What are Pro bono projects?
Pro bono projects are those where an agency provides its services free of charge—typically for non-profit organizations, charitable initiatives, or other causes where the client does not pay.
Setting up a Pro bono project in Allfred
Billing category:
Select the ‘Non-Billable’ option:
When creating a new project in Allfred, simply check the ‘non-billable’ option to indicate that no invoicing is expected for this project.
Project category:
Use tags and project categories:
To clearly distinguish between different types of non-billable projects, we highly recommend using tags or project categories. This lets you define and filter projects. Here is an example:Pro Bono: Agency projects where the client does not pay.
Internal: For example, projects for tracking hours on internal marketing tasks.
Overheads: For monitoring internal costs.
Project type:
Fixed price:
Use when you want to detail every service you will deliver along with their prices for the client. This budget can then be sent as a quote to the client.Fixed price project without budget:
Alternatively, if the project is relatively small and does not require detailed task breakdowns or quote for the client, you can create a fixed price project without a budget and work solely with a not-budgeted item. In this case, you can create tasks and subtasks under this pre-created item -> an approach that works well when minimal work is anticipated.Time and materials:
For time and materials projects on pro bono work, you do not specify the work in the budget (so no budget is sent to the client). Instead, you can build the project structure yourself using the “New budget item” button in project detail
Rate card:
Real client hourly rates:
If you want to view how much time and money your agency is spending on the project from the client’s perspective (i.e., what the client would be billed), then apply a rate card with real client hourly rates.
If such a project has an agreed maximum budget that your agency is willing to spend (i means it is a fixed-price type of project with specified budget), you will clearly see the status in terms of both hours worked and their monetary value.
In the rate cards and commissions section, you can create a separate rate card for pro bono projects; we recommend saving it under Default rate cards.
Zero hourly rates:
If you do not specify a sum to be spent on the project in the budget, but instead set the work item’s price to zero (using the dollar icon), you can use a rate card where every position has an hourly rate of zero. This approach ensures that, in the project detail view, the monetary value of tracked time does not visually fall into negative red numbers. However, each budget item will still display the current spending in hours.
If every user has an internal hourly rate defined, then (even though the client’s rate is set to zero) Allfred will calculate the real cost to your agency based on the internal rate and the number of hours tracked.
Both types of rate cards can be applied to both types of projects.
What if the client pays for external costs but not for internal work?
Sometimes, a client may cover external expenses (such as costs for subcontractors) but not the internal work done by your agency. In these cases, you should set the project as BILLABLE to be able to issue the invoice. Then consider the following options:
Set Internal Hourly Rates to 0 €:
Within the budget, use the dollar icon to price the service at 0 € and set the position rates to 0 € as well. As explained earlier, this approach ensures that, in the project detail view, the monetary value of tracked time does not visually fall into negative red numbers. However, each budget item will still display the current spending in hours.
Even though the budget shows the work as priced at 0 €, if a user has an internal hourly rate set, tracking time will still reveal a cost to your agency after finishing the project, or real-time in the Project profit report.
Tip: Create a Rate card for pro bono projects under Default rate cards where all the positions will have an hourly rate of 0 €.
Create Non-Billable Tasks:
You can mark created tasks as non-billable.
This way, you’ll still get an overview of the work done and the associated internal cost, while ensuring that these hours are not included in the invoicing process.
