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You book a client when they sign a contract with your company, and your bookings reflect the value of your signed contracts.

Often, you won’t receive the money right away, and there are different terms for explaining what you’re owed versus what you’ve collected. Your bookings can be classified as billings once you send an invoice and can expect to be paid. 

For example, a client might sign a one-year contract for $1,200, and you book the $1,200. Every month, you send them a bill for $100, and your billings are $100. You have $100 in deferred revenue until you deliver the product or service, and then you can recognize the $100 in revenue. 

Bookings can be classified in different ways, such as new, renewal, and upgrade bookings. As the names imply, these are bookings from clients who signed new contracts, renewed a contract, or upgraded to a new plan. Additionally, you can categorize annual contract value bookings (the annual value of multi-year contracts), total contract value bookings (total value of multi-year contracts), and non-recurring bookings (for one-time fees).