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ability to record timesheets by the hour but invoice by day
I need the ability to record my hours worked on the timesheets, but my contract with my client is such that I can only invoice half or full days. I've had to put all my past invoices on manually because if I generate them from the timesheets, the invoice amount is pro-rated based on the hours worked which is not how I invoice - e.g. I may work 9.75 hours in a given day but this would still only be invoiced as 1 x 7.5 hour day.
Having entered the invoices manually, I now have a huge amount of "unbilled time" showing as an asset on the balance sheet - however this is incorrect since I have invoiced for this time.
Maybe you need a preference on the project settings to say that invoices are to be in professional days only - either 0, 0.5 or 1.0 days worked depending on the hours logged on the timesheet. For example, one of my contracts used to be that if I worked 0-3.75 hours I got paid nothing, 3.75-7.4 hours I got 0.5 of my day rate and anything 7.5 hours or over I got 1.0 of my day rate.
Hope this makes sense.
Need your advice on how to get rid of the "asset" on my balance sheet, but I do need to keep the timesheet data!
Having entered the invoices manually, I now have a huge amount of "unbilled time" showing as an asset on the balance sheet - however this is incorrect since I have invoiced for this time.
Maybe you need a preference on the project settings to say that invoices are to be in professional days only - either 0, 0.5 or 1.0 days worked depending on the hours logged on the timesheet. For example, one of my contracts used to be that if I worked 0-3.75 hours I got paid nothing, 3.75-7.4 hours I got 0.5 of my day rate and anything 7.5 hours or over I got 1.0 of my day rate.
Hope this makes sense.
Need your advice on how to get rid of the "asset" on my balance sheet, but I do need to keep the timesheet data!
I’m confused
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Tricky.
If you really need to record your time like this, do we need to have an 'unbillable time' type of task?
I can't see us being able to model all the variations of the contract billing conditions your previous contract stated. It may well be that, as Dennis implies, you need to just 'track what you can bill'.
In advance of having 'unbillable' tasks, if you need us to do any modification or removal of timeslips 'en masse', just let us know. For example, we could move them over to a dummy project billed out at £0/hr?
Of course, if you can think of an elegant way of handling this, we're really open to suggestions...
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this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?@mcpl - in advance of the tech guys answering this - I'm wondering why you need the hours recording if you bill using a different unit of time?
I’m curious
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Inappropriate?Tricky.
If you really need to record your time like this, do we need to have an 'unbillable time' type of task?
I can't see us being able to model all the variations of the contract billing conditions your previous contract stated. It may well be that, as Dennis implies, you need to just 'track what you can bill'.
In advance of having 'unbillable' tasks, if you need us to do any modification or removal of timeslips 'en masse', just let us know. For example, we could move them over to a dummy project billed out at £0/hr?
Of course, if you can think of an elegant way of handling this, we're really open to suggestions...
The company says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?That makes sense Ed and is where I hoped you would go. I've only seen this scenario once before though I appreciate it can happen. It was extremely difficult to parse, requiring some specific rule setting on a per client basis.
This could be something to be eliminated by the professional accountant at period end but would require an explanation. That reinforces the case for attached short notes (like Twitter - 140 characters?) as a useful option.
I’m OK with this one
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the responses.
I guess I thought I could use FreeAgent to record my timesheet data and print a report which my client could sign, and then I could generate the invoice from it.
This would have saved some duplication in paperwork as currently I have to fill out a Word document, fax it to the agency and fax a copy to myself for my records. The original stays with the client.
When I started putting my historical timesheet data onto FreeAgent, I hadn't appreciated what this would do in terms of the balance sheet. The bottom line is that although I want to record my actual hours worked, I don't want FreeAgent to pro-rate my daily rate when invoicing. That could be just a check-box. If I wanted to bill in hours, I would have selected that option instead.
Anyway guys, this is a great product and now I understand it a bit more, I'm sure its going to work out.
I will need some assistance with the historical timesheet data where I have entered actual hours worked. I manually created the invoices so that I could reflect what was actually billed. So if you could set all timeslips prior to 3 December to zero as you suggest, that would be very helpful.
Thanks,
Russell.
I’m ok
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Inappropriate?aah - OK. Curious to know: is the 'fill out Word doc' etc thing agency specific? It seems horribly clunky. If so, I'm wondering whether we could offer the agency a slicker way to get this done that would benefit multiple contractors?
Thoughts?
I’m questioning?
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Inappropriate?Russell -
We're definitely planning to produce an 'Unbilled Time and Expenses' report that can be sent to clients. Adding some 'sign here' extra bits would be pretty straightforward - could you send us an example of the type of document you're after?
