Introduction
Time Tracking is an extremely useful tool for any practice that relies on people to provide time based services to their client base. Benefits to your practice would be:
• The ability to bill your clients for time worked • Monitoring the performance of staff
• Tracking performance against budgets (tasks and projects) • Keeping track of expenses per project
This guide will take you through the setup process for Time Tracking. This initial setup is important because it determines the manner in which Time Tracking will work for your practice.
Accountant Edition Users
Invite all your partners, managers and clerks as Accountants Edition users to your practice: • Add users under Administration…Accountants Edition Users
• Assign user access to Time Tracking and other areas of the practice by editing permissions Time Tracking users can be set up as:
• Project Administrators • Project Managers • Timesheet Only users
Make sure that you assign the correct User Rate to ensure that time worked gets charged out correctly. Also ensure that you capture an accurate User Cost as this will enable you to do profitability reporting at a later stage.
Tasks
Tasks are used to define specific areas of work within a project. • Add users to Time Tracking under the Users tab in Time Tracking:
Projects
Projects can either be applicable to many clients or can be specific “once off” projects. Example of a common project:
“Audit 2015” could be a project applicable to many of your clients. Taks within this project could be:
• Audit Planning • Accounting Work • Audit Work • Taxation Work
Some examples of typical tasks for an accounting practice would be:
Billable Tasks
• Accounting • Advisory • Audit Planning • Audit Finalisation
• Audit Substantive Procedures • Bookkeeping
• Client Administration • Company Secretarial
• Independent Review Planning • Independent Review Finalisation • Independent Review Procedures • Mergers & Acquisitions
• Other
• System Implementation
• Taxation (VAT Submissions, Annual Returns, Provisional Tax)
Non-Billable Tasks
• Administration • Annual Leave
• CPD – Continuous Professional Development • Public Holiday
• Sick Leave • Study Leave • Training
Billing Method
The recommended billing method would be either:
• User Rate per Hour (if you want to charge per hour your team has worked), or • Fixed Cost projects (if you have agreed to a set fee for the entire engagement)
This project structure (together with its assigned tasks) could then be copied to other clients where applicable. Example of a “once off” project:
Due Diligence Report could be a project you undertake for a client looking to invest in a business. Tasks within this project could be:
• Client Meetings • Due Diligence Work • Drafting of Report
Timesheets
Time can be recorded in one of three ways
• Through Customers…Time Tracking…Timesheets • By using the Mobile app
• Through the Company Console
Customers…Time Tracking…Timesheets
Here, the manner in which you decide to capture time is flexible. You can capture time either daily or weekly.
Invoice Lines
The Sage One Time Tracker Mobile App!
The Time Tracker App allows you to record your time on the go from any Android or IOS mobile devices. You have the option to select from projects and tasks that have been setup in Time Tracking in Sage One.
Capture your comments and then enter your time using either the built in timer or the edit time option, this information will then be saved directly to Sage One ready to be invoiced.
Capturing Time through the Company Console
Start by Identifying your Accounting Practice Company
This refers to your own Sage One Company which you use for your Accounting Practice. Start by identifying which company this is by clicking anywhere on the row that contains your Accounting Practice company name.
Example: If Universal Accountants is the accounting practice company, click within the row to set it as the Accounting Practice Accounts.
Once clicked, this screen will display. On the Company Details tab, click on your practice company name and on the Set Accounting Practice Account pop-up, tick the relevant block.
This set of accounts will now always display first on the list under My Clients, highlighted by the lightly shaded grey background.
If you make use of Time Tracking, one of the features on the console is the ability to log the time worked for your clients. To invoke this feature, you will be required to link your clients’ companies on your console to the customer accounts that have been created in your practice’s Sage One Company.
Definitions:
Client’s Company on your Console: This is the set of books that you have access to, which either you have created under your own profile, or your client has invited you to.
Your Practice’s Sage One Company: This is the set of books that you have created under your own profile for your practice. Customer Account: This is the account that you have created in your Sage One Company.
Start by creating a customer account in your Sage One Company, and then link this account to the matching company on your Company Console.
To link the customer account to the company on the Console, access the Console pop-up by clicking anywhere within the row of the client’s company which you want to now link to your customer account. Click on the Company Details Tab, and click on Link Customer.
In the screen that now displays, click on the drop down list and select the correct account that you have created in your Practice’s Sage One Company.
Now that the client’s company is linked to an account in your Practice’s Sage One Company, when you access the Console pop-up for this client, you will notice an additional tab – Time Entries.
Here, just the same as you would enter the time in your timesheet, you can now capture time directly from your console, without having to be logged into your Practice’s Sage One Company!
You are able to do this for all clients in your Company Console that have been linked back to your practice accounts, allowing you to capture your time worked as you do it!
Invoicing
You could choose to do your billing monthly or on completion of a project.
Interim or Retainer Billing
Use this type of billing if you want to bill your clients a set fee (maybe monthly) or to do interim billing during the project for cashflow purposes.
With this method, the capturing of time and the billing of time will be processed separately.
• Invoicing should be done manually by selecting the type “Time” on the invoice screen and selecting the project you want to invoice
• You can select whichever task you like – this description field can be edited if you like
• Capturing of time should happen as normal on the time tracking screen, however, when the time worked has been invoiced manually (above) you should mark the timesheets as invoiced by selecting the “Mark Unbilled Time as Invoiced” button on your list of projects
Setting a Timesheet Lockdown Date
If you would like to prevent the capturing of timesheets into older periods you have the option under Company Settings to set a Timesheet Lockdown Date.
Reporting
Sales by Project
Timesheet Report
Use this report to review and assess the efficiency of your time and your staff: • Check time captured (Billable vs Non-Billable)
• Check time invoiced • Check time written off
• Check what still needs to be invoiced (Work in Progress)
Profitability Reporting
See how profitable your projects are with the Profit by Project Report. This will allow you to compare your actual invoicing against your user costs and project expenses.
Work in Progress
Time Tracking only posts information through to Sage One’s Ledger when a client is invoiced. We also allow you to allocate costs to projects from the cashbook. This is very helpful when trying to assess the total profitability of a project.
Work in Progress is simply the number of hours not yet billed to your clients ie. Unbilled Hours = Billable Hours Captured but not marked as invoiced or written off. Your Work in Progress value can be calculated by using the Timesheet Report • Run the Timesheet Report for the period you are checking
• Select the Display Option as “Unbilled Hours”
• The Unbilled Hoursw multiplied by your Billing Rate amounts to your WIP
General Notes
• Projects should be marked as inactive when they are no longer in use. The same applies to tasks • These can still be viewed by using the “Inactive Projects” filter on the projects list
The Cost by Project Report will illustrate your user costs based on their hours worked on each project. It also includes all project expenses that have been linked to a project on the banking screen.
