For
a services organization, Time is the main and crucial resource. We
had many suggestions, from you, to improvise and bring in a mechanism
where, every hour spent in work is captured in a more meaningful way.
We spent considerable amount of time to bring the best way of
capturing and analyzing this important resource called - Time.
A
major change that is being introduced, is changing the way time is
captured, and analyzed. Following are two major changes from concept
of Time:
"Categorizing
Time" for certain major activities within your organization.
All
this while, time has been entered in service for each task or for a
specific service. Though it serves basic purpose of capturing time,
it was lost in many other numbers. What we mean here is, time entered
was not grouped in a meaningful way. Imagine if you wanted to know
how much time has gone towards "vouching" alone, or how
much of time in client meetings across services, and across clients,
during a certain season, or how much of this time is chargeable or
non-chargeable. There was no mechanism to know answers to these
questions.
Secondly,
Time spent in an organization is not just on services, but for
various other activities of organization. Some of it would include
marketing, sales, CSR, internal meetings, trainings, seminars,
participating in recruitment activities like interviews, resume
scrutiny, etc., or performance reviews, unplanned time outs, team
meetings, so on and so forth. Till
now, it was
captured in various ways by different organization. Either by
creating multiple services for each such activities and log time
against this services or having one general service where time spent
for all such activities was grouped.
To
address above mentioned concerns, "Time" in Papilio is
revisited and revised completely. We are introducing "Time
Sheet", a group of time logs. Also, time logs can further be
classified as "Chargeable" or "Non-chargeable",
"Regular" or "Overtime".
"Approval"
of Time Sheets
Time
entered by various levels of people on activities were disclosed by
executives and the same was not verified or approved by managers. Due
to this, time entered was never checked for accuracy and secondly,
there was no regularity and discipline in entering time.
We
are happy to introduce approval mechanism for each such submitted
time sheets. Managers will have option to approve or reject time
sheets.
These
new features are detailed in the following section:
Time Sheet
Timesheets
are group of time logs for a week. Each timesheet starts with Monday
as first day of week. Each timesheet will have multiple entries. Each
entry corresponds to a service or activity, for which, time can be
entered for the entire week. Each entry can belong to any of the
following types -
1.
Chargeable - Billable time, spent during regular working hours
2.
Non- Chargeable - Non-billable time, spent during regular working
hours
3.
Overtime - Extra hours spent (other than regular working hours),
which is billable. Note
that, there is no non-chargeable overtime.
A
time log is one entry made for a day against a specific activity.
There are multiple time logs for a given timesheet spanning a week
for one or more activities. Such entered time logs are all visible
within those services, similar to how it use to appear earlier under
a service. Also, note that, such time logging can be done from
services or from tasks. And such entered time logs will become part
of a time sheet.
Once
a time sheet is filled for a week, the same can be submitted. You can
choose to have an approval mechanism for time sheets.
If
time sheets require approval, submitted time sheets will wait at
approving manager's desk. And approving manager has right to approve
or reject time sheets. Notifications are sent on submission,
approval/ rejection of time sheets. If time sheets does not require
approval, all submitted time sheets are considered approved on
submission.
Setup
1.
Enable Timesheet feature
Under
"Settings", you can choose to enable time sheet or disable
Time module completely by choosing appropriate option. After time
sheet is enabled, save settings to choose whether you require
approval flow or not and to set minimum work hours per week. By
default, it is set at 45 hours.
2.
Create Chargeable codes and Non-chargeable codes
Under
settings, click on "Configure Lists".
In
the following screen, select appropriate list name to define codes.
After
selecting appropriate type, click on "Add a new item" to
add list values. After adding, you will be provided with an option to
reorder the list the way you would like to see them in the drop down
while entering time.
3.
Set Approving Manager for each user
Select
Approving Manager for each user by editing user. On submitting time
sheets, approving manager, on his login, will get list of time sheets
waiting for approval.
4.
Linking Chargeable codes to "Service Type"
This
is an advanced option, where you can link chargeable codes to service
types. Doing so, for a given service, depending on its service type,
chargeable codes will appear accordingly for every time entry. To
link, go to "Settings" >> "Configure Categories".
Click on "Edit" against a service type to link chargeable
codes to that service type.
Important Note
You need to enable "Timesheets" to see/ access time that was captured earlier.
Changes you will notice are:
- Each timelog is considered to be chargeable
- Each timelog will be part of a timesheet
- Each time sheet till date is approved by default
- All time logs till date are grouped under "General" chargeable code.
