Planning tasks

1. Planning Types

    1.1. Planning Type: "No Planning"

    1.2. Planning Type: "Task Hourly Rate"

    1.3. Planning Type: "Users Hourly Rate"

    1.4. Planning Type: "Fixed Price"

2. Assign planned budget

3. Planning of subtasks

4. Change planning

 

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

 

1. Planning Types

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.

 

2. Assign planned budget

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, "planned by parent task"

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 

 

4. Change planning (Planning type, Hourly rate, Budget, ...)

Planning types, hourly rate and assigned budget can be changed. If there are already records for a task, you can decide whether these existing records should be updated or whether the changed parameters should only apply to new records.

4.1 Change planning type

The planning type can be changed at any time, e.g. from "No planning" to "Tasks hourly rate" etc.

 

If there are already recordings, you will get a hint when saving the change. Select "Update record" to adjust all already recorded records to the new planning. Select "Do not update" if you do not want to change the already recorded records and the new planning type should only apply to future records.

 

 

4.2 Change tasks hourly rates

If you have selected the planning type "Tasks Hourly Rate" for a task and change this hourly rate, you will be asked if you want to update the already existing recordings with the hourly rate.

 

 

 

Select "Update recordings" if you want to apply the new hourly rate to already recorded records as well. If you only want new recordings to be billed with the updated hourly rate, select "Do not update".

Note: The new hourly rate will also be applied to locked records when you select "Update Records".

Example Tasks Hourly rate is changed:

You have a "Maintenance" task that is charged at the hourly rate of 70 EUR. From 01.01.20 you have agreed with your customer a new hourly rate of 75 EUR. You now change the hourly rate of the task to 75 EUR on 12/31/19.

You receive a message that there are already records and you can now choose whether existing records should be changed to the new hourly rate by selecting "Update records". If only the new records should be charged with the new hourly rate, select "Do not update".

4.3 Change user hourly rates

User hourly rates can be changed under "Administration/User" directly in the user settings of the respective employee. See point 6 under Configuration (Budget).

If records already exist, you have the following selection options:

- Update all

- Update all as of key date

- Update all with status "Changeable

 

In the next step, select: Update project times, or, if you want the hourly rate to apply only to new records, then select "Hourly rate applies only to new project times".

 

 

To check which hourly rate was used for billing, you can also display the hourly rate in reports during export. See point 5 under Configuration (Budget). Tasks hourly rates and user hourly rates are displayed here.