Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/acctg/timeslip/timeslip.txt

Text File | 1988-11-17 | 12KB | 414 lines

 
\XY\TSLIPS.ASC
                                                          1826  words

        AS TIME GOES BY:
 Timeslips III and the Fine Art
        of Time-Billing

       By MICHAEL FINLEY


     Not everyone gets paid by
the week or by the month.  A
whole class of professionals and
skilled technicians --
attorneys, public relations
people, electricians, CPAs,
graphic designers, plumbers;
anyone who consults, really  --
get paid for the hours they
bill.  And how they bill those
hours is a matter of some
controversy.

     Often, individuals at the
account executive level are told
by their employees that they
must bill a certain percentage
of hours every month -- 65-75%
are common figures.  There is a
strong temptation on account
reps to pad the hour-count to
meet that difficult quota, to
turn ten hours of work into 15
or 20 on the invoice.

     Sometimes, hours are added
at the boss' whim.  Three extra
hours billed per month per 20
clients at $75/hour may not
bother clients, but it buys a
nice boat.

     On the down side, hours are
hard to keep track of --
attorneys are hard put to mark
down every incoming phone call,
particularly with call waiting.
Panicky account execs lay awake
nights wondering whether every
6- or 15-minute increment that
day was tallied.  Sometimes the
very work of tallying is
included in the tallying -- half
an hour every day, just to enter
the other hours, and it's all
billable, if you're clever.

     There are other factors
that I have never been able to
bill for.  Let's say you are a
public relations account exec,
doing a lot of government
relations work.  A client calls,
and he is distraught that a vote
is coming up on Monday morning
in the Senate, and needs
desperately to call Sen.
Boschwitz and make a plea that
he vote a certain way.  But Sen.
Boschwitz is incommunicado --
off at his private resort
fishing.  What to do?  Now let's
say you are privy to the sort of
precious information your client
needs -- it's nobody's business
how.  The phone number may mean
the life or death of your
client's business, yet it takes
only eleven seconds to flip
through your rolodex for it.
What do you charge your client?
Seventy-five cents?

     Are you really selling time
to clients?  Or are you selling
value?  Answer that question
"time" and you are henceforward
a prisoner of the clock; answer
it "value" and you open the door
to chicanery and flimflam, along
with the worthwhile stuff.   You
can see why time-billing has
professionals more than a little
confused.

     As a consequence,
time-billing is the single most
"creative" accounting feature in
business today.  Clients have no
way to dispute the number of
hours a contractor claims to
have put in, especially those
performed off-site.  Mistrust
over time-billing might just be
the number one cause of
agency/firm firings -- it is a
fact that more accounts collapse
within 72 hours of billing than
at any other time.  The result
of slipshod time-billing too
often is suspicion,
overcharging, declining business
ethics, shallow business
relationships, and market
instability.

     But hey, here comes
Timeslips III, the latest update
of a memory-resident
time-billing software product
that has many, many
professionals singing its
praises.

     Timeslips is essentially an
accounting database -- it keeps
track of hourly charges, plus
expenses, plus interest on aging
accounts, plus payments.  In
that sense it is not unlike
accounts receivable segments in
many an accounting software
package.  What makes Timeslips
unique is the fact that it is a
TSR program -- when you turn
TSTIMER.COM off, it keeps
running in background -- and
while it does, it invisibly
times the number of seconds,
minutes, and hours you are
working on a job -- or on a
dozen jobs.  And it compiles and
organizes all this information
using a unit called a "timeslip"
-- the rough equivalent of the
envelope flap, timecard line, or
Post-It note you may currently
be using to keep track of your
hours.

     Example:  You're a graphic
designer, and you have four
clients, 3M, Pillsbury,
Honeywell and Control Data, and
each has you working on an
assignment this week.  For every
individual task you or
out-of-pocket expense you must
pay for a given client --
meeting with them, planning,
mileage, typesetting costs,
parking -- you fill out a
timeslip.

     At the end of the month you
may have a "stack" of 30 or 50
timeslips.  Each is organized by
three factors -- who did the
work or incurred the expense in
question, what client each is
for, and what activity/expense
it is.  At billing time (or upon
concluding a given job), you
simply load the reporting
program (TSREPORT.COM), and have
it tally up the costs for each
of the four clients, and bill
them.

     A sample timeslip would
say:
__________________________________________________________________________
User                   [1  ] Michael Finley      $40       =
Account                [12 ] Computer User                 =
Activity               [   ] Article                       = $250.00

Article_on_time_billing_software_______


Reference      [                 ]             Time estimated  [   7:00:00]
Date           [04/28/88] thru [05/18/88]      Time spent      [10:15:00]                                                              Flat rate:      $250
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

     A timeslip is not a bill,
and clients never see them --
they are the units that bills
and other reports are later
compiled from.  Timeslips III
has an elaborate reporting
program which can kick out bills
upon completing a project, at
month's end, or over any
specified period.  And it
incorporates a powerful macro
utility which keeps keying to a
minimum.  All I had to do to get
my name on the slip above was
type M;  all I typed to get
"Computer User" was CO.  The
entire slip took perhaps 30
seconds to flesh out.  The
entire bill might also include a slip for
postage and mileage expenses
incurred in preparing this
column.

     Timeslips doesn't stop
there, however.  It offers you
the option of timing the work
for you, or having you fill in
the blanks yourself.  If you
forgot to toggle the timer on
for a given job, no problem --
you just fill in the time to the
best of your recollection.

     Timeslips' great virtue is
that it doesn't tie you down.
It lets you charge different
hourly rates for different
services -- $15 for typing, $50
for drafting, $120 for
conceptualizing, for instance.
It lets you charge different
hourly rates for junior
associates ($40) and senior
associates ($80), different
rates for different clients ($50
for commercial clients, $35 for
nonprofits) -- it even lets you
vary from hourly rates entirely,
charging clients with lump sum
amounts (e.g., $1,500 for
designing a brochure),
regardless of the amount of time
it takes).  Flexibility is the
very spine of Timeslips III.

     Once you remove the
shrinkwrap, Timeslips is
comprised of two diskettes and a
manual.  Once installed, and
once you have added a few
timeslips of your own, the
\TIMESLIP subdirectory exceeds
1000K, so a hard disk is
absolutely mandatory.

     The pop-up part of
Timeslips III requires 60K to
run; combine that with the
reporting feature, and you've
gobbled up almost 400K -- don't
imagine you can run the whole
program as a pop-up alongside
your word processing program or
spreadsheet, unless you've long
since broken the 640K barrier.
Also, the program is a bit
uncomfortable sharing your RAM
with other programs -- I have
gotten INSUFFICIENT MEMORY
messages from Timeslips while
using TSR programs as innocuous
as Sidekick.

     Timeslips can handle 30,000
individual timeslips, 250 users
(your employees or colleagues,
working off an LAN), 3400
accounts and 250 separate
activities.  Fo