How to Create Invoices from Jira Worklogs

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If your company provides services to clients, you’ve probably dealt with the pain of invoicing. On one hand, you already have all the logged hours your team worked. On the other hand, converting that data into clear, client-ready invoices often involves a manual process with spreadsheets, copy-pasting, and rate recalculations.

The Time & Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud solves this gap. It not only helps you build invoices directly from Jira worklogs but also lets you track project revenue, costs, and profitability — all in one place.

🚩 Why invoicing in Jira is tricky without a tool

• Scattered data – time logs sit in Jira, while invoicing is done elsewhere.
• Error-prone calculations – monthly rates applied manually mean mistakes.
• Lack of transparency – clients want detailed reports, but preparing them takes hours.
• No profitability insights – invoices show only what you’ll bill, not how it compares to your internal costs.
  
  

⚡How Time & Cost Tracker helps

• One source of truth – worklogs → costs → revenue → invoice.
• Reliable rates – set them once (by client/project) and reuse monthly.
• Transparency – see keys, hours, and rates clearly displayed.
• Profitability tracking – compare costs, billed (revenue), and difference in one report.

🔑 Step-by-step: Create an invoice from worklogs

Here’s how you can build an invoice in just a few clicks with Time & Cost Tracker:

Step 1 — install the app from Atlassian Marketplace.

Step 2 — Prepare scope

Build a JQL filter for the client/project you’ll invoice. Save and share it with finance to avoid accidental scope changes.

Step 3 — Set rates once

• Team → Rates: set the internal and external (billing) rates for every team member who works with clients.

💡 Effective date — is the date when a certain rate is agreed with an employee. All work logs are then multiplied by the rate that was active on that date.

For example:

• In January 2021, an employee logged 100 hours with a $40 rate.

• Starting from February 1, based on the agreement, the rate was increased to $45.

Thus, all logs until February are multiplied by $40, and all logs from February onward are multiplied by $45.

👉 For accurate calculation, make sure to add rates carefully according to their effective dates.

Step 4 — Generate a Cost report

• Cost reports → Create report

• Pick the scope filter and billing period (e.g., last month)
• Enable Revenue tracking ✅ and set the Default billing hourly rate 

   

💡 To generate the invoice, specify the billing period's start and end dates. The system will then retrieve all work logs for that period and calculate the costs by multiplying the hours logged by their respective rates. This process ensures an accurate and straightforward invoicing system.

Step 5 — Review Report Data

Once you generate the report, you’ll see multiple tabs with detailed financial insights:

Overview tab – gives you a high-level summary of project costs and progress.

• On the chart, you’ll see how costs accumulate over time compared to the planned budget.

• On the right-hand panel, you can track the planned budget, remaining budget, total to be invoiced and profitability difference.

• The progress bar shows how much of the scope is completed vs. how much budget has been spent.
  This tab is great for quickly assessing whether your project is on track financially and in terms of delivery.

Scope tab – displays the total cost of all issues in the selected scope, calculated based on internal rates. This helps you understand where the budget is being allocated.

Team tab – lists all team members who logged time within the billing period, along with their hours worked and corresponding billable amounts. This view is especially helpful for validating individual contributions before invoicing.

💡 You can also edit the Billable hours column to adjust for special cases before generating the invoice.

Totals tab – consolidates all financial data:

• Costs total – your internal spending.

• To be invoiced – what you’ll bill to your client.

• Difference – the profitability margin (i.e., revenue vs. cost).

• Planned budget vs. Remaining budget.

🎯 Final Thoughts

Invoicing doesn’t have to be a separate, manual process. With Time & Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud, you connect worklogs, billing, and cost management in a single workflow.

That means:

• Your finance team gets accurate invoices faster.
• Your project managers see real-time profitability.
• Your clients get transparent, trustworthy reports.

👉 Next time you prepare monthly billing, skip the spreadsheets — let Jira worklogs and Time & Cost Tracker do the job for you.