Non billable time tracking
Posted by AniBMagal@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 80 comments
Accepted a 6 figure Senior L3 Engineer / Team Lead role at an MSP today. Found out they do time tracking for non billable time down to the 5 minutes, billable is 15. I haven't tracked non billable time in 20 years. They want 40 hours on my timecard every week. How does this work for things like checking emails, context switching, mentoring a junior, multitasking, ramp up/ down time, making coffee, taking a leak, etc? He said it's not for punitive measures it's to see where the business is spending time. I already don't want to work there because of this. Is this normal?
Pristine_Curve@reddit
Everything you plan to do goes on a list. Map the list onto the calendar. Calendar becomes the timesheet.
It is not that difficult once you get used to it. The largest drawback is all the stop/start inefficiency. Most IT people are used to loading all context into the brain and dropping into 'the zone' where they keep working a project until serious progress is made. 'The zone' is not conducive to a full schedule of minor tasks. It feels like you never do any *real* work. Over time you get better at breaking down work into small pieces.
TotallyNotaStoner@reddit
I'm really not sure why companies love doing this, all this leads to is employees padding their time....
Own_Error_007@reddit
It's a stood stupid management concept that gets taught in MBA school.
"You can't manage what you can't measure".
It's taught to people who should never be given people management roles.
OzymandiasKoK@reddit
Them they decide to measure simple or meaningless things as possible and pretend they're important.
signal_lost@reddit
Notes for billable time works is important because you billing a client for it.
10 years ago people used to spend anywhere from $250-$325 an hour for my time. People would dispute that billing if I did not have some justification for it.
psykezzz@reddit
Also, people who have never had to record their time.
I’ve seen amazing techs quit over the constant time recording stress.
PlzHelpMeIdentify@reddit
Tbh I definitely see why they want it tracked as it shows areas where stuff needs improvement and they make money off your billable time.
On the flip side I hate tracking my time cause it’s a pain and a lot of times if I’m doing travel work it’s gets guestimated by my google map times, along with work done cause the app we use barely works mobile.
Overall it’s kinda necessary evil for billable , and somewhat depending on non billable as long as it’s not excessive (don’t make account for all 40hrs, but meetings , and things like backup checking and automation probably wouldn’t hurt to be tracked)
ihavescripts@reddit
But you can't know if they are meeting KPIs without 5 minute logs on a time sheet. /s
ozvic@reddit
Or just making up shit two or a few days later.
Existential_Racoon@reddit
We had like... 6 hours a week of "professional development"
Yeah, I always did 6 hours a week of that.
helphunting@reddit
Bottom up governance, I.e. this sh#t, is easier on management as the lower levels do all the hard work.
Top Down governance, where medium term goals, deliverables, etc are tracked are more work on middle management.
I'm changing our work to top down as we speak, I f'in hated the minute/action/task tracking that some try to force down on people.
signal_lost@reddit
Team Lead role at an MSP today
Hey I used to do that! BTW, you seem lost. I would go over to r/MSP to be in the land of your new people.
Found out they do time tracking in Autotask for non billable time down to the 5 minutes, billable is 15
We billed in 15 minute increments. It's pretty normal and it's a good minimum for a client "quick question". that invokes context switching.
haven't tracked non billable time in 20 years
Been 10 years for me.
They want 40 hours on my timecard every week
Yup, Note. Autotask had a "General admin and overhead" catagory I think, but we tried to set some targets on that to keep it from getting too high. Week to week stuff swings, but I think our target was 70% billable. If it got too high it meant I needed to hire, or people needed to be mentored. As a manager/leader who worked I had a target at 50% billable.
How does this work for things like checking emails
Nothing URGENT comes in in email. You basically check it at most once every hour or two. If it's urgent it was a call and it routed through my dispatcher. (or the ticketing system really). Repeat after me:
"Can you rephrase that question in the form of a billable ticket?"
"NO TICKET NO WORK" (in the tone of an angry 5 year old, while banging your desk). We would chant this at a sales person with a drive by quick question.
context switching
You try to avoid this. Everyone thinks they are good at multi-tasking. STOP, your not. Everyone underestimates how long stuff takes. The longer your at a MSP you learn "padding" is just "estimating correctly. Part of being a good lead is helping scope things, and pushing back on over padding, but also telling sales "no, a VMware cluster upgrades doesn't take 45 minutes, GTFO with that". You also learn to try to expand scope to things being " a full day".
mentoring a junior
While normally a single person was supposed to be billing the ticket, you also have to find a balance between "look this is above your grade transfer it to me and and I"LL bill at a higher rate while you watch" (and it ding their billable %) vs. "Socratic questioning" Instead of just doing the work for them. Remember if someone can do it 80% of the way/time you need to let them work and try it. Part of Jr's having lower billable rates is the customer is eating that "figuring it out" time.
ramp up/ down time, making coffee, taking a leak, etc
* Researching potential solutions.
* Investigating previous similar issues
* