As a new Monograph user, you may want to include historical billing information so the app understands what has already been billed on your projects. This is done by adding historical billed values and is designed to help you move to invoicing faster, not to recreate past reporting.
The real value begins once your team starts logging time directly in Monograph. From that point forward, Analytics provides a much clearer view of performance, helping you identify patterns, optimize workflows, and make informed decisions going forward.
During onboarding, the priority is building out your active projects. Historical billed values can be added as part of this process to ensure a smooth and efficient setup.
Entering Historical Billed Amounts
Historical billed amounts allow firms to record work that was billed before starting in Monograph, so project financials and invoices reflect an accurate picture of past billing.
📖 Best practice: Firms are encouraged to enter historical billed amounts within 90 days of their subscription start date. Once the first invoice is opened for a project, this option is no longer available. Enter all historical billed amounts before creating your first invoice to avoid missing data.
What are historical billed amounts?
Historical billed amounts represent fees that were invoiced outside of Monograph before your firm began using the platform.
These amounts:
Appear in Project Financials, Unbilled, and on invoices
Are used for display and reference only
Do not impact analytics or reporting, including Total Unbilled, Total Invoiced, or revenue calculations.
Historical billed amounts must be entered at the level of detail required to display correctly on an invoice:
Hourly phases: Enter totals by role
All other phase types: Enter a single lump-sum amount
🚨 Items that do not appear on invoices (such as additional items) cannot have historical billed values entered
Historical billed amounts can be added from two places Project financials and Unbilled report:
Adding from the Project Financials
This option is only available until 90 days after beginning your Monograph subscription.
Navigate to Projects → Select a project → Financials
At the top of the Financials page, you’ll see a purple banner prompting you to add historical billed amounts
Click Add now to begin
Enter historical amounts for:
Phases
Consultants
Expenses
Click Save to apply your changes
Once saved, the Project Financials page will display the historical data entered.
Adding from the Unbilled Report
This option is available to all customers on the platform and to projects that don't yet have invoices created, whether in draft or open status.
Navigate to Money → Unbilled
Click the carrot to the left of the project name to expand and show all phases:
Click the three dots next to the relevant phases:
Select Edit historical amounts
On the next screen, you’ll see all phases associated with the project, including:
Phase name
Fee type
Budget
For hourly phases, expand the phase using the arrow and enter amounts for each hourly rate
Repeat the process for Consultants and Expenses
Click Save to apply changes
💡 Hovering over the billed amount will display any historical data entered. To edit existing entries, click the purple edit icon next to the historical amounts box.
Once historical billed amounts have been added, it’s time to create your first Monograph invoice. When working in the invoice builder, hovering over the Previously Billed details—whether for project phases, consultant phases, or project expenses—will display those historical amounts.
In the screenshot below, hovering over the Previously Billed column shows the historical billed amount, while the Monograph previously billed amount displays as $0.00. When opening your invoice, this level of detail is also available to share with clients, helping maintain consistent and transparent records.
While adding historical billed amounts can help set a baseline, the true value comes from consistent time tracking and invoicing moving forward.
This unlocks the full potential of Monograph to better highlight trends, identify inefficiencies, and enable firms to manage projects more intelligently and profitably.
✏️ Learn how to create your first invoice here.