Factors that Affect Time Entries

It is important to understand that Autotask records two types of time worked, time spent on customer-facing work and internal time.

  • Customer-facing work helps to resolve a customer issue or provides direct customer service. It is recorded via a ticket or task time entry.
  • Internal (or regular) time is not directly customer-related, for example, internal organization meetings, miscellaneous or administrative time, or sick time, and it is entered via the timesheet.

IMPORTANT  Since internal, or regular, time entries are never billed to the customer, this document does not discuss internal or regular time.

In Autotask, converting time to money begins when a resource enters time on a ticket or task. Two factors, rounding and offsets, can impact the amount of time recorded.

Rounding

When rounding is enabled, the amount of time the user enters automatically rounds up to the nearest "n" minutes.

EXAMPLE  For example, if rounding is set to 15 minutes and I enter time from 10:00 am – 10:05 am, this will result in 15 chargeable minutes.

You enable and configure rounding for tasks and tickets via 2 separate Timesheet System Settings:

  • Round project task time entries up to the nearest # minutes (timesheet and billing entries will be rounded)
  • Round ticket time entries up to the nearest # minutes (timesheet and billing entries will be rounded)

When you enable these system settings, time is rounded on the users' timesheets as well on billing entries. That means that the rounded time is used to calculate total hours worked.

If you want to round time entries on billing entries only, another system setting turns off rounding for the timesheet. This system setting is named “Do not round hours worked for task or ticket time entry”.

  • When this system setting is enabled/checked, the billable hours will round, but the timesheet hours will not round.
  • When this system setting is disabled/not-checked, the billable hours will round, and the timesheet hours will also round.

Offsets

Offsets allow users to manipulate a time entry so the customer is charged for only a portion of the time entry, or for the time entry plus additional time. Offsets affect the billable amount of time. They do not affect the user’s timesheet. The timesheet will ignore offsets and will count the elapsed time between the time entry’s start time and end time.

Offset examples

EXAMPLE  A junior technician is at the customer site to install a new printer. Normally, this action would take about 1 hour. However, because the technician is not familiar with this model of printer, it takes him 1.5 hours to install it. In this case, the technician could enter a -.5 hour offset so the customer is not charged for the extra time. 1 hour will be billed to the customer, but 1.5 hours will show on the technician’s timesheet.

EXAMPLE   A senior technician is at the customer site to install a new hard drive in a PC. Normally, the service provider would not send a senior technician for this type of work – they would send a junior technician and the action would take about 2 hours. The senior technician completed the action in 1 hour (10:00 am – 11:00 am). If the technician wants to charge the customer for 2 hours, he could enter a 1 hour offset. 2 hours will be billed to the customer, but 1 hour will show on the technician’s timesheet.

EXAMPLE  When using offsets, be aware of unintended impact on resource timesheets, as shown in this example.
A technician is at the customer site from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, but takes an hour lunch break during this time. In this case, the technician could enter a -1 hour offset so the customer is not charged for the technician’s lunch break. 3 hours will flow through billing, and 4 hours will show on the technician’s timesheet. But, this use case is not recommended because, on the timesheet, the hour that the technician was on lunch break will be counted as a worked hour.
The best practice in this case would be to enter 2 separate time entries (10:00 am – 12:00 pm, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm).

NOTE  Offsets are applied to the actual (non-rounded time).

NOTE  Work types have a minimum and maximum feature that also utilizes offsets. For more information, refer to Time to Money: Work Types.