Analyze time spent working on a task or a project

Article
05/15/2018
9 minutes to read

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

Use time slips to accurately determine how much time a project takes by analyzing the time spent working on a task or a project.

Prerequisites

You must have the Time Slips privilege to work with time slips.
You must have the Time Slip Invoicing privilege to invoice time slips.
You must have the Expense privilege to expense time slips.

More information: Work with user accounts and staff contacts

View and manage time slips

To work with time slips, go to Projects > Time Slips > Time Slips. This brings you to the Time Slips list page, which provides many of the standard controls for searching, sorting, filtering, adding, removing and viewing items in the list, plus other common features. See Learn how to work and get around in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing for details about how to use these common controls.

Whenever you create or edit a time slip, the settings shown in the following table are provided.

Field	Description
Status	Status shows whether the Time Slip is posted or not.
Organization	The organization drop-down list box is only displayed for sites that are using the multiple organizations option. Select the organization the work is being done for.
Contact	Select a contact. By default, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing displays the name of the contact who created the time slip.
Service	Select a service from the drop-down list box. The service selected may be associated with a rate used for invoicing and cost analysis.
Currency	Displays the drop-down list box of currency options for the sites using multiple currencies. Select the currency the time slip should be billed in. If a currency isn't specified, default currency will be taken.
Company	Select a company from the drop-down list box.
Description	Enter a description for the work done. Dynamics Marketing displays the description of the “rate” by default; you can edit the default description.
Billable	Select this check box to indicate that the time slip is billable. The Billable check box is only displayed if you have the Edit My or Edit All Invoices User Role. If a time slip is associated with a billable job, by default, the time slip's billable check box will be checked.
Invoiced	Displays the status of the invoice. This checkbox is selected and the Invoice # is displayed when the time sip is invoiced.
Time	Enter the duration of the work. Entries can be positive or negative. Depending on the site setting, the time can be entered in 100ths/hour, hours and minutes. For example, 1 hour and 15 minutes would be 1.25 hours. More information: Administer your site
Service Date	Enter the date of service, the date when the work was done.
Department	Select a department from the drop-down list box.
Program	You can associate a task with a program. To link a task to a program, select the program from the drop-down list box.
Campaign	You can associate a task with a campaign. To link a task to a campaign, select the campaign from the drop-down list box.
Event	You can associate a task with an event. To link a task to an event, select the event from the drop-down list box.
Job	You can associate a task with a job. To link a task to a job, select a job from the list.
Task	You can associate a time slip with a task. To link a task, select a task from the drop-down list box.

Note

You cannot enter more than one time slip for one activity, on a single day. An activity is a job, campaign, client, or a task. If you create a copy of a time slip, you need to enter a different date or a different activity.

Create a new item

Choose the New button .
If there are templates in the system, Dynamics Marketing will prompt you to select one. Templates are optional.
In the new item page, enter the information.
To automatically track the duration of a time slip, start a time slip's timer by choosing the Timer button.

To stop the timer, choose the Timer button again.

Dynamics Marketing adds the time elapsed since the timer was started to the current time of the time slip.

View time slip worksheets

Go to Projects > Time Slips > Time Slips or,

On a campaign, company, division, channel, program, campaign, event, job, or task page choose the Time Slips tab.
Select Worksheet in the View By pull-down menu.

Dynamics Marketing displays the Time Sheet Worksheet.

View workload

The Workload page can help you manage your workload more efficiently because it displays the total time recorded on time slips by contact and interval (day, week, month, etc.). To open it, go to Projects > Reports > Tasks Workload and choose a start date. Dynamics Marketing displays that date and the six days that follow in the worksheet.

Add rows to the worksheet

You can add a row for each activity (such as job, campaign, client, task etc.) you worked on during the week

Choose the New button .

Dynamics Marketing adds a new blank row to the worksheet.
Choose the Selector button to select the activity you are entering time for. The time you enter on each row corresponds to the activity.
Select a Service from the pull-down menu.
Select a Job.
Enter a Description of the work. If you selected a service, the service's standard description is displayed. You can edit the default description.
You can enter in the time you spent each day on the activity. You can update time during the week using the worksheet, update a single time slip or use timers to analyze time. The time on the worksheet will reflect all the changes you make until you post the time slip.

