TABLE OF CONTENTS:
For Enterprise Customers -
Important terms to know:
As we dive into time tracking, there are a few terms you should know:
Billing – the amount charged to the customer for an onboarding project.
Fully Loaded Cost (FLC) – The hourly “cost” of an employee when you take into account their full compensation and benefits package. (This field is accessibly only to Admins in Company Details > User Details).
Cost – the actual cost to your organization to complete an onboarding project. This is calculated by multiplying the actual time logged by the ‘Fully Loaded Cost’ of the user who logged the time.
Example: ABC company is using GUIDEcx to onboard customers. They charge a one-time $500 implementation fee. It takes 1 of ABC company’s employees 12 hours to onboard the customer (with the employee’s Fully Loaded Cost of $35/hour). In GUIDEcx, this would mean:
Billing = $500 (one-time fee)
Fully Loaded Cost = $35/hr
Cost = $420 (12 hrs x $35/hr)
Setup (Organization level)
For Admins -
Billing Profiles – new!
Setting up a billing profile allows you to set how (billing type) & what (rate) you are charging for projects you run in GUIDEcx, plus specify allotted hours. Admins can set up multiple billing profiles for the organization, and then users can select the applicable Billing Profile when creating a project.
To create a Billing Profile, navigate to Company Details > Settings > Add Billing Profile. First, enter a name (e.g., “Billing Profile 1”), then choose a billing type from these three options:
Flat Fee: Select this option if you set a fee in advance for projects. If you do not charge anything for projects, select this type and enter $0 for the fee amount. (Note: The dollar amount you set for your billing profiles will be the default value when you select the billing profile on your project, but you can modify the dollar amount per project as needed in project setup.)
Hourly – Single Rate: Select this option if you charge a standard hourly rate for time logged on your projects. Enter the dollar amount you use for your standard hourly rate. You cannot edit this amount at the project level.
Hourly – Categorized Rate: Select this option if you charge based on time spent, but the rate varies based on the type of work being done. The specific rates used for projects with this billing type will be determined by the rates you set when creating Time Categories.
Notes:
Editing a Billing Profile in Company Details > Settings will NOT affect in-flight projects using that Billing Profile. However, you may edit a project and select a different Billing Profile should you wish to change something in-flight.
Billing Profiles are set at the Company level and then added to projects. At the project level, only two fields within the Billing Profile can be modified – Flat Fee amount and Allotted Hours amount. These fields can be edited at any time during the duration of the project.
Allotted Hours (Billing Profiles) - new!
When creating a Billing Profile, you will also be given the option to enter ‘Allotted Hours’. This is the count of billable hours you expect a project to take. This may be the same as the total estimate from your tasks. Using Allotted Hours is optional, but consider these benefits:
Customer transparency: Set expectations with customers for how many hours they will receive as part of the project. On a per-project basis, you may choose whether you want to display this Allotted Hours number to customers (visible on the Project Overview Page). If you choose to show hours to customers, they will also see the billable hours logged throughout the duration.
Note: The hours logged that will be visible to customers will ONLY reflect the billable hours logged. Non-billable hours logged do not count against allotted hours.
Overages billing: Some organizations may have a set fee or rate for allotted hours, but then charge additional fees for any ‘overages’. If you run projects this way, select the box 'Use separate billing type for overages’ and choose another billing type. GUIDEcx will then calculate the appropriate billing total for your projects based on time logged.
Example: Your company charges an implementation fee of $15,000 for projects - this fee covers 60 hours of implementation work. Any hours above 60 incur an hourly fee of $500/hr. For this case, you would create a Billing Profile and select the Flat Fee billing type, enter $15,000 for the fee amount, then enter 60 for the Allotted Hours. Then select the overages checkbox and choose Single Hourly Rate of $500.
Time Categories – new location!
View, create, edit, or delete Time Categories in Company Details > Settings. Time Categories allow you to assign a rate for a specific category of work. Users can then select a category when logging time on a task or project. (ex: Campaign setup, rate: $20/hr)
When creating a Time Category, provide a name, rate, and optional description. You will also have the option to choose if the category is billable or non-billable.
Non-billable categories – Any time logged with a non-billable time category will NOT count towards billable hours or allotted hours used.
Billable categories – When creating a billable category, you will be asked to provide a rate that should be used for time logged in this category. Billable time logged will count towards billing totals (if the project has an hourly billing type) and allotted hours used. (The specific category rates will only be used for billing calculations IF the billing type for the project is set to Hourly-Categorized Rates.)
Notes:
Any Time Categories you have previously created will be transferred to Company Details > Settings.
