Contract limitations and workarounds

[Sean]

I'm still using a trial and very new to this system, so its possible some in the community can give me a workaround or advise on how to achieve what I'm doing.

There seem to be some features missing and limitations to contracts. 

1. No way to auto-renew a contract after the end date.

2. Forced to have an end date, no ability to have an unending contract

3. Time&Material Lacks the same Billing cycle options as retainer contracts

4. No Bi-Weekly billing cycle option

Here is my use case.  The retainers are the closest contract type that will fill the need I'm looking for, but they aren't quite what I want.  The way I work is I typically bill my clients every two weeks.  It's basically a postpaid service contract based on labor and expenses used.  Time and Materials would work if I could set the end date two weeks after the start and I could have it auto-renews.  But that doesn't seem possible.  If I could set the contract length for T&M for a year, and have a billing cycle for every month (or bi-weekly) that would work as well.

I can probably get away with setting up a retainer.  The only issue is that it's not great in the sense that if I choose hours, then I can't really mix and match work/ role types of different values.  It could be by amount, but I have the same questions. If I allow different work/ role types on the one contract will it allow to bill the overages at the end of the billing cycle?

I'd really like to see the T&M contract have billing cycles.  Or a whole new retainer type called Post Paid Retainer.  Where you can set billing cycles and all time and expense is logged against it and invoiced at the correct Role/Work type amounts.

 
 

 

Edited January 29, 2019 by Sean

[Gary Haberl]

Hi Sean, Here are my suggestions.  (Yes contracts need some work.IMO)

On 1/29/2019 at 12:15 AM, Sean said:

1. No way to auto-renew a contract after the end date.

I agree.  But I just set an end date of Dec 31, 2099

On 1/29/2019 at 12:15 AM, Sean said:

2. Forced to have an end date, no ability to have an unending contract

Again, just set 2099

On 1/29/2019 at 12:15 AM, Sean said:

4. No Bi-Weekly billing cycle option

Just bill every 2 weeks then.  The system will keep track of what is billed and what is not.  Under Finance, Billing review, Labor hours, just choose the time you want to bill and post the items for billing (i.e.  Jan 1 to Jan 15)

On 1/29/2019 at 12:15 AM, Sean said:

Here is my use case.  The retainers are the closest contract type that will fill the need I'm looking for, but they aren't quite what I want.  The way I work is I typically bill my clients every two weeks.  It's basically a postpaid service contract based on labor and expenses used.  Time and Materials would work if I could set the end date two weeks after the start and I could have it auto-renews.  But that doesn't seem possible.  If I could set the contract length for T&M for a year, and have a billing cycle for every month (or bi-weekly) that would work as well.

I can probably get away with setting up a retainer.  The only issue is that it's not great in the sense that if I choose hours, then I can't really mix and match work/ role types of different values.  It could be by amount, but I have the same questions. If I allow different work/ role types on the one contract will it allow to bill the overages at the end of the billing cycle?

I'd really like to see the T&M contract have billing cycles.  Or a whole new retainer type called Post Paid Retainer.  Where you can set billing cycles and all time and expense is logged against it and invoiced at the correct Role/Work type amounts.

We use T&M for our clients.  We do the same thing, bill clients 'POST" work. The reason we use T&M is some clients are a different hourly rate for different roles. (i.e. We charge clients for onsite work hourly rate.  Then remote work at $ 0.00 as we charge a flat rate per computer. And then some clients we charge hourly for remote work.)

All our time is billed on 15 Min intervals.  It takes time to enter a ticket, time to do the work, time to close the ticket. 

1. Set your minimum billing time under Admin, My Company, company settings, timesheet

2. Set your normal hourly rate per role.  Admin, finance setup roles.

3. Now setup contracts (IF NEEDED) for clients that have a different rate other than your normal hourly rate setup in admin, finance. (Watch that you set "Default contract for Servicedesk).

4. Do your work in tickets, then bill every 2 weeks as needed.  The system will keep track of which work is billed and which is not. (i.e.  you can bill some clients every 2 weeks, and some monthly.  Up to you).

 

Hope that helps.  If I am missing something, let me know.

Gary

[Sean]

Thanks Gary! Super helpful.  
 

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around Roles & Work Types.  Work types are obviously tied to service items in QuickBooks.  It makes sense that I can choose that in a Ticket or Project for accounting reasons.  It makes sense that I can override Work Types amounts in contracts.  But then what's the point of Roles? 

[Gary Haberl]

Hi Sean,

Here is what we use Role and Work Types for.

Work types we use for "Regular Hours, Non Billable and Overtime". See the setting in the work types.  We also choose to "Show" non billable hours to our clients as we want them to see how much time we put in at $ 0.00.

Role is for what type of work we do, and at what cost. "Admin, Tech Support, Backups, etc." We then set a dollar (Default) for this Role. Think of it as a type of task you perform.

We bill and send what we call 'service Work Detail" reports to our clients.  We have a report we PDF and send.

Hope this helps.

[Sean]

I see that clears things up.  It's a bit different when you come from QB and your roles and work types are just your service items.  

[RandyChuck]

Hi Gary, Not sure if you're still out there but I thought I'd ping you and see. I'm wrestling with how we want to use Roles and Work Types. My thought is to use them as you describe in this thread. "Work types we use for "Regular Hours, Non Billable and Overtime"." . However I see a hurdle with this method. From what I can tell, the Work Type must be selected with-in  the ticket information. While adding time entries you can only select the work type that is added into the ticket info. 

So that doesnt work for multiple time entries on the ticket with different work types. I dont get how you can use it that way. I would love to set it up that way, if I could work around having to specify a work type on the ticket.

[RandyChuck]

I've discovered my answer. Apparently when you assign any Work Type to the ticket proper, it limits subsequent time entries to only that work type selected. When I leave the Work Type field blank on the ticket proper, it works as expected.