January 16, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I operated a time/charge billing system for a few years, and if you want to put together a database to store this in, assuming you can't make it fit the help desk system, I'd suggest something along the following lines:
Department Table:
DepartmentCode
DepartmentDesc
WorkCode Table
WorkCode
WorkCodeDesc
(BillingRateMultiplier? default 1.0)
Employee Table:
EmployeeCode
EmployeeName
BillingRate
WorkUnit
Timesheet Table:
EmployeeCode
TimesheetDate
WorkCode
DepartmentCode
Time
NotBillable (bit, default off)
HelpdeskTicketNum
Comments
We had to track time in 6 minute increments. By having a BillingRateMultiplier field, you can easily charge x1.5 for standby or OT or x2 for emergency service or something. The NotBillable flag should be self-explanatory, sometimes you need to do stuff that you need to account for for a specific client but isn't really billable.
But if you want a quick & dirty system for tracking, this might give you a good starting point.
Good luck! They're talking about the same thing here, apparently the charter for IT did not include it being funded out of the City general fund, so we may have to doing chargebacks. I am NOT looking forward to that concept!
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January 16, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Rayven (1/16/2009)
Jeff: Any jobs going at your place? Initiative here tends to be welcomes with a ".. and why were you wasting company time?" before they have even evaluated the results, :w00t:. But I fully agree with you on those two points.
Man, sorry to hear that... I hate companies like that. And, no... like many companies recently, the company I'm working for has a hiring freeze. In fact, they had a huge layoff. How I survived as mearly a "contract to hire", I'll never know. They did fight city hall to get my contract extended and, apparently, won because I'm still there.
--Jeff Moden
January 16, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Jeff Moden (1/16/2009)
Rayven (1/16/2009)
Jeff: Any jobs going at your place? Initiative here tends to be welcomes with a ".. and why were you wasting company time?" before they have even evaluated the results, :w00t:. But I fully agree with you on those two points.Man, sorry to hear that... I hate companies like that. And, no... like many companies recently, the company I'm working for has a hiring freeze. In fact, they had a huge layoff. How I survived as mearly a "contract to hire", I'll never know. They did fight city hall to get my contract extended and, apparently, won because I'm still there.
You survived because you were a Contract. If they would have hired you, you would probably be gone. As a contract you don't count in the department head count, thus you can be kept on. Odd, but I've seen it work that way in a couple of places. Employees let go, contractors kept on or brought in to replace the ones let go.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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January 16, 2009 at 9:05 pm
If that's true, I'm very happy for me but I'm really sad about the folks they let go. Most of them were really good people that I'd go back-to-back with in a heart-beat.
--Jeff Moden
January 17, 2009 at 11:07 am
Where I live (Italy), it doesn't work that way at all. The first people to be let go are the external consultants. That's because it's pretty hard to fire employees. The external consultants portfolio has grown quite large for many companies here including big IT companies. Even a company like IBM here literally employs and deploys consultants in the thousands. And, of course, with the current crisis these consultants are being let go in droves everywhere (and I don't mean just IBM).
But I nevertheless see the external consultants concept as something positive here in Italy. It gives companies the necessary flexibility to adapt and change and get over economic crisis. Of course, Amercian companies have had this privilege for a long time now. Isn't it called the pink slip? I wonder if in the way it is used today the slip of paper is still pink. Or do you just get an email with an attachment whose icon is pink...:crying:
Jeff, I'm glad being in the category of consultants has proved to be positive for your situation.
January 17, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Michael Meierruth (1/17/2009)
Jeff, I'm glad being in the category of consultants has proved to be positive for your situation.
Me too and I'm very happy it wasn't me that got the ax. I just feel bad for anyone who loses a job right now especially if they have other mouths to feed.
--Jeff Moden
January 19, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Its entirely different here in Australia as to US. Contractors are the first to be axed. Group of big IT companies haven't renewed contracts of more than 1000 employees giving a big shock to the IT employment market. In turn, these companies are now hiring graduate positions to cover up the head count. Graduates are happy to work on marginal wages and HR and PMs are happy in this to show the reduction in their expenses(salaries).
i would say, Steve you are lucky.
January 19, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I wonder if this will come back to bite them later? We had a debate the other day about selling solutions to people that don't know they have a problem? Or they're growing a problem over time and eventually it's a big deal.
Grad students are not a bad idea, and some will become great IT people, but some won't. Hard to decide when it's worth it.
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January 20, 2009 at 5:50 am
Steve Jones - Editor (1/19/2009)
I wonder if this will come back to bite them later? We had a debate the other day about selling solutions to people that don't know they have a problem? Or they're growing a problem over time and eventually it's a big deal.Grad students are not a bad idea, and some will become great IT people, but some won't. Hard to decide when it's worth it.
It does sound like the perfrect makings for the proverbial "canoe club".
--Jeff Moden
January 21, 2009 at 12:57 am
Take a look at commercial time tracking packages. Some of them are pretty cheap on a per seat basis. Law firms, accountants, and other professionals use them to generate reports for billing clients. There's no reason one of those wouldn't work for DBA's/developers.
January 29, 2009 at 6:11 pm
A cheap alternative is that everyone keeps a diary with the time details mentioned by GSquared and at the end of the week writes a a report and emails it to the team leader to be combined into a department report. This has worked well in the past when team members may be called off to client sites rather than head off, but we all needed to report to our team leader/manager with our details, so they in turn could keep our butts out of the firing line.
A plus side is you always have a personal record of what you did, for whom and when, plus any steps you took. This ensure if you're every called up about a support call you did months ago, you have all relevant details at your fingertips.
Sections on the report included:
Tasks Completed
Tasks in Progress
Tasks todo
Projects Planned
Leave Details pending and occuring
After we submitted our individual weekly reports we received back to consolidated copy so we also knew when members of our team would be going on holiday, major projects in the pipeline etc etc.
Didn't cost anything but time and some diary entries.
Regards Adonia
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