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Internal Job Ticket for Administrative / Non-Billable Hours

Does it make sense to create one job ticket for each employee to use for non-billable administrative tasks/time?

Last year we used ONE single job ticket to capture everyone's non-billable time. This became a mass of time and didn't provide much useful information.

This year we are considering using a separate job ticket for each individual (this amounts to 20 jobs!) in the hopes that it will facilitate tracking of vacation, sick and non-billable time by employee.

Any thoughts or comments??

Thanks

Andrea Jonethis

That's what we do. Each employee gets his/her own JOB (new JOB every year) to track personal tasks such as holidays, sick days, vacation days, internal admin, etc.

Cathy Brownlee VP Client Services BHI Design http://www.bhidesign.com

you know, that sounds like a great idea... we used 12 separate job tickets last year (one for each month), but i'm wondering whether there's a better way to track all that time as well...

maybe tracking each individual employee by month?!

Josh Chen Chen Design Associates www.chendesign.com

I set up one Overhead Job with individual tasks for non-billable time which works very well because I can see at a glance how much time is spent on various downtime activity as a group. Then we set up special jobs for agency jobs (like updating our own website etc.) That way staff is not penalized for charging too much to Overhead Job.

Additionally you can pull all kinds of reports at the staff level in the productivity module for detail.

These are tasks we currently use for downtime: (HOL) HOLIDAY HOURS (MEET) MEETINGS (NEW) NEW BUSINESS (O/H) OVERHEAD MISC (PART) PARTIES (PTO) PERSONAL TIME OFF (TRN)TRAINING (FILE) FILE MAINTENANCE

Roxanne Cowan

We set ourselves up as client #999. We have a job ticket for each employee. In the tasks we have Vacation, holiday, sick time, etc. to track info. We set it up as always unbillable. We also open job tickets for specific internal projects such as production of our holiday cards to track the amount of ime it took to create and produce the cards.

Teresa Jimenez Growth Strategies Group

We do use one job ticket for non-billable work and have created several non-billable tasks (i.e. HOL, VAC, SICK, ADM, MTG, OTH). This has worked well for inputting time but I'm finding it difficult to retrieve information. For instance, if someone asks how much vacation time they took, I haven't found a quick and easy way to find that info. Therefore, I too would be interested in knowing how other agencies have set up tracking their non-billable time.

Diane Elliott Deardorff Associates

I set up two job tickets for each person - one I use for personal/vacation time and any personal costs they may incur such as sending a personal FedEx, etc. The other job they use for administrative/unbillable time or expenses that they spend on behalf of the company. I was worried at first that it would be too complicated, but all they need to remember are the last 4 digits of the job code (the first characters of the job number is the C&P abbreviation for our company) for the entire year (I give them new numbers each year). For example - my admin code is 9090 and my personal code is 8080. Hope this helps.

Donna Lipp

We use one job for this as you did last year, however we have set up tasks for paid vacation days, paid sick days, paid holidays, and non-billable time. These task codes are to be used only on this job. I don't know if this is how you did it or not, but I hope it helps.

Jaimee Stagner Accounting Manager Group C Design
www.groupcdesign.com

We are tackling that same issue ourselves. We have one general administrative number that employees use for Vaca/personal/sick/holiday time and then we have opened administrative numbers for each one of our clients in order to track time spent on client related issues that may not necessarily be billable. We find this helpful in analyzing how much total time is spent on each client not just billable time.

Hope this helps.

Kathi Sheehan Coyne Communications, Inc.

This doesn't answer your questions but it made me wonder -- how are you tracking vacation and sick time in C&P? Are you entering this time as hours but to a "sick" or "vacation" task code? How are others doing this?

Thanks, Kim Donahoe

We open one job per month for all agency non-billable time. The job is closed once a new month starts. You can pull a time report by task by employee that would give you the vacation and sick time. We found that one job for the year was too overwhelming. I would think that having a job for each employee would also be very time consuming. By doing it monthly you can set up an excel spreadsheet for each employee and add the totals for each month once the job closes. Hope this helps.

Kim McNeill Lighthouse Marketing

As some previously mentioned we currently have open one job for each employee which captures both vac/sick/pers. time as well as general non-billable time. Seems to work fairly well. Although I kinda like some of the above mentioned ideas concerning dual job numbers per employee or single numbers for vac/sick/per time and client admin numbers. Anyways, my biggest dilemma is trying to figure out how to best analize my employee realizations with admin staff, overtime hours and non billable hours. I need assistance in coming up with a solid realization number as a bench mark per employee which takes these factors into consideration.

