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Whiteboard: Blocks of Support Time

Are you a consultant? Do you sell blocks of support time to your customers?

Then this video is for you. Scroll down to watch.

You should consider using project tasks to represent blocks of support time you sell to clients. Here how they work:

  1. You create a project task to represent the block to time
  2. Set the ‘Duration’ to the number of hours you sold
  3. Set the ‘Percent Warning’ to 75%
  4. Set the ‘Percent Error’ to 100%
  5. Assign the task to consultants who will be logging hours
  6. When the 75% limit is triggered, you will get an email
  7. Go back to the client and sell the next block
  8. When the 100% limit is triggered, you won’t be able to log any more hours

Sweetness and cool.  🙂

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Whiteboard: Customize Client Invoices

While sending out invoices to clients why not customize them? Start with your logo. Then update the fonts and colors to your corporate style. Add some graphics and colored text blocks

The Standard Time® invoice templates are simple RTF documents. So all this is easy in MS Word. Once you have your client invoice the way you like it, all your new invoices will use that new format.

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Interview: Customize Client Invoices

Make invoices your own with Standard Time®. Put your company logo, company style in every invoice sent out to clients.

Scroll down to watch the video

Invoice templates in ST at simple RTF documents.  That means you can edit them any way you like.  Open them in your favorite word processor and go to work!  Add your logo, motto, corporate colors and style.  Add anything you like.  When you’re done, save it in the Invoices\Templates folder.  Now you use it in ST.

Place these tags in your document to serve as placeholders for data.

[INV_NUM] Invoice number
[INV_SUBTOTAL] Total, before taxes
[INV_TOTAL] Total, after taxes
[INV_TAX_RATE] Percentage of tax on goods and services
[INV_TAX] Total taxes
[INV_DATE] Date the invoice was produced
[INV_PO] Purchase order number
[INV_TERMS] NET30, or other payment terms
[INV_DUE] Due date
[INV_REP] Representative
[INV_PROJECT] The project this invoice was billed against
[INV_SUBSYSTEM] The subsystem this invoice was billed against
[INV_USER] The user the time and expenses belonged to
[INV_NOTE] Note to display on the invoice
[INV_STARTDATE] Starting date range for time and expenses
[INV_ENDDATE] Ending date for time and expense records
[INV_TASK_DETAIL] A pre-built block that describes all the time logs
[INV_EXPENSE_DETAIL] Pre-built block of expense records
[INV_TAXID] Federal tax id of the consulting firm
[INV_ADDRESS] Address of consulting firm
[INV_CLIENT] Client name and address, displayed anywhere you like
[INV_TASK_TOTAL_ACTUAL] Total hours for all time logs
[INV_TASK_TOTAL_CLIENT] Calculated time log cost to client
[INV_TASK_TOTAL_SALARY] Calculated cost to consulting firm
[INV_EXP_TOTAL_AMOUNT] Total expenses
[INV_EXP_TOTAL_DISTANCE] Total distance for all mileage records
[INV_TASK_] Prefix for any time log field
[INV_EXP_] Prefix for any expense field
[INV_EMBED_RTF:] Prefix for embedding a report into the invoice

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Blocks of Support Time

Clients can buy blocks of support time from their vendors. Project tasks can be set up in Standard Time® to follow the time used in support. When the time runs out a new contract is then negotiated.

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Interview: Better than a Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet looks really inviting; free! If you have a small business with a few employees and don’t have to send any invoices, then it probably is OK. But multiple projects, many employees and different billing rates for them all is when you need a professional timesheet.

All true…

But here are some reasons spreadsheet are not the best tool for tracking client hours.

  1. You can easily make the mistake of entering hours into the wrong employee.
  2. Same with the wrong project
  3. Same with the wrong client
  4. You can’t sync with a neato time tracking app like Standard Time®.
  5. You can’t easily share the spreadsheet on the web without collisions.
  6. You don’t get any email notifications when things are wrong.
  7. You don’t get any real project status.

So… that free timesheet may be costing you more than you think.

Check this out.

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Client Invoices

Using this technique, you can customize the client invoices you send to your customer.

The video below describes client invoice templates, which are really just RTF documents.  Because you can open RTF docs in Word, you can put your own logo in, or rearrange the template to look any way you like.

Tags in the document are replaced with actual data when the invoice is run.

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Customizing Invoice Templates

Rich Text Format (RTF) can be used in Standard Time® invoice templates. This video will show you how to customize invoices for client billing.

You need a flexible client billing invoice.  A Rich Text document that can be opened in MS Word does it!  It seems old-school, but it really works well.  Here’s why: you can use MS Word to put anything anywhere.  Then Standard Time fills in the invoice and opens it in Word.  You can then use Word to save as PDF and send it to your client.

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Customer Login and App

Customers can now see the status of their projects without bugging you! They just log-in to Standard Time® and get an update. Or use Android app called ProjectBot.

Customers want project status.  And they sometimes want it frequently… like every day!

Fortunately, there is a simple solution.  Standard Time has a simple client login page where your customers can log in to get their status.  All their projects are listed.  They can see how many hours were allocated, and how many hours were logged.  Simple.

Android ProjectBot

Plus, there’s even a simpler way.  There’s an Android app called ProjectBot that does the same thing.  Except that it does it automatically.  Every 15 minutes, ProjectBot syncs with the cloud and pulls down all the project information for that client.  The client can simply look at the app for the status.  That makes things pretty simple!

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Customize Client Invoices

Consultants can customize invoices sent out to their clients. Standard Time makes it easy.

Client invoice templates in ST are simple RTF documents you can open in MS Word.  That means you can customize them anyway you like.  Put in a company logo… add extra text… move things around… change fonts… anything you like!

Plus, you can create your own invoice templates to choose from.  Check out these videos.

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/customizinginvoices.htm

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/newinvoice.htm

 

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Consultant Billing Rates

Different consultants can use different clients billing rates.  For instance, a project manager can bill differently than an engineer.  Makes sense, huh?  This video makes it look simple.

Actually, it is simple.  Standard Time lets you assign unique project rates to each consultant.  And, those rates can vary by project.  Project A is not the same as Project B.  So the billing rates for each consultant can be unique.

This video may also help.  It describes exactly how to set up client billing rates for each consultant.

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/clientbilling.htm

How to verify client billing rates

You may also wonder how to verify that the rates are correct.  Of course, you can look at the invoice itself.  That’s the final check.  But the techniques below will also help.  They involve using the Time Log rate and cost columns to display the values you expect from each employee and project.

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/verifybillingrates.htm

Future billing rates

Consulting rates may be different in future years.  For instance, the year 2020 will likely have different rates than today.  That means you can set those rates for future years (if you know them).  Standard Time uses those future rates for project costing and revenue predictions.  Check out this video!

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/futurebillingrates.htm