Questions regarding timesheet management and jobs module in NAV 2013

Business Central/NAV User Forum
1

Hi all and Happy New Year :slight_smile:

We are a professional services company and have just started using the timesheet and jobs functions in NAV 2013. My question is how to plan and execute jobs in NAV using the timesheet function. I know the process of how actually to do it, but I come across a few problems.

  1. Our process is that each month we have a group meeting where say there are six group members (resources A-F) and 20 projects. So, for arguments sake, person A, B and C plan to spend 20 hours on each project 1-5 so that all of them work a total of 100 hours. Person D works 20 hours on each project 6-10, E 20 hours on projects 11-15 and F 20 hours on projects 16-20. Where do I fill in this information? Currently we use job planning lines to fill this out (and I think that if you use TimeSheets, it’s the only way to plan your work) but there are a few problems. a) We have to go through each project and fill in the information, but we would rather fill it in per resource. b) Currently we use “Schedule” as the line type when we plan something but it using “Schedule” gets confusing later on.

  2. Say that person A works 25 hours on Project 1, instead of 20 hours. If that gets cleared through the time sheet, then it is supposed to be posted on a Project journal. For scenario 1) say that I want to charge all 25 hours. Do I post these 25 hours as, Schedule, Contract or Both? I will only invoice 25 hours if I have 25 hours of contract so I guess my options are contract or both. But if I choose contract then it will look like person A only worked 20 hours. And if I use both, then it will look like person A worked 45 hours. In any way, the person who is posting the job journals must know what has been in the job planning lines, and that’s not the case in our Company. Also, even if this person now will check the job planning lines, it will take forever to go through all of them for 20 projects and divide stuff up.

  3. If we do not use job planning lines, how do we then plan our time/Resources?

Ok, maybe this was a bit long and complex, but if anybody has any input, please let me know.

Regards,

Magnus

2

A Quick comment on my own question above.

There are three problems I am having:

  1. Planning phase - I do not think jobplanning lines is the best way to plan my work.

  2. Invoicing phase - From time sheets to job journal, the information gets lost as to if this a particular line is chargeable or not (i.e. Schedule/contract)

  3. Analysis phase - Due to the inconsistencies in the two previous phases, I find it hard to analyse the job.

3

I will provide an answer to my own question here. This is the workflow we follow. You of course, might follow different

First, we plan our projects by entering Schedule in the planning lines under each Project.

In the time sheet, the person enters whatever has been worked. The person can also use the “chargeable” check box.

Since the check box does not work as intended (my NAV partner tells me), if the manager wants to keep track of chargeable hours, use a work type code that indicates chargeable or unchargeable hours.

After all is approved, just post all entries in the jobsjournal and with blank (i.e. no contract or schedule on the lines).

After having posted the lines, you can convert them by filtering the job ledger entries for job no. and entry type “usage”. Mark the usage lines and under action you can convert them to contract.

Now the whole thing works :slight_smile:

Maybe I did not explain this is very much detail but anyways, now you know in general.

Regards,

Magnus