Post or finalize time slips

Posting time slips finalizes them. Once a time slip has been posted, it can no longer be changed. On the Time Slip Worksheet page, you can post all the activity for 7 days at one time at a time.

Choose the Post button.

Dynamics Marketing posts the time slips for the activity.

Note

If an activity has some posted time and some un-posted time for the selected week, the posted time and un-posted time will be displayed on separate rows.

Invoice time slips

You can convert time slips into invoices.

Here's how things work:

Users analyze time worked using time slips. Users can specify which service was provided.
When time slips are completed, users post them. This indicates that they are ready to be billed. Once a time slip has been posted, it can’t be changed.
Services associate time slips with the price of doing the work and a general ledger account. You can invoice any posted time slip.

To view posted time slips:
1. Choose Time Slips.
2. Choose the check boxes of the time slips you want to invoice.
  
  Be sure to select Time Slips for the same Bill To.
3. Choose the Invoice button to invoice them.
  
  Dynamics Marketing creates an invoice for the selected time slips using the rate and account associated with the service specified for each time slip.
4. You can edit the invoice items to change the hours, rate, or account.
  
  If you are using multiple currencies, Dynamics Marketing uses the rate in the appropriate currency. If there isn't a rate in the appropriate currency, Dynamics Marketing sets the rate to 0.

Expense time slips

Dynamics Marketing lets you convert time slips into expenses:

Use time slips to analyze the time worked.
When time slips are completed, post them. Once a time slip is posted, you can’t change it.

Time slips associate work with rates; rates are the cost of doing the work. Each rate is associated with an account in the chart of accounts.
1. To analyze the cost of work as a marketing expense, associate the rate with an expense account.
2. To analyze the cost of work as a cost of providing services to clients, associate the rate with a cost of goods sold account.

To view posted time slips:

Choose time slips.
Choose the Filter button.
Filter on Status. Select Posted.
Choose the check boxes of the time slips you want to expense.

Be sure to select time slips for the same vendor.
Choose the Expense button.

Dynamics Marketing creates an expense for the selected time slips using the rate and account associated with the service specified for each one. Time slips are grouped by service and the default service description is used. For example, if you have two time slips for design services and two for copy writing, the expense will contain two time slips; one for design services and one for copy writing.
You can edit the expense to change the hours, rate, or account.

If you are using multiple currencies, Dynamics Marketing uses the rate in the appropriate currency. If there isn't a rate in the appropriate currency Dynamics Marketing sets the rate to 0.

Expense time slips versus job costing

Job costing provides an alternative approach to analyzing the costs of providing services. Job costing doesn't post to the chart of accounts.

More information: Determine and track project cost

Group metrics by day, week, month, quarter or year

Choose the Search/Filter button to toggle from Search (default) to Filter.
Select the information you want to use as a filter by choosing the Filter On pull-down menu.

Dynamics Marketing displays the filter categories that are available.
Choose the Value pull-down to choose the value that you want to filter on.

Dynamics Marketing applies the filter and displays the information that matches.
Select a date range, or enter a custom date range.
Select the interval that you want to group metrics by.
Choose Go or press enter on your keyboard.

Dynamics Marketing displays the information that matches the filter criteria.

Utilization/Realization

The Utilization/Realization page can help you manage work more efficiently and compare the realization and utilization of members of your team. The page displays the total time on time slips by contact and by interval (day, week, month, etc.). To open it, go to Performance > Projects > Time Utilization/Realization. The following information is shown here:

Utilization: Utilization shows the number of hours that a contact worked during a time period, i.e. the sum of all hours on all time slips during the period.
Realization: Realization shows the number of hours that the contact worked during a time period that are billable, i.e. the sum of all hours on all time slips during the period that were billable. For example, during June Person A entered time slips for 80 billable hours.
Realization %: The Realization percentage is the percentage of hours that the user entered that are billable. Using the example above, 80 billable hours divided by 120 total hours = 75%