What is TimeBank?

• TimeBank is an application designed for tracking employees’ time against many different clients. It is intended to be simple, user-friendly and efficient. 

  We designed TimeBank around the needs of our own agency. As the application evolved, we saw the opportunity for many different businesses to use it. 

  Employees track their time and activities within the application. The resulting data can be rolled up one of two ways. For the employees, their hours can be totaled and used for Payroll and other metrics. For the Clients, their hours are summarized and can be used to track billing and invoicing information.

• Adding a New Record

  • Client Name: Select the client for which you have just completed a task.
  • Billed Against: This field determines whether the task is billed against a TimeBank, a Contract, or as Pro Bono. Additional values may be added and customized by your account administrator. 
  • Category – This field captures the activity category to which the task belongs. These categories are fully customizable for your account. 
    Some Category values are specific to a certain client. In those cases, you will see the appropriate values in the drop-down list once the correct client has been selected. 
  • Date – Enter the date the work was performed. 
  • Start Time – Enter the time of day the work was begun. 
  • End Time – Enter the time of day the work was completed. 
  • Elapsed – This field will populate automatically to give you a preview of the time before the entry is saved. 
  • Notes – Enter any notes or comments that would be helpful to describe the task. 

  When you are finished filling out all fields, click the green “Add Record” button to save the record.

• Editing Records

  To edit an existing record, simply click on the yellow “Edit Record” button. 

  All of the fields are the same as entering a new record. 

  There are 3 actions you can take while editing a record: 

  1. Update the record – Saves all changes
  2. Delete the record – Completely removes the record from the system. Caution: deleted records cannot be recovered
  3. Cancel – Abort the operation and don’t change the record at all. 

3. Editing Personal Information

• Users can update their personal information by navigating to the User Administration screen. 

  Here, you can manage the following information: 

  1. First Name: The user’s first name
  2. Last Name: The user’s last name
  3. Email Address: The user’s email address
  4. Username: The username to log in to TimeBank (we recommend using the email address as the username for simplicity, but users are free to change their username if they wish)
     • Must start with a letter, be at least 3 characters and cannot contain spaces
  5. Password: To change the password, hit the ‘Change Password’ button and follow the instructions on the screen. 

1. Users

• Types of Users

  In the application, there are two types of users: Employees and Clients.

  Employee Users are typical users that will enter and record work in the TimeBank system. Each Employee User requires a paid license. 

  Client Users are special users with very limited privileges. They are able to log in and view several reports, with only their data being visible. There is no limit to the number of Client Users an organization may have. 

• Add a New User (Employee)

  Navigate to the User Administration screen. 

  To add a new user, simply fill out the fields on the screen and then click the ‘Add User’ button. 
  

  1. First Name: The user’s first name
  2. Last Name: The user’s last name
  3. Email Address: The user’s email address
  4. Username: The username to log in to TimeBank (we recommend using the email address as the username for simplicity, but users are free to change their username if they wish)
     • Must start with a letter, be at least 3 characters and cannot contain spaces
  5. Active Indicator: Inactive users do not show up in any drop-down lists and cannot log into the system. We do not allow deletion of inactive users, as this would cause data consistency issues within the application. 

• User Privileges

  1. Administrator
  2. Add / Edit Client Bank Hours
  3. Add / Edit Users
  4. Enter Hours Worked
  5. Add / Edit Clients
  6. View Reports

• Edit an Existing User

  Select the user from the drop-down list and modify whatever data needs to be modified. 

• Adding and Editing Client Users

  The same process is used for Client Users, except there are no user privileges to set. All Client users have access to the same thing – their Client Bank Balance report, and their own personal information (Name, Email, Username). 

  Client users MUST be associated with one and only one active client. They will only be able to view that client’s data. 

2. Clients

• Adding a New Client

  Navigate to Administration > Manage Clients

  Explanation of fields/columns: 

  1. Client Name: The display name for this customer.
  2. Billed Internal/External: This is simply for reporting purposes so companies can keep track of profitability. An internal client represents work being done that is not funded by an outside customer. For instance: training, administrative, time off, etc. 
  3. Active Indicator: Inactive clients do not show up in any drop-down lists. Clients can only be deleted if they aren’t attached to any work records, as this would cause data consistency issues within the application. 

  Editing an Existing Client

  Select the client from the drop-down list that you wish to edit. 

  Make the necessary modifications, then click the green “Update Record” button to save the changes. 

  This screen will also display whether the client has any Alerts or Limits set up. The respective management screens for those items can be accessed directly from the two blue buttons. 

3. TimeBanks and Account Balances

• Managing TimeBanks

  We think of this function as making a ‘deposit’ into the bank account of hours. As employees perform tasks at the client’s request, those tasks are withdrawals from the account. 

  When the bank of hours is getting low, a client may choose to replenish that bank by purchasing more hours. 

  There are a few fields to complete: 

  1. Hours (or Minutes) Purchased: How much time the client just purchased
  2. Date of Purchase: The date of the purchase
  3. Notes: Any additional information that may be helpful (invoice number, etc.)

  Editing TimeBank Records

  Purchases can be modified or deleted within the application. To edit a record, simply click on the yellow ‘Edit’ box to the right of the table. 

  1. Update data
  2. Delete record

4. Customizing Drop-Down Lists

• Managing Billed Against Values

  One of the key distinctions in TimeBank is how we categorize the billing. There are three values standard in all TimeBank instances (although more can be added and customized). 

  1. Hourly
  2. Contract
  3. Pro Bono

  Managing Categories

  Work Categories can help further define tasks by their high-level activity. Several Categories come standard with TimeBank. However, we recommend customizing this field to your particular field of expertise. 

  Custom Categories

  Clients are able to have custom Work Categories that apply only to them. These custom categories can be assigned from the Manage Categories screen by choosing a client from the Client (Optional) column drop-down list. 

  On the Enter Hours Worked screen, when a user selects that client from the drop-down list, the Category list will re-populate with any custom Categories for the selected client. This feature is useful if clients have special projects, unique services, etc.

5. Key Features

• Alerts

  Alerts are low-balance warnings on a client’s TimeBank. They are set to send an email to selected recipients when a running balance falls below a specified interval.

  These alerts are *only* valid for hours with a Billed Against value of ‘TimeBank.’ They are intended to function much like (for example) a low-balance notification about a checking account.

  Limits

  This feature is intended to help with budgeting. Limits can be applied to any client, and it will provide a visual warning to users on the Enter Hours Worked screen if they are entering time that exceeds or goes within 10% of a set limit. Limits can be set for a given time period, with additional options to filter by Billed Against and Category values. A client can have any number of limits set, from zero to many.