Help Desk - Billable Hours and Time Tracking
The help desk allows staff members to record billable hours and track time spent resolving each task. Time entries for a specific help desk task are visible while viewing the task details. Additionally time tracking entries related to tasks belonging to a division are visible while viewing a Companies and Divisions details.
Time tracking allows staff and managers to monitor the time spent on any task and identify where support and work hours are spent. Time may be marked as "Billable" and non-billable time. Bill codes can be applied to time tracking entries for classification by staff. Properly tracking billable and non-billable time on task provides accountability and proper records for generating invoices for services performed or time spent from invoicing and billing applications.
To add a time log record entry to a task open the Task Details from the Task List and click on the Log Time icon on the Task Details Menu.
Time Entries
Time can be tracked using 2 methods. The first method is to manually enter time records. When manually entering time records the user has the option to select the staff member, start time and hours and minutes spent on the task. The user can also specify if the time log entry is "billable" or if the line item has been "invoiced" as well as provide a description for the time spent. While entering manual time log entries on a task task the start time and end time are not required. The staff memer can supply the hours and minutes, or supply start date and time as well as the end date and time. In the case where start and end date and time information is provided the log entry manager will calculate the hours and minutes spent on the task.
The second method is to use the timer to track time spent while performing a task. Clicking on the "start Timer" button on the Log Time Entry Screen starts the log timer. The timer is displayed in the upper right corner of the tiHelpdesk instance. The timer overlay will stay displayed as long as time is being tracked. The staff member can navigate to other tasks and perform additional functions inside of the tiHelpdesk instance. While tracking time, the user can close their browser window or sign out of tiHelpdesk. When the user signs into the tiHelpdesk instance again on that specific browser, the timer overlay will be displayed in the upper right hand corner. If the user logs out of tiHelpdesk from their desktop and logs in on a different device the timer will not be displayed. This prevents the timer window from being displayed across multiple devices and is by design.
The functionality of the timer on desktops and mobile devices is slight different. On the desktop they buttons on the timer bar allow the user to pause, restart and stop the timer. On mobile devices the timer bar acts as a display only. Mobile users should click on the log time button again to stop tracking time on a mobile device.
When the user stops the time they will have the ability to adjust the information stored in the time log.
Depending on the nuances of how the time record was created and the total duration of the tracked time, the start or end time for a log entry may be "blank." This is behavior is normal.
Viewing Time Log Entries
Time log entries can be viewed from each task that has time logged. Logged time can also be viewed from the "Company Detail" panel for any company. This panel displays all tasks that have time logged. task entries displayed on the Billable Time tab by task. Each task entry displays the total time logged for each task. Individual time log entries can be viewed by clicking on each task entry.
