Planning tasks

1. Planning Tasks

In the task administration you define a planning type for tasks. You have 4 possibilities of Planning Types: "No Planning"; "Task Hourly Rate"; "Users Hourly Rate" and "Fixed Price". There is one more planning type for a subtask "Inherited (Task Hourly Rate)".

Every time you change the planning type, the hourly rate, the hours planned or the budget planned you will be asked if you want to update already existing recordings.

1.1. No planning

Choose the planning type "No planning" if you don't want to use neither hourly rates nor time budgets for the task. 

1.2. Task Hourly Rate

If you choose the planning type "Task Hourly Rate" you can add "Budget Planned" for the task. The value inserted here will be divided automatically to the assigned employees. In addition, you can insert a "Hourly Rate" for the task. The Hours Planned are calculated automatically out of the Budget Planned and the Hourly Rate.

Example:
If the requirement is "own hourly rate per user and task", then you can solve this with the planning type "Task hourly rate".

First you create a project: "Project A". The "key" is to create a separate task for each hourly rate. For example, if you have the task "Development" and there are senior and junior developers working here with different hourly rates, then create a separate task for each:

Project A
- Development Junior, tasks hourly rate 70 EUR

- Development Senior, tasks hourly rate 100 EUR

This also gives you a good visualization according to the individual tasks.

1.3. Users Hourly Rate

If you choose the planning type "Users Hourly Rate" the "External Hourly Rates" defined in the tab "Users" or each user will be used automatically for the task. You only need to insert the "Budget Planned". This budget calculates automatically the "Hours Planned" with the external hourly rates of the assigned users. You can of course divide the hours planned also manually to the assigned users.

1.4. Fixed Price

If you've sold your work for a fixed price you should choose the planning type 'Fixed Price'. In the 'Budget' field you can set the price that you've sold the work. After that you can set the "Hours planned" that you've calculated and timr will automatically calculate the planned hourly rate.

1.5. Planned Hours by Employee

Planned hours are automatically assigned to all employees and divided equally. In addition you can also manually assign hours to employees. 

For example, if you manually assign a greater budget of hours to one user the remaining budget of hours will be equally divided between the other employees. A manually assigned budget can be recognised by the blue blue icon next to the planned hours of the employee.

In order to reset the budget to be automatically divided just click the blue icon.

1.6. Saving Changes

If you change the planning parameters (planning type, hourly rate, budget, ...) for a task which already has records you'll be asked if you'd like to update the existing records to the new parameters. 

Choose 'Update Recordings' in order to update all existing records to the new planning. E.g. if you've changed the hourly rate from 70 to 80 USD: If you choose 'Update Recordings' all existing records will be updated. If you choose 'Do not update', the new hourly rate only applies to new records which is nice if you were able to negotiate a new hourly rate.

2. Planning of Subtasks

If you have a project with multiple subtasks, timr provides 2 ways how you could plan your project. You could plan the project in total or by subtask. As an example we're using the following structure:

Website

   Development

   Testing

   Design

2.1. Planning by project (fast & simple)

If you've sold the project for a fixed price of 5000 USD and you'd like to plan it as fast and easy as possible, we recommend the following approach. 

The project will be planned on the root level, the project. Subtasks will not be planned in detail.

Website: Planning Type='Fixed Price', 5000 USD

   - Development: Planning Type='Planned by parent'

   - Testing: Planning Type='Planned by parent'

   - Design: Planning Type='Planned by parent'

Employees which are working on the project will be assigned to 'Website', including the totally planned hours per employee and the project.

Developers will track time on the subtask 'Development', the designer will track time on 'Design'.

2.2. Detailed planning by task

In this case you'll plan each task separate, employees will be assigned to the subtasks.

Website: Planning Type='No planning'

  - Entwicklung: Planning Type='Fixed price', 3000 EUR

  - Testen: Planning Type='Fixed price', 500 EUR

  - Design: Planning Type='Fixed price', 1500 EUR