A quick and easy introduction to Tempo Accounts

Tempo Account screenshot

Accounts are one of the top features of Tempo Timesheets. Many small businesses benefit from using them, but they’re also crucial for large organizations with complex time tracking needs. 

So, what are Tempo Accounts? Simply put, they are a powerful tool for organizing the wealth of information generated by Tempo. Without Accounts, time tracking data can be difficult to interpret or use effectively. Accounts can help you to consolidate a particular subsection of the data you’ve generated in Tempo.

A view of Tempo Accounts

What can you use Tempo Accounts for?

Accounts are made to be customized to your unique needs. They can help you to keep track of all sorts of different information, for instance: 

  1. You may want to keep track of billable hours or non-billable hours for a given customer.
  2. You may want to organize projects or initiatives. 
  3. You may want to monitor time spent on internal issues like training or vacation time. 
  4. You may want to define the cost centers in your company with capitalized and operational expenses

Oftentimes, Accounts are defined as customers, but they don’t have to be. A “customer” can also be a product, a supplier or even a department in your own company. 

How Accounts work with Jira and Tempo

There are two ways to capture data for Tempo Accounts. 

The first is the Account Custom Field. By linking the Account Custom Field to the Jira project and then adding it to the Jira issue view, you can associate issue time entries to that account.

The second way is the Account Work Attribute, which is not configured in the issue screen, but in Tempo’s Settings. The Account Work Attribute will appear in the log time form and the value for the account is chosen when logging time. 

The Account Custom Field is linked to the issue itself, while the Account Work Attribute is linked to the time logged itself. There are pros and cons to each approach. See here for a detailed breakdown of the different ways of using Tempo Accounts.

How categories classify the Accounts data

Account categories are used to classify account data and explain what kind of account it is. Examples of categories include Research, Development, Training, or Marketing. Each category has an associated type, which can be either Billable, Capitalized, Internal, or Operational. Categories and types are handy because they can be used as filters when running reports and they add an additional layer of insight into the data. 

For example, if you have multiple accounts with sales and marketing data, you could create a new “Sales and Marketing” category and assign those accounts to it. Or you could use categories to differentiate between the needs of customers, for example with titles like “Website improvements” or “Software maintenance”.  

Some helpful pointers

Here are a couple of pointers to keep in mind when starting to set up Accounts: 

  • We recommend implementing Accounts before rolling out Tempo, because it’s easier to set up at the outset.  
  • Use consistent naming conventions for Accounts, so that everyone at your organization knows which Accounts can be used for which issues and for what purpose.
  • Time logged to internal issues in Jira may be wrongly included as part of billable hours. Usually they are not billable, so it makes sense to create a non-billable Account for internal issues that will be excluded from the data when running reports. 

Why Tempo Accounts are so empowering

Tempo Accounts can fulfill different objectives for different organizations. With them, businesses can easily visualize the distribution of work efforts across their companies in any way they need. There’s no need for spreadsheets to manipulate the data or other ad hoc tools for reporting: the real-time, categorized data is available right there in Tempo. 

They also offer a convenient way to capture and report on high-level data on all the work performed across your business. At the end of the day, using them helps to eliminate headaches and hassle. 

With Accounts, the potential for inaccuracies or soured relationships dramatically drops. They transform customer billing and invoicing into a highly accurate, reliable, and transparent process. Using Accounts to track operational and capitalized expenses can also optimize profitability since the time spent on capitalized expenses can be reduced from taxes in many countries. 

Ultimately, Accounts turbocharge the power of Tempo Timesheets with carefully organized data management. See our Help Center documentation for either Cloud or on-premise for details on how to set up, use, and modify Accounts.

Tempo Accounts work in conjunction with Tempo Reports, which provide visibility into the data that’s been generated in Tempo. Read more:

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