How TimeLinx Calculates Billing Rates

TimeLinx Billing Rates

Did you know that TimeLinx calculates the Billing Rate to use for time entries based solely on the Billing Mode?  Many people assume that when someone records their time on a project/task the system will “search” for the appropriate rate to apply.  Rather than impose a strict hierarchy over rates, TimeLinx instead gives you precise control over the rate to use for any time entry.  This advantage allows for flexibility with rates and rate overrides when determining the rate for a Time Entry.   It does not lock you into a strict hierarchy for determining rates and makes it simple and transparent to locate the rate found on any time entry.

There are five modes for rate calculations:

  • Account – An hourly rate fixed for a customer across all engagements
  • Consultant – A rate based on the Consultant performing the work
  • Fixed – A fixed amount for the entire job (independent of hours consumed)
  • Project – An hourly rate set for the project globally
  • Task – A rate set for a given task

The billing mode for a project is set when a project is first created.  This mode can be changed until the first time entry is entered.  At that point the billing mode is frozen for that project.  All tasks are set to the project’s billing mode, HOWEVER you can override the mode for any task.  When a time entry is made, it will look at the task to see where the rate is set from … Account, Consultant, Fixed, Project, or Task.

Here’s an example to highlight how to use the rates flexibility in TimeLinx.

For our project “ABCL-33”, we have set the billing mode to “TASK”.  This means we will enter an hourly rate for every task when we create it.  You need to explicitly set the rate on the task.  Leaving it at zero means that it will BE zero (and not look somewhere else for the rate).

For our override example, we will set the “Radiation Protocol” task to use the “Consultant” Task Bill Mode”.  You might for example, want to do this because you need to outsource a particular task to an expert and will need to bill the customer at that professional’s rate rather than the rate for standard tasks on this project.   Below you will see in the example that we chose Task Bill Mode = CONSULTANT.  When we do that, the Bill Rate disappears since it is not used to locate the task rate.

Instead, the rate will be found on the Team tab.  The team entry gets the rate from the consultant entry when you select them for the team.  It can be overridden again here on the team (but we can save that for another discussion).  In this case, we have set this consultant’s rate to $250/hr on this project.

Finally, lets say that Anna spends 3 hours on the “Radiation Protocol” task and 3 hours on the “Validation Tests” task.  The rates would be calculated this way:

We ran a Service Query on this project to check to see that the calculations occurred as expected and Voilà!  We see that indeed this is exactly how billing was calculated!