Steven Kanney

We do basically the same here.

Greg Weir

We use one job ticket as well for non-billable, vacation, sick, holiday, and administrative (non-project-related) time such as checking e-mail, answering phones, and tracking down folders. But we use different codes within the job, such as ADMN, NOBL, VACA, etc. Each employee posts time against this one job with specific nonbillable tasks, and that way we are able to track each user's nonbillable time separately.

Scot Robnett

We have one General Number for the entire office. We then created various tasks, i.e.. UNAS-Unassigned, VACA-Vacation, ADMI-Administrative, etc. You can then track an individuals time in C&P through timesheets.

Sandra Mitchell Horton Lantz Marocco

We use a payroll service that accrues & tracks vacation/sick day usage. SOOOO happy to offload that. That is my control feature but in a pinch:

Pull this report: Accounting Timesheets File Print Time Reports Summaries Staff Time by Task (be sure to put staff ID in or you'll get ALL as default) Show hours Only

You have various dates & periods to choose from. It's pretty good.

Roxanne Cowan

We use one job per year (which is hard enough for people to remember the job number) and each person uses VAC (vacation) SICK (Sick) HOL (Holiday) GO (General Office) COMP (comp time). If I need to find out how many hours some has used I run a report using time sheets.

Cheryl Rankin Anderson Partners, Inc.

We have established an unbillable job titled "Benefit Hours". This job includes a task code for sick, personal, vacation, holiday and comp time. By establishing a separate job, it was easy to write a custom report that shows time by each staff member. Here's an example of what's included on this report. I have the report set up to sort on the date, the job #, task #, and the staff member.

DATE JOB# TASK STAFF HOURS NOTES 03/22/00 HM-3106 pers LK .5 woke up late

PERSONAL TIME: LK .5

___________________________________________________________________________

06/16/00 HM-3106 vactn LK 8 Florida vacation 06/17/00 HM-3106 vactn LK 8 Florida vacation

VACATION TIME: LK 16

___________________________________________________________________________

While educating staff members as to how they are doing on actual vs estimated hours, I use this report to answer the question "how many hours have I worked on this job?" The timesheet reports in C&P gives total hours by staff - but you cannot sort by an individual job# - C&P only gives a listing for all jobs within a status code range.

If anyone has a better way of determining how many hours I placed against a particular job, I would love your comments.

Hope this helps; and thanks in advance!

Laura Karns Logistics Manager Hanon McKendry Advertising

We use a separate job ticket for sick time, holidays, internal unbillable, etc. Each employee enters time to those dockets. Additionally, we have an admin job ticket for each client. Lots of work that we do on behalf of a client is not billable but it helps to track that time and see which client is using up the unbillable time. We usually know who they are, but its nice to see it on paper at the end of the year. Also helps for pricing future jobs :)

Elizabeth Love CSG Inc. Victoria Canada

Can you walk-thru the menu options to print this report? (assuming same set-up as you have here!)

Andrea Jonethis

And what is the source of the information for the payroll service?

Pamela A. Brosch, CPA Chief Financial Officer HSR Business to Business Inc.

The source is the time sheet. We are all salaried, but I call in usage of benefits right from the time sheet. My point is, currently I don't rely on C&P for accurate reports when I must answer to the employee about usage. Plus the accrual & usage information prints on their payroll check stub - eliminating about 90% of the questions right away!

Incidentally - we have just purchased and are testing My C&P. All employees will be entering their own time (using one job for O/H stuff with individual tasks for benefits.)

Then I will rely on C&P reports and will extract the report as itemized below.

Roxanne Cowan

We set up our Administrative/In-House jobs quarterly.

Shannon Ellis Business Manager Tackett Barbaria Design Group

My company sets up jobs for everything - business cards, brochures, etc. Not only do our employees charge their time to these jobs but production costs are charged to these also. I have a concern that our job costs are inflated and that these items should show up in expense.

I would like to here from some you on how your company handles internal charges.

Wendy Keith Thompson Murray, Inc.

Our project estimates are written in Word and when we write up a job ticket, we do not want the prices out there for everyone to see. Is there an easy way to enter all the info when a job is written up and block out the pricing from some users?

Bill Choate