So far, the most commonly asked question about Tempo Books has been, “How does Tempo Books know whether time logged is billable or not?”
This November tip of the month shows you how you can configure Tempo Books to determine whether hours are billable versus non-billable as team members log their time.
Tempo Books begins with Tempo Accounts, a system plugin included with Tempo products, where an account is configured to match the type of work being performed, and to filter the time logged. By filtering time logged, Tempo Books is determining whether it is billable or non-billable - e.g. capitalized, internal, or operational. A big part of selling service and catering to clients is the time spent on each task for billing and invoicing.
The Tempo Account Manager permission gives permission to create, edit, import and export accounts. Each account is linked to a JIRA project where team members log their time on issues within JIRA projects - with Tempo Timesheets or with JIRA log work field.
Related article: Managing Accounts in Tempo Books
Define a Descriptive Account Category
When an account is created or imported to Tempo Books, a category is chosen for the account, as seen above. The category is totally up to you, where you give it a name describing what kind of work is being performed. Names of your categories are solely for the purpose of differentiating and grouping data together.
The Magic Happens When the Type of an Account Data It's Grouping Together Defines Each Category
Why not take advantage of it? It’s easy! Here’s how:
First, go to the Account browser from the Tempo drop-down menu by selecting more… under Accounts.
In the top right corner in the Account Browser, you’ll find the Manage drop-down menu. There you select Categories - to access all account categories already created in JIRA.
Manage Categories section opens where you can configure your account categories into four different types: billable, operational, internal, and capitalized. By selecting the type of the account category, you enable Tempo Books to categorize time logged for each issue in a JIRA project according to its account data.
So next time when a team member logs time on a certain issue linked to a JIRA project and an account, Tempo Books depicts how each team and team member is utilizing their time in the Team Utilization view. As many professional service organizations have a certain utilization target, Tempo Books can easily help with sustaining that target. Team leads or the person responsible for a team can monitor their team members and the teams' utilization.
Tempo Books helps you keep track of overall team and time spent on each account category, and view different ratios of the team's practical efforts and for each team member. Pivot the information and see how your team is performing on different categories.
