Whitepaper: End of Period Billing Workflow

At the end of the period, when we want to do invoicing from TimeTrak there are a series of steps that must be completed. This could be done on a weekly or monthly basis or a combination of both.

REMEMBER: Time entered into TimeTrak does not automatically go to the Job, it needs to be posted first!

If permissions allow, both TimeTrak Professional and Mobile users can post time to the job via the websites.

TimeTrak Professional

Check that all staff have completed their time sheets for the period you wish to invoice.

In this example, if we are doing an “invoice run” on a Monday, then you will need to check that the staff have all completed their time sheets up until Friday night of the previous week. (Friday is the last working day in this example).

To do this, a Global Professional user that has access to the “User Time Balancing Report” will need to run the report as per below:

Change the selection to the time period you want, All Users and All Groups.

This report shows how much time the staff have left to fill out based on their roster class. Ideally, this report would be blank. If you select the email button, it gives you a list of days they have outstanding time to complete and allows you to email them and suggest they get their time sheets up to date.

See below example, of an email template if they have timesheets that have not been completed:

Once you have chased up staff who had not completed their time sheets you go to the next stage of verifying the time entries before exporting them. The theory here is that if an Administrator or Manager checks them, then they can be billed with minimal or no change in Exo JobCosting, or by using our utility JIBE.

Run the Timesheet Verification Report, again, normally only Administrators and Managers will see this. If it is not on your menu, then it can be added via the TimeTrak Admin Console.

In the below example, the TimeSheet Verification by Job report is used.

Select ALL USERS, ALL GROUPS and the dates you want to check you will get the following report.

In many instances, if billing queries are used then it would be advised to review just billing queries first by selecting the “Only Include Jobs with Billing Queries” from the report parameter.

Then address each item that has a billing query and editing the entry to make the business discussion on whether or not it should be billed before running the report for all other entries.

Click on a Job Line to drill into it.

This shows you at a job level all time entries and disbursements that have been applied against the job in TimeTrak for the period selected.

By selecting each Job, you can go through and check the amounts, narrations, billable statuses etc.

You can edit the narration directly on the first page to fix typos or update the narration.

If you want to edit the entry and change one of the other items like rate, billable status or update the task then you click the small icons as below.

You can also email the staff member if you want to query them on the time entry, by clicking the email icon beside the user’s name. This produces a small report to email to the staff member.

If you are happy with the time and materials to be billed, you can verify the entries individually or all together at the same time.

For more information on TimeSheet Verification click here

After verification has been completed, you can move onto the next step.

TimeTrak Administrator Console

The next step is to export the time and materials from TimeTrak into Job Costing.

To do this you need to use the TimeTrak Administrator Console.

Once you have logged in using your TimeTrak credentials, go to the folder icon on the bottom left corner.

Note: Only users with “Global Administrator” permissions can login to the TimeTrak Admin Console.

It is pertinent to run a backup of both databases before you start, especially if this is the first few exports you are doing. Once you are comfortable with how it works you may choose to skip these backups.

You can manually complete back ups of both databases via the Post to MYOB Exo > Backup Database’s icon as per below:

If you have a backup file location specified in Global System Setup, then backups can be completed from the Posting Screen.

For more information about how to backup databases, click here.

Once the backups are saved, click into the Post to MYOB Exo menu item.

Click on the Post to MYOB Exo button.

You will notice there are some options on the Export page:

• Period – Select the (MYOB Exo) Period to post the entries into, this will only display open financial periods
• Filter by a date range – Select the date period you wish to review and post entries for.
• Lock the period after post – If enabled, this setting locks the “filter by period” and prevents users from creating or editing time entries (regardless if they are posted or not) that are prior to the end filter by date range.

In this example, as per above, the filter by date range was 01/09/2018 – 30/09/2018

With Lock the period after post setting enabled, the Global System Setup setting “Lock Records Before” date has been updated preventing all users from adding or editing any entries prior to this date.

• Lock Non-chargeable time entries after post – This will lock Non-Billable Productive and Non-Productive time entries within this period in TimeTrak.
• Only Post Verified Time Entries and Disbursements – Select this and click on the Refresh button to see the time entries have been verified, it may be your business process that only verified time entries are posted to MYOB Exo.
• Only post completed days – If this setting is enabled, only time entries where the user has completed their daily minimum hours as per their roster class will be visible and posted to MYOB Exo.
• Validate – This will check that Job statuses, stock codes and general job information still match between TimeTrak and MYOB Exo. All entries validated will display a green tick and the totals will show in the Post Summary.

Before posting to MYOB Exo, users have the option to Backup databases or Print the information that is on screen.

If Print is selected, there is the ability to export the data to another file type, Excel for example.

Once you are happy with the data on screen, Click the Post Button to Post from TimeTrak to MYOB Exo.

Read through the warning and confirm by clicking on YES.

Once Posting is complete a pop up confirming the totals will show, all time entries and disbursements will have a solid green tick beside them.

Click CLOSE to shut down the posting screen.

MYOB Exo Job Costing

These entries are now in the Exo Job Costing system against the applicable jobs.

You can see these jobs by going into the Job Management Screen, via the Account drop down:

Posted time entries and disbursements from TimeTrak will be against the applicable jobs.

Time entries will land in the timesheets tab against the applicable jobs:

Disbursements will land in the costs tab against the applicable jobs:

Time entry and disbursement narrations will be posted through with the line as a narration as per below:

The line status that the time entry or disbursement is posted to the job at is based on the billable status that the entry was entered against.

For example, if a time entry was entered against the below “Quote Status”

Time Entries and Disbursements are posted to the job at the line status of “In progress” but with a zero value due to the settings specified in the billable status below:

When you are ready to invoice your job, you can select the lines either individually or all lines against the tab, then right click and “Send line to invoice”

From the invoice tab, the job can be invoiced by clicking the “Invoice Job” button as per below:

This will generate the invoice form for you to review/ alter

When you are satisfied with the invoice, click save which will generate the invoice against the debtor account.

After that, you will be asked to change the job status or leave it as is.

Another common way of invoicing is via billing schedules.

Once the time entries and materials are posted to the job, select the time and/or materials you wish to allocate to a progress invoice.

Right click > Marked lines > Allocate to Progress Invoice as per below:

Select the progress invoice you wish to allocate costs against

Allocate costs as per your usual business process.

In this example, we are going to allocate all time entries against the progress invoice.

This now shows the costs allocated to the progress invoice as per below:

For auditing purposes run the Job Costing Report – Work in Progress.

This report should show totals that have been added from TimeTrak onto Jobs.

Job Invoice Batch Engine

The second way to invoice is by using the Exosoft product called JIBE.

JIBE stands for Job Invoice Batch Engine, and has the advantage of being able to invoice a series of jobs at once.

This can save a lot of time if you need to invoice say 100 or 500 jobs.

JIBE creates each invoice automatically and you then use MYOB Exo Batch Invoice Printing to produce the hard copy.

Note: If you do not have this installed please contact your Exosoft Consultant for assistance.

To run JIBE, click the icon, select your Database connection and user name.

Once you have logged, in the following screen will appear.

It is important you fill in these fields correctly, as this process is hard to reverse.

The invoice date is the date that will go on the invoice.

The Debtor \ Stock period is the period that the invoices will be posted into – make sure you have this right as you may have more than one period open.

As a general rule of thumb, your invoice date would coincide with the period month.

Job Value – Invoice Value > 0, is a filter that stops jobs that might have had ‘NO CHARGE’ time against them for the month, normally we would not want to create a zero value invoice.

TimeTrak is typically setup to send charge up jobs to Exo with a status of Ready to Invoice or Work in Progress, you should select Ready to Invoice or Work in Progress as this is a good ‘catchall’ to get any job transactions that also didn’t come from TimeTrak.

You can go into Jobs (double click) and alter lines from this screen if you need to (Right click on the line).

You can also change Job line statuses from the main screen (Right click on the line).

You will see there is a checkbox on the left hand side that allows you to tick on and off Jobs you do not want to include in this batch invoice run.

For example, if you know there was more to be billed on a job, and you wanted to bill it on completion, then you may choose to deselect it.

Users can print a report of the Jobs in this selection by clicking the Print button, this would allow you to go through them and analyse which Jobs you may or may not want to invoice.

When you press the ‘Invoice Checked Jobs’ Button, you also get the choice to change their status.

This would be relevant if they were say warranty Jobs and you want to set them to be finished.

You would not do this if it was an ongoing “General Support” Job.

For this reason, you may choose to do the warranty invoicing in a separate run to the General Support invoices.

Once you invoice these, you receive a run screen like this showing you each invoice being produced. Any invoices that did not go through might not have had the lines set to ‘Ready to Invoice’.

You can now generate the actual printed invoices from Exo via Invoice Batch Printing

Print or Email Invoices

Log in to MYOB Exo Business you can click into the Reports Menu and select Debtor Reports – Debtor Invoice Batch Printing.

Select the date range you wish to pick up invoices that have not already been printed and emailed.

Tick on “Exclude If Already Printed” and “Exclude If Already Emailed”

Push the “Load button:

Once the selection looks right, Click Mailshot

Below will appear, Click Yes if you would like customers to receive one email with all their invoices attached.

This will take you to the MailShot window in Exo where you can complete your normal Mail out process.

Untick “Confirm each email on screen” if you would not like to confirm each email on screen.

Untick “Email Body as plain text” if you have custom HTML email templates setup in Exo.

Click Go, when you are happy with your selection on screen.

You are finished!

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