Posted By Rod on 04 Nov 2010 08:11 PM
So... here are a few design issues that might be worthy of discussion.


1. The cost of the time interval is rounded up. Is this preferable? Do people need to round down, or be precise? For example, if you configure a billing template to use intervals of 10 minutes @ $25 and the action time is 9 minutes, the cost will be calculated at $25 (rounded up). If the action time goes above 10 minutes, the cost will be $50 etc.

2. Discounts. Should these be applied at the job level, or the action level?

3. Job Screen - billing tab. Invoicing data. Is this information required? How extensively should HelpMaster do financials? What accounting systems do you use? MYOB, Quicken, something else? Are you after integration? To what level?

4. Tax. Is this a HelpMaster thing, or an accounting software thing?

5. Currency. Do you bill in different currencies?

6. Monthly invoicing. Should actions that have already been invoice become read-only after this event? Should the invoicing data be associated with the Action, rather than the job?


OK, that should be enough to get some more discussion going.

Look forward to your comments.

 For my business, the answers would be:
1)  Rounding - we would like some "adjustability" here. If the action goes 1 to 3 minutes over the interval, we round down, otherwise it gets rounded up. 

2) Discounts - I think at the aciton level

3) For us, having financials is not critical, but would be nice. We use MYOB, and simply raise an invoice at the end of the month for the total number of hours used. Correctly capturing the time used is mostly what we are after. Integration is not required for us at this time.

4) Tax - not your problem. Leave it to the accounting packages.

5) Currency - AUD only for us

6) Invoicing - locking actions as ready only after billing - good idea! We would need an admin over-ride ability, but for the most part once the report has been issued, the data should not be changed. I think the invoicing data should be in the action, rather than the job. We bill at the end of each month for any work peformed, regardless of whether the job is still open or not. So if the job required 5 actions in total to complete, and 3 are performed in the first month, then we need to report and bill on those 3 work actions after month 1, and the other 2 are reported and billed after month 2.
 

Posted By Rod on 04 Nov 2010 08:11 PM
So... here are a few design issues that might be worthy of discussion.


1. The cost of the time interval is rounded up. Is this preferable? Do people need to round down, or be precise? For example, if you configure a billing template to use intervals of 10 minutes @ $25 and the action time is 9 minutes, the cost will be calculated at $25 (rounded up). If the action time goes above 10 minutes, the cost will be $50 etc.

2. Discounts. Should these be applied at the job level, or the action level?

3. Job Screen - billing tab. Invoicing data. Is this information required? How extensively should HelpMaster do financials? What accounting systems do you use? MYOB, Quicken, something else? Are you after integration? To what level?

4. Tax. Is this a HelpMaster thing, or an accounting software thing?

5. Currency. Do you bill in different currencies?

6. Monthly invoicing. Should actions that have already been invoice become read-only after this event? Should the invoicing data be associated with the Action, rather than the job?


OK, that should be enough to get some more discussion going.

Look forward to your comments.

1) basicly same as Matthew, round to the nearest.

2) not sure on discounts.

3) we use MoneyWorks, i think helpmaster should stop at the point where it can provide sufitiant information for an accounting package to generate an invoice. integration would be awsome, would beat having to retype everything in an accounting package to create the invoice.

4) i would say accounting thing, but having said that i think it would be need to generate the required info for integration should you go down that path

5) just AUD

6) we always invoice the entire job when it is complete so not sure on this one.

 

 

Hi Matthew and Geoffrey,

Thanks for your input. This is great feedback and just what we needed to know.

We've had a pretty robust discussion this morning in the development room with the team, and we'll be making some improvements to the screen shots and functionality that has been posted so far.

We'll be implementing a price/time rounding feature, as well as improvements to the invoicing and bulk-billing. Should be good.

For the first release, we'll be scrapping the tax, foreign currency, and possibly the discounts. Discounts can already be applied by the current implementation by over-riding the cost at the action level.

Perhaps the overall feeling we're getting is that companies already have an accounting package in place that they use for the general invoicing etc. People just want HelpMaster to calculate time and money, and then do the invoicing etc from the accounting package of choice. We will be implementing some overlapping concepts like invoice number, dates, totals etc, but for now, we'll let HelpMaster do the time tracking, and the accounting packages to handle the accounting and deeper financial issues.

I'll post more updates as they come to hand.

In the meantime, please let us know if any further ideas come to mind.

Best regards,
Rod

OK, here's an update.

The billing template screen now contains the ability to round the time.

 

The action billing tab now contains a notes tab and an improved layout...(we hope)

 

 

We've also changed the invoicing behaviour.  All "Is billable"  actions appear on the "Billing" tab of the job.  When it's time to invoice, click on the last of the actions that should be included in the invoice and the new "Invoice" screen will appear.  At this stage, you can transfer the totals into whatever accounting package you use and generate an invoice number that can be recorded back in HelpMaster.  Future versions may have integration into different accounting packages for this step.

A new invoicing record will appear in blue.

As further billable actions are added to the job, the colour coding makes it easy to see what has been invoiced or not.  Click on the action and click "Invoice" to create another invoice for the same job.

 

What do you think?  Are we on the right track?

 

yep looks like your on the right track.

only thing i can see that might need improving is...

say the admin person is doing up the invoice, the "additional items" for all the actions don't appear on the invoice screen.

otherwise the only way for the person that is doing the invoicing to know about additional items is if they go through each action and look in the billing tab.

other than that, looks ok to me.

The latest screen shots from the dev team.  The billing feature is looking good.  Most of the desktop features are complete and we're now working on the web version, reports and database.

 

The action screen billing layout has been optimized a bit.  Note the additional costs are calculated, and a summary is now included along with billing notes.

 

The invoice screen now includes any "additional items" that were added to the action.

 

The "Billing" tab on the job screen displays all billable actions, invoices, totals and grand totals.

 

If anyone has any ideas for the billing feature, please get them in quick as time is running out for the feature develop for this round.

 

 

Hi Rod,

Happy new year to you and your team.

Any timeframe for release of the next version with the customer charging?

Hi Matthew,

We'll be releasing the next major version as v11 and it should be available Q1 2011. Sorry I can't be more specific than this. We're close, but there are still a few things being developed.

Thanks,
Rod

Hi Rod,

Are we close to seeing Version 11?

Hi Matthew, thanks for your patience. We are getting closer now. We are now looking at a end of May 2011 release. PRD Software and HelpMaster will be attending CeBIT in Sydney at Darling Harbour at the end of May and we will take this opportunity to officially release HelpMaster 11.

In the lead-up to this event, we will publish further information about the release on this website.

Rod