Billings Pro Help
Index

# Publishing an activity from Merlin

Merlin is a tool for professional project management on Mac OS X. If you've been using Merlin for managing your projects, you can publish an activity or sub-activity of a project in Billings Pro. You would do this if you are interested in tracking time for an activity and billing for your time. You can also publish an activity in Billings Pro for managing expenses, sending professional estimates/invoices, and receiving payments from your clients. To be able to transfer information between Merlin and Billings, you should have the minimum application version:

- Merlin 2.6.2 or later
- Billings 3 or later

You can send activities from Merlin to Billings Pro as estimate slips, working slips for time tracking, or working slips with actual costs.

1. Estimate slip. In Billings Pro, an estimate is an approximate calculation of a project's cost and time requirements. You can publish activities from Merlin along with their planned costs as estimate slips in Billings Pro for creating and sending estimates to clients.

   ## To publish activities as estimate slips

   1. Open a project in Merlin.
   2. Select an activity.
   3. Choose File > Publish...
   4. In the sheet that opens, select Billings Pro.
   5. Select 'Estimate slip.'
   6. Click Publish.

      A new window opens in Billings Pro. Note: This window opens only the first time you publish an activity of a project in Billings Pro. The purpose of this window is to enable you to select a client to link with.

   7. Select the appropriate client. Click Continue.

      The Slips window showing details of the estimate slip appears.

   8. Click OK.

      Billings Pro creates a project for the selected client having the same name and start date as the project in Merlin. The activity in Merlin is published as an estimate slip with the same name. The 'Rate' and 'Subtotal' fields of the estimate slip show the actual costs for the activity in Merlin. Any additional text in Merlin is added under 'Comments' in the slip window.

2. Working slip for time tracking. You can publish activities in Merlin as working slips in Billings Pro. Costs will not be published. This option is ideal if you want to manage activities and resources in Merlin and let Billings Pro keep track of their working time.

   ## To publish activities as working slips for time tracking

   1. Open a project in Merlin.
   2. Select an activity.
   3. Choose File > Publish...
   4. In the sheet that opens, select Billings Pro.
   5. Select 'Working slip for time tracking.'
   6. Click Publish.

      A new window opens in Billings Pro. Note: This window opens only the first time you publish an activity of a project in Billings Pro. The purpose of this window is to enable you to select a client to link with.

   7. Select the appropriate client. Click Continue.

      The Slips window showing details of the working slip appears.

   8. Click OK.

      Billings Pro creates a project for the selected client having the same name and start date as the project in Merlin. The activity in Merlin is published as a timed slip with the same name (Timed slips are working slips used to track how much time was spent on a task. They use a combination of hourly rate and total number of hours worked to calculate a total amount).

      The 'Rate' field in Billings Pro shows the standard rate of the resource in Merlin. The 'Subtotal', 'Tax', and 'Total' fields show 0. Any additional text in Merlin is added under 'Comments' in the slip window.

   Note: Keep in mind that the standard rate of a resource is published in Billings Pro only if the activity has one resource assigned to it. If the activity has multiple resources or no resources assigned, the 'Rate' field in Billings Pro is 0. In this case, you will have to assign a rate in Billings Pro manually.

- Working slip with actual costs. You can publish activities in Merlin along with their actual costs as fixed working slips in Billings Pro. Fixed slips allow you to charge your client a fixed rate. This option is most suitable if you want to keep track of costs in Merlin and use Billings Pro for creating and sending invoices.

  ## To publish activities as working slips with actual costs

  1. Open a project in Merlin.
  2. Select an activity.
  3. Choose File > Publish...
  4. In the sheet that opens, select Billings Pro.
  5. Select 'Working slip with actual costs.'
  6. Click Publish.

     A new window opens in Billings Pro. Note: This window opens only the first time you publish an activity of a project in Billings Pro. The purpose of this window is to enable you to select a client to link with.

  7. Select the appropriate client. Click Continue.

     The Slips window showing details of the working slip appears.

  8. Click OK.

     Billings Pro creates a project for the selected client having the same name and start date as the project in Merlin. The activity is published as a fixed slip with actual costs in Billings Pro. The 'Rate' and 'Subtotal' fields of the working slip show the actual costs for the activity as defined in Merlin. Any additional text in Merlin is added under 'Comments' in the slip window.