Edit

Invoices

Out of users' activity and with the help of some extra configuration, Zing is able to generate monthly-based invoices and optionally send them via e-mail. This is useful when paid contractors and/or agencies are involved in the translation process.

Calculation of Payments

Payments are calculated based on the rates set for users and the amount of work they have performed during the month being processed. Rates can be set per translated word, per reviewed word or per hour.

The amount of work is measured considering the following activities:

  • The number of translated words.
  • The number of reviewed words.
  • The number of hours dedicated to a specific paid task.

Each type of work is multiplied by the rates set for the user, and is summed up to get the total amount corresponding to the work performed during the month.

Note this might not be the final amount though, as it still needs to go through potential carry-overs and extra payments.

Carry-overs and Extra Payments

A minimal amount to be paid can optionally be set on a user-specific basis via the minimal_payment user configuration key. In such cases, when the total amount to be paid for the current month is lower than the minimal payment amount set for a user, the total amount will be carried over to the next month.

When running the command in a subsequent month, the carried-over amount will be added to the totals as a correction.

Extra fixed amounts to be paid can also be added for individuals, as a way to indicate reimbursements for transaction fees or similar. This is controlled by the extra_add user configuration key.

Paid Tasks

There might be ocassions where some translation activities happened out of Zing (e.g. via spreadsheets or documents sent via e-mail), and the way to track these is by manually adding paid tasks.

Such tasks can refer to the translation or review of a certain amount of words, as well as hour-based activities. Other type of corrections can be added here, too. These tasks allow adding a description to easily identify the type of work being reported.

In order to manually add paid tasks, administrators can go to the Reports section of the administration site, select a user from the drop-down and add tasks below.

Alternatively, this can also be done by translators themselves by going to their statistics page and adding the tasks right below their daily activity graph. This option is only available to them once an administrator has set payment rates for them.

Subcontractors

A paid contractor can act as an agency that has multiple translators. All their work is consolidated and added in one invoice for the main contractor, along with the report on how much money they owe each subcontractor.

This is controlled by the optional subcontractors user configuration key.

Currencies

Currencies can be set in a user-by-user basis, however this is currently limited to USD, EUR, GBP, CNY and JPY.

Configuring Invoices

It's necessary to configure two aspects before proceeding to generate invoices:

  • Specify the users for whom invoices will be generated, as well as their payment details.

    This is detailed in the setting description for ZING_INVOICES_RECIPIENTS.

  • Set the user-specific payment rates (per-word, per-review, per-hour) for a given period.

    This needs to be set in the Reports section of the administration site. Select the user from the drop-down and set its rate below. Specific tasks to be accounted for payment can also be added manually here.

You may also want to specify the full path to the location where the invoices will be generated. This is controlled by the ZING_INVOICES_DIRECTORY setting.

Adjusting the Look & Feel

Before actually sending any invoices, you will want to check how the generated invoices look like and adjust the layout and styling to match your company's needs.

The default templates provide a good starting point, so initially you can set the pre-defined ZING_INVOICES_COMPANY and ZING_INVOICES_DEPARTMENT settings to some sensible values for your use-case and see if the result is of your liking.

Provided you already followed all the previous configuration steps, you can run zing generate_invoices and check for the generated output under ZING_INVOICES_DIRECTORY.

In case you are not satisfied with the look & feel of invoices or their wording (note the default invoices are in English), you can completely customize the templates being used by copying them to your custom templates location and modifying them at your will. Re-running the generate_invoices command will use them automatically.

Generating PDFs

Invoices can optionally be generated in PDF format too, which will also be sent via e-mail.

PDF generation requires PhantomJS. Check its website and documentation for installation instructions. Once it's available on your server, you will need to set the absolute path to the phantomjs binary in the ZING_INVOICES_PHANTOMJS_BIN setting and subsequent runs of generate_invoices will generate PDFs as well.

Reference

Commands:

  • generate_invoices

Settings:

  • ZING_INVOICES_COMPANY
  • ZING_INVOICES_DEPARTMENT
  • ZING_INVOICES_DIRECTORY
  • ZING_INVOICES_PHANTOMJS_BIN
  • ZING_INVOICES_RECIPIENTS
← Translation EditorSettings →