Can I suggest that you use the timeslips comments field to note your actual hours, leaving the hours field for the billable time?
So you enter
Task: Something Useful
Hours: 7.5
Comment: 8.5hrs doing important stuff
The comments show up in your time reports, although you can't do much in the way of analysis. If you just entered the actual hours, and used our forthcoming 'export to csv' option, you might be able to do some though.
We should probably offer a 'per day' tracking option that allows you to enter 0.5 for half a day. Or maybe you could select 'Days' in the timeslip itself, and FreeAgent would convert to the appropriate number of project hours.
So we'll zero the timeslips prior to 3 December later on today. Do you want us to move the existing hours numbers into the respective comments field, prefixing any existing comments?
I’m hoping that will work for you
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Inappropriate?@Dennis
Most agencies have their own proprietary timesheet format, or a website where you can enter your hours online.
Might be useful if there was a way to set up a template that allowed a contractor to enter hours into FreeAgent, and then generate and e-mail the timesheet in the agency's or client's own format.
The other complication is that many agencies use a self-billing model, where you send them your timesheet and they generate a combined invoice and remittance advice. In effect, with my current contract, I am just generating invoices for completeness as far as FreeAgent is concerned. -
Inappropriate?@mcpl - this is something I remember from my days in construction. Curiously, many people think it removes the need to generate invoices whereas of course it doesn't.
I’m not enjoying clunky processses for end users
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Inappropriate?Hi Ed,
I've actually started doing this for timesheets from 3 Dec onwards - i.e. putting the billable hours in the Hours field and the actual hours in the Comments field. If you can do the same when updating the historical timeslips that would be perfect.
Thanks a lot.
Russ.
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Russell, that's all done now.
Does this work for you as an ongoing solution or is there something we could do to make this work better for you?
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Inappropriate?Hi guys. I'm seeing exactly what Russell is talking about here. I can only pay 0.5 days or full days, So if I work 1-4.5 hours, I get 0.5 day, anything else, 1 day. It would be good in the timesheet area to have your timeslip in hours or days (or both) but for invoicing, you have an overall 'tick' for invoicing the project in days or hours. That way you can keep track of how many days you billed, and also know alongside that how many hours you worked. My client timesheet has a column for days billed but also a column for hours worked.
Great product guys. I'm gonna start recommending it! Once I get to the end of my free evaluation period, will start subscribing!
I’m cool
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Inappropriate?Gav - if you set up your Project as being billed by the 'day of 8 hours' or whatever, you get this (sort of).
You enter 4 or 8 hours in the timeslips, but you add the actual hours worked to the comments field.
On the invoice this will obviously come out as days and 0.5 days.
When you look at the timeslip report you get the comments field showing, but of course it doesn't add up those numbers, if that's what were after.
Does that work for you, or would we need to model the '1-4.5 hours' thing?
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Inappropriate?Hi Ed, to be honest, it works the way it is .... I just put 8hrs in for a day and 4 if I charge a half day. I dont bother tracking the actual hours I work. One place where I would have found it useful was for running a timesheet 'report' where it spits out how many 'hours' I worked on that project, albeit I worked that project in days ... I just divide the hours by 8, thats all!
It's not a real problem, just a nice to have reporting function.
I’m not concerned
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This solves the problem
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Hello there. I would like to request that when generating weekly/monthly timesheets, this can be done in days as well as/instead of hours. This is kinda linked to the topic previously. The reason is my client signs a separately generated timesheet which is an excel spreadsheet, which is just 1,1,1,1,1 = 5 days per week. He does not really care about the hours I do, although I like to see it so that I can record the actual hours I have worked. is there an easy fix for generating timesheets in days?
I'm wondering if there is a user-specified function can be added to the project details area, where the user can set the parameters for charging a half-day or full-day, ie.
Project to be recorded in days, hours or both (invoicing and timesheet)? Tick, Tick or Tick
If days, one half day shall constitute [insert] hours or less.
If days, one full day shall constitute [insert] hours or more.
Hope that makes sense and not too complicated. If it would be, is there any way of just having a function whereby I can print a timesheet out in days so that I don't have to generate another one?
Also, one last thing, I notice in the timesheet generation that the formatting is slightly out in the description of service? I don't think it is wrong, just maybe should look better if the description was 'justified' - just a suggestion.
Thanks!
Gavin -
Inappropriate?Hi Gav
Thanks for the feedback. This is likely to be a common requirement for contractors who charge by the day, not specifically by hours worked, so we'll look at how best to implement this. Watch this space!
Olly
EMPLOYEE
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