@Lubos is it possible to have a dropdown in module Billable time to access the Sales prices from Non-inventory items?
I searched the forum and ideas for Billable time but does’nt seem to be anything there.
Use case:
Employees are working on various tasks where tasks have various sales price. This “complexity” can be defined very nicely in Non-inventory items.
In this scenario there is no standard sales price for each customer, but I know it is possible in Manager to set sales price pr customer, but that does’nt apply here.
So why not connect Non-inventory Item code and Non-inventory Sales price to the Billable time module so billable work can be priced more efficiently ?
Sorry, but while that concept has been mentioned in past forum topics, the capability to set different sales prices for inventory or non-inventory items by customer does not exist. Nor would its implementation be simple. The difficulty would be the need to create and maintain separate, multi-dimensional price matrices for every customer encompassing all inventory and non-inventory items (because those are treated identically except for quantity-counting functions), all employees and/or pay grades, and possibly quantities. In other words, once you open the door, there is more to the issue than how much you charge for a task.
See, for example, these topics—all returned by searching the forum for “customer billable time” or “pricing levels”:
But there is nothing wrong with billing services via non-inventory items rather than billable time. In fact, there are strong arguments against using Manager as a time clock into which every employee enters their billable hours, unreviewed and unapproved by supervisors. I’ve worked with and for a lot of companies over the years. Never once have I seen a situation in which employees are given direct access to the primary accounting system for timekeeping functions. The risks and complications of errors are just too great.
For a large company I would probably not use Manager as a time clock as you say, but dedicated external software. But still I think for small SMBs, Billable time module has earned its place as it has some great benefits:
For small SMBs (in my country a small company/SMB is defined having less than 5 employees) the Billable time module’s register of Time spent, that is time clock, is more than adequate.
Group many Billable time records on one Sales invoice for each customer. If many employees are working for a customer over a period of time this can be very handy as customers usually prefer as few invoices as possible.
Have all Billable time records “contained” in one dedicated module where accountant/manager can review all information before making Sales invoices. Sometimes information is missing, for example Ticket number or information is wrong, for example work code.
Employees could use the Billable time table, pasted into Google Sheets for use on their mobile, to register Time spent. They can then share the table with the accountant/bookkeeper which can Batch create for them in the Billable time module, so the employee doesn’t need direct access to Manager.
This is a direct contradiction to what you originally asked for, @Tor. An autofilled rate would be a single rate. You asked for various rates for different tasks, and you asked that they be called from non-inventory item definitions. And that immediately implies all the different dimensions I mentioned earlier.
This is irrelevant. You can add as many line items to a single sales invoice as you want. Whether using the Billable Time tab or entering as non-inventory items directly, there is no grouping to be done, as individual employee’s records are not segregated. The controlling parameter is the customer.
That is exactly why most employees should not have access to your accounting system, no matter what size your business is.
yes I was asking for various rates or sales prices in Billable time module sourced from non-inventory items. I just used sales prices fixed in the customer module as an example as sales invoices issued to a customer can source the sales price for that customer from the customer module. The example was only supposed to demonstrate that a sales price can be sourced from another module inside Manager.
I said specifically that sales price pr customer doesn’t apply, as there are various prices which need to be used from Non-inventory items.
When accessing Customer’s module and clicking an amount in the Uninvoiced column is what I meant by grouping. Behind that Uninvoiced amount there can be many Billable time records, from many employees, in a group after building up over a period of time. This in my opinion is very handy and you can issue one sales invoice for all of those records with a single click on the the button “New sales invoice”. I don’t know about such a controlled process if Non-inventory items is used on Sales invoices but maybe I am misunderstanding something…
That is only true for a single customer at a time, for a single hourly rate. It is definitely not true for sales prices in general. And it ignores the fact that implementation of your suggestion would require—as I already pointed out—interaction with both Employees and Customers tabs, where necessary data on pay rates per customer and task (for employees) or contractual rates per task (for customers) does not even exist. And that ignores the complexities of both employees and customers being eligible for denomination in different foreign currencies. Additionally, you expect all that to come from the definition of non-inventory items, which are only shortcuts for data entry to begin with.
I am not saying your suggestion is not technically feasible. I am saying its implementation and use would be too complex for users to understand or troubleshoot.
Today a staff member made a similar request as in this title and thread. We have multiple techs using billable time and love the ease in which invoices are constructed for same customer over a range of days and by different techs. Billable Time is nice and accurate … it is in our practice for call-out and project work is in our view far more powerful than sales orders.
Now what the crew have asked is if Billable Time can access Inventory and non inventory records and allow them to add items to the billable time form when completing their billable time for a particular project or job.
This ability world save them time having to manually looking up the inventory item and then entering the item code and quantities into the billable time notes to ensure items not overlooked during the invoice creation stage.
Other than inventory items, travel kms is a great example of a non inventory item that would be applied to almost every instance of our billable time.
So this suggestion will potentially save the techs a headache in time and secondly the admin at large invoice creation mind blowing fast.
What you describe has nothing to do with billable time, so I certainly would not endorse the concept. Even if you could call up inventory and non-inventory items, what would the program do with them? A billable time entry is neither a sales invoice nor a receipt. So there they would sit.
Travel distance entries are best handled as expense claims, if you are reimbursing employees for them, because they are an implied expense. Of course, if the distance charges are for company vehicles, they would just be non-inventory items.
That said, there is already an idea that would cover your request: Billable Services tab. Look only at posts #1 - #7 in that topic. Post #8 diverted the discussion down a rabbit hole that two moderators tried without much success to correct. Ultimately, that part of the discussion was made irrelevant in December 2019 when Manager’s accounting for billable expenses changed.
Yeah Billable Time would not be an appropriate term for this. What is pointed out here is invoice generation which has everything to do with the Techs billable time entered over a month and then processed. I emphasis that the billable time as it stands works extremely well for that only and the crew are very familiar with it. In addition expense claims are not part of the scope raised by the crew but saving time should they no longer need to manually look up the inventory items and such from the current “Billable Time” tab. (Try this on your mobile device TuT pretty cool hey?)
I had a quick scan at the Billable Service Tab post in the Ideas section pointed out which is pretty cool but does not talk about Inventory and non inventory other than allured to this “I am guessing that the input screen would be similar to the Sales Invoice Account line section”
All in all it seems like this Billable Service Tab concept may deliver a solution provided its invoice generation process is of a similar fashion to that of the current Billable Time mechanism.
