Validate an Activity Report (AR) for a Time and materials project

An Activity Report (AR) is a document that binds you to your Supplier. It includes the number of working units worked, any expenses or overtime incurred, and an evaluation of the service provided. Its validation is indispensable to trigger invoicing. In this article, we will look at how to validate it and correct it if necessary, for a Time and materials project.

Within this article

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Overall video

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Impact of the Activity Report (AR)

The AR should be validated at the end of each month for a project because it is essential to generate the invoice/billing voucher (BV) and therefore trigger the payment process of the project.

Important

Any delay in the validation of an AR leads to a delay in the invoicing and therefore in the payment of your supplier.

To ensure a smooth and optimal relationship with your suppliers on this matter, we recommend that you respect the following dates:

Good to know

You may follow the progress of the validation process in the Validation Steps section on the right of the AR page.

You may also have an overview of the status of the ARs within your scope by clicking on Activity Reports on the Activity Reports & invoices tab and using the Status column.

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Verify and validate the Activity Reports submitted by your suppliers

Here are the steps to verify and validate the ARs submitted by your suppliers for a Time and materials project:

Go to the Activity Reports & invoices tab and click on Activity Reports
For the ARs with the status Approved by Business Manager, click on View the Activity Report in the action menu

3. Verify the number of working units worked, indicated by your supplier in the calendar

4. Project details (optional): Verify the expenses (in €, including taxes), documents, overtime, etc., attached by your supplier

5. Monthly report of my activity (optional): You can describe here the deliverables of the month that you received. You can also rate, thanks to the stars, the expertise/methodology, the technical knowledge, as well as the communication of the supplier, and leave a public feedback. This allows other clients to see what a project with your supplier looks like.

Good to know

If you have enabled the Custom fields premium feature and applied them to the Purchase Order, they will appear at the bottom of the AR, for information purpose.

6. Breakdown of the projects (if applicable): If you have activated the Project Breakdown premium feature, verify the information entered by your supplier about the time spent on each part of the project.

7. Eventually, check the information summarized in the Summary of the Activity report section that gathers all the information filled in by your supplier, and click on Check the billing information.

- If the billing details are correct, and the information in the AR as well, click on Validate to validate the billing voucher. The validation process is now closed, and the billing voucher is available for download.
- If some information (like the information in the calendar) is not correct, click on Reject the Activity Report, then check the box for the reason of your refusal and click on Confirm refusal. The AR will be sent again to the supplier, who will be able to correct it and submit it again, for your validation.

Important

The invoice is automatically generated only after you validate the Activity Report.

Simplified validation

You can also validate ARs in a faster way, directly from the ARs grid, located in the Activity Reports page of the Activity reports & invoices tab. To do so, for each AR, you can check the following information directly in the grid:

Name of the consultant and their project
Month concerned
Number of Work Units declared
Amount to be invoiced

If all this information is correct and none is missing, you can click on the action menu on the right of the AR and on Validate the Activity Report.

For even faster AR validation, you can activate the premium AR bulk validation feature. Find out more in this article.