Any changes made to Time Categories will be immediately effective for both new and in-flight projects. Existing time records using the categories will not be changed, but any new time entries made with the categories will reflect the changes and whatever the current state is at the time of time entry.
Entering Time
For All Users
Time Entry Modal – redesigned!
Now you can....
See # of hours logged for the week
Enter exact minutes for increased accuracy (Note: decimals may still be entered into the hours field if preferred)
View and use remaining estimated hours to autofill the time fields
Logging Time - new locations!
You can now add time to a project by selecting the 3-dot menu on the top right of the Project Plan page and selecting "Enter Time on Project".
Time can also be logged for tasks in the Project Plan View by selecting the 3-dot menu on an individual task.
Time Editing
There are now two options for restricting time-editing, found under Company Details > Settings.
Inflight projects only – If this toggle is turned on, users may only edit time entries for projects that are not marked Done. This toggle is on by default.
Current month only – If this toggle is turned on, users may only edit time entries in the current month, not previous months. At 12:00am on the first day of the month, the previous month will be locked for editing or adding time entries.
Note: These settings will not affect Admin or Manager permissions for editing time entries
Requiring Time Entry for all Tasks is now available on a project by project basis and can be toggled on or off in Project Details.
Reporting & Insights:
Newly added reporting helps you identify how efficient your team is, where most time is being spent, and project probability factoring in load cost.
Project Overview
You will find the following information on the ‘Overview’ tab of your projects:
Hours: The Hours card gives you a summary of the hours estimated, logged and forecasted for your project, which may help you understand how efficiently your project is progressing compared to what you expected.
Estimated: Total of the estimated hours across all tasks in the project.
Logged: Total of all time logged for this project, by any user.
Forecasted: Projected total hours for the project based on hours logged so far and remaining estimated hours.
Note: an error icon is displayed if any tasks do not have estimated hours entered as this may mean totals for Estimated and Forecasted hours are incorrect. To remove this error icon simply add estimates to each task.
Cost: The Cost card gives you a summary of budgeted, accrued, and forecasted cost for your projects. Cost is calculated by multiplying hours logged by the fully loaded cost amount for the users who logged that time. Admins can set fully loaded cost for your users in Company Details >>> Users.
Accrued cost – the total cost accrued based on time logged in the project
Budgeted cost – the expected cost based on the estimated hours for tasks and the users assigned to those tasks
Forecasted cost – The expected total cost for the project considering time logged thus far as well as remaining estimated time.
Billing: The Billing card will show you the billing amount accrued for the project as well as the total allotted hours compared to billable hours.
Charges accrued: This number is calculated based on the billing type for the project – if Flat Fee, the number will not change, if Hourly, this number will increase based on the number of hours logged, etc.
Allotted hours – this is the number of allotted hours you set for the project. This is the total that you may decide to show to customers, which may be different from the total estimated hours.
Billable hours – this is the number of hours that have been logged in a billable category. Only billable hours count towards allotted hours.
Note: If you enable the ‘visible to customers’ toggle for the project, Allotted and Billable hours will show for customers. Charges accrued will never show for customers.
Profit: The Profit card just represents the current billing total less the current accrued costs.
Advanced Time Tracking Report
The Advanced Time Tracking Report is found in Reports, and features five key cards:
Total Hours Worked by Task: this will show you what tasks are the most time-consuming for your team. You will see two columns for each task:
Actual Hours Project – This represents the total number of hours spent on this task across all projects where the task exists.
Average Hours – This represents the average hours spent on that task across all the projects where that task was included.
For example: If you have a task in a template called “Integration”, and it is included in three projects, with 4, 5, and 3 hours logged on it in each project, you would see an average of 4 hours for this task, and a total of 12 hours.
You can click on any task to drill down into details of which projects the task was in and how many hours were logged for each project.
Total Hours Worked Trended: this will show you the total hours logged by your team over time, across all projects. You can adjust your filters on the page to see this trend by any of the following:
User
Category
Project
Template
Task
This report can give you a good sense for how efficient you are, where most of the time is being spent, and whether you’re improving over time.
Total Hours Worked by Category: this is similar to the task report above, but instead of breaking time down by task, this report will break time down by category, with columns for both Average hours and Actual Project Hours. You might use this report to discover that a lot of time is being spent on things like follow-up work, which might not be clear if you’re only looking at time by tasks since follow-up work is done for a lot of different tasks.
Total Hours Worked by Person: this will tell you how many hours have been logged by all the users on your team across all their projects. You can click into any specific user to see more detail about their time on specific projects or tasks.
Total Hours Worked by Project: this will tell you how many hours have been logged by project, across all users and tasks. You can click into any specific project to see details about time spent on specific tasks within that project.