Planning tasks – timr Support

1. Planning tasks

Open the "Users and Budget" tab to choose a planning type for the task.

1.1. Planning Type: "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. Planning Type: "Task Hourly Rate"

Marker 1: In order to bill a task according to effort with a certain hourly rate, select the planning type "Task Hourly Rate" and save the "Hourly Rate" for this task.

Marker 2: If you have given your customer an effort estimate, you can also enter "Hours Planned" or a "Budget Planned". If you have a budget, timr calculates the planned hours out of the budget and the hourly rate. If you have "Hours Planned", timr calculates the planned budget out of hourly rate and planned hours.

Marker 3: You can assign fixed hours (employee budget) to employees. Without allocation employees share the project budget.

Marker 4: To assign a fixed employee budget, select "Assign fixed budget".

Different hourly rates per user and task

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. Planning Type: "Users Hourly Rate"

In order to bill a task according to effort with the hourly rates of the employees, select the planning type "Users Hourly Rate". Here the external hourly rate is used, which is stored with the user.

Marker 1 and 2: If you have given your customer an effort estimate, enter "Hours Planned". You can also specify a "Budget Planned".

Marker 3: You can assign a fixed hours budget (employee budget) to employees. Without assignment, employees share the planned Project Budget.

Marker 4: A fixed budget has been assigned to this employee (employee budget).

Marker 5: The warning indicates that no external hourly rate has been stored for an employee
(see pt 4. Save Users hourly rates).

1.4. Planning Type: "Fixed Price"

If you have sold a task at a fixed price, select the planning type "Fixed price".

Marker 1: In the "Budget" field, enter the price at which the task was sold.

Marker 2: Afterwards you can enter how many hours were planned in the calculation under "Planned hours". timr automatically calculates a planned hourly rate from the budget and the planned hours.

Marker 3: You can assign a fixed hours budget (employee budget) to employees. Without assignment the employees share the Project Budget.

Marker 4: A fixed budget has been assigned to this employee.

1.5. 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.

Example: You have a task "Maintenance", this is charged at an hourly rate of 70 EUR. As of 01.01.20 you have agreed upon a new hourly rate of 75 EUR with your customer. You now change the hourly rate of the task to 75 EUR on 31.12.19. When saving select "Do not update" if you want existing entries to be calculated with the old hourly rate of 70 EUR.

Another option is to lock the time entries that you do not want to change (see point 3.2. Change status values).

2. Allocate planned budget to employees

Basically there are 2 options to distribute the budget of a task to employees: Either the employees authorized for the task can "consume" from the entire project budget (see pt. 2.1.) or you assign a fixed hourly budget per employee (see pt. 2.2.). You can also mix both variants per project, i.e. some employees get a fixed budget, others access the project budget.

2.1. Project Budget

In case of a project budget, all assigned employees can access the budget. This setting is automatically activated when you assign an employee or a team.

2.2. Employee Budget

If you have planned fixed hours for employees for your project, you can assign an employee budget. To assign the hours, select "Assign fixed budget".

2.3. Project budget with "Show all tasks

The "Show all tasks" configuration allows users to select all tasks and record time on these tasks. If a budget has been assigned to a task, all employees access it (for setting see pt. 1 in the configuration of project times).

To assign a fixed budget to an employee in this case see point 2.5.

2.4. Project budget when assigning via organization

You can also assign a team or an organization to a task. In this case, all members of the team or organization will access the project budget. To assign a fixed budget to an employee of the organization, see point 2.5.

2.5. Assigning "Employee Budget" when using "Show all tasks" or assigning via organization

Even if you use the assignment of tasks to employees via "Show all tasks" or by assigning an organization, you can assign a fixed budget per employee.

In this case, proceed as follows:

Marker 1: Select this user explicitly via "Assign user and organizations" and assign the corresponding hours via "Assign fixed budget".

Marker 2: All other employees can continue to record on the task and draw budget from the remaining project budget.

3. Planning of Subtasks

If you plan a project with several subtasks, you have 2 options: You can either plan the project in total by project or you can plan it by subtask.

To illustrate this, let's take the project "Sample Website" with the tasks "Development", "Design", "Content".

3.1. Simple planning at project level

If you have sold the project at a fixed price and want to make planning as simple as possible, but still want to record the effort per task separately, you plan only on the top project level. The subtasks are not planned separately.

Example:

Project: Website, billable = yes, bookable = no.

For user and budget: planning type = fixed price, budget = 5,000 EUR, planned hours = 60

Subtasks:

- Development: planning type=planned by parent task

- Test: Planning type=Planned by parent task

- Design: Planning type=Planned by parent task

You assign the employees working on the project to the "Website" project. The employees are thus automatically assigned to the subtasks as well. If no hours per employee are specified, the employees share the project budget.

The developer books his hours to the subtask "Development", the designer books hours to "Design", the project manager is working on different tasks and books on 3 subtasks as appropriate.

3.2. Detailed planning by task

In this variant, the budget is divided among the subtasks according to the calculation.

Website: Planning Type='No planning'

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

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

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