billable on: the date the payment becomes available to invoice.

Together, your milestones add up to the project fee. You don't enter a fee separately. As you build the schedule, Harvest shows the running total at the bottom, for example Project fee $12,000.00 across 3 payments.

Note: A milestone is a payment date, not a task. Nothing needs to be marked complete for a milestone to become billable. It becomes billable when its date arrives.

Set up a milestone schedule

1. Go to the project and click Edit Project.
2. Set the billing method to Fixed Fee.
3. Under Project fees, choose Milestone payments.
4. Add a row for each payment, with its name, amount, and when it's billable.
5. Click Add milestone to add another payment.
6. Click Save.

For the date of the Milestone, you can choose one of two options for each milestone:

• On date: pick a specific calendar date. This works best for dates that are fixed in your contract.
• After project start: enter a length of time, such as 6 weeks or 3 months, after the project start date. Harvest works out the date for you and shows it as you type.

A few things to keep in mind:

• A milestone project needs at least one milestone.
• If any milestone uses After project start, the project needs a start date.
• If you've set project start and end dates, every milestone must fall between them. An end date is optional.
• You can add up to 100 milestones to a project.
• You can still track time on the project as normal, including outside the project dates.

If you switch Project fees to Single fee or Monthly, the milestone schedule is removed. If you duplicate the project, the schedule is copied across, so you only need to set up a repeating engagement once.

Invoicing a milestone project

A milestone becomes available to invoice on its Billable on date, and not before.

When you create an invoice for the client and include the project, Harvest adds a line item for each milestone that's billable and hasn't been invoiced yet. Each line item is named after the project and the milestone, so your client can see what they're paying for.

This means:

• Milestones aren't missed. If you don't invoice in April, a milestone that became billable that month is still waiting for you in May. Harvest includes everything that's due but not yet invoiced, oldest first.
• Milestones aren't billed twice. Once a milestone has been invoiced, it won't appear on the next invoice.
• Future milestones aren't included. Milestones dated in the future aren't added to an invoice, so you can't accidentally bill a deposit and the final balance at the same time.
• Projects with nothing due aren't pre-selected. You can create one invoice for a whole client without having to deselect projects by hand.

Note: If a project has ended or been archived, milestones scheduled after that date won't become billable.

For more on invoicing, see How to create a single invoice and Sending invoices and estimates.

Milestone payments in reports

On a milestone project, Harvest reports the money you've earned so far, rather than the full value of the contract. A milestone's full amount is earned on its billable date, so the amount earned steps up on each milestone date instead of increasing day by day.

You'll see this in a few places:

• Uninvoiced: on the project overview and the Uninvoiced report, this is the amount that's become billable, minus the amount you've already invoiced. It shows what you can bill right now, for a single project or across your whole account.
• Project budget: if you budget the project by Total project fees, the budget is labelled Fees accrued to date and grows with each milestone. So a $60,000 project with only a $10,000 deposit billable isn't reported as though you have $60,000 to spend.
• Profitability: revenue for a period is the total of the milestones dated in that period. Hover over the revenue figure to see which milestones Harvest counted.
• Report Builder: the Project budget and Budget remaining columns work the same way. If a period doesn't contain a milestone, the budget shows as $0, and Harvest adds a note on the report explaining why.

With a single fee, a long project can look unprofitable for months and then suddenly profitable at the end. With milestone payments, revenue is recorded when you earn it, so your monthly margins are more accurate and it's easier to spot clients who are behind on scheduled payments.