Account&See Invoicing and Accounting

Timer Projects

Account&See allows you to record time spent on customer's projects. From the main screen, click on the Stopwatch-iconed Timer Project button, select either a customer code or customer name from the drop down boxes and in the text below, type a brief description of the work being carried out - this could also include the name of the person carrying out the work so you will know the hourly rate to charge. Clicking the Start button will, obviously, start the timing of the project and the length of time the project has been running is shown in the stopwatch underneath the buttons. When you click the stop button, timing for the particular project is stopped and the length of time is stored in the database for later retrieval when billing your customer.

From the last button in this section, you can preview all timer projects stored in the system that haven't yet been billed.
To convert the Timer Projects into invoices, you can either click on the 'View All Timer Projects' button mentioned earlier and double click on any entry to open a standard invoice, or when creating a standard invoice, selecting a customer who has a timer project associated with them, a Stopwatch image appears at the bottom of the invoice.

Timer Project Window


The Timer Project Billing Creator window shows all currently 'open' timer projects including the date, brief description and the time in both Actual and Unit measurements.
By default, the time 'units' are 10 minutes - or six billing periods per hour. A time unit rounds up your actual time to the nearest time unit, or in the case of the default units, rounds the actual time up to the nearest 10 minutes. Therefore, if you spend 54 minutes on a particular project, using the time units you would bill out 60 minutes of time. The grace period is measured in seconds and the default value is 60 seconds. Therefore, if your actual billed time was 10 minutes and 20 seconds, the 20 seconds would be less than the grace period, so the unit time would be just 10 minutes, whereas 11 minutes and 1 second would create a unit time of 20 minutes. You can set the Unit and Grace periods by changing the text in the two boxes at the top right hand corner of the screen.

To select which projects you want to include in your invoice, simply check the relevant check boxes to the right hand side of the window. Selecting the check boxes adjusts the total Actual and total Unit Times in the two boxes in the bar below the checkboxes.
In the bottom half of the window, a drop down box allows you to select a Product Code. A large text box allows you to type the description that will appear in the description line of the invoice. To enter a quantity in the Quantity box, you can either type the time you wish to bill - remember 1 hour and 30 minutes is 1.5 hours - or you can 'drag and drop' either the total Actual or total Unit times by placing the mouse in either box, hold down the left hand mouse button and drag the time into the quantity box. This operation also has the advantage of converting the hours, minutes and seconds into a decimal time value (i.e 1 hour and 40 minutes is 1.67 hours).
The price box is where you enter the hourly rate you wish to charge.
When complete click on the 'Update Database and Exit' button which firstly closes the selected Timer Projects from the system and then populates the invoice with the code, description, quantity and price you have just entered. Any timer projects that you did not select by unchecking the check boxes are not removed from the system so that they may be included in a subsequent invoice.

Another example of the use of the timer project is detailed in the Non Printing Products section.



Related Topics
To Do List
Appointment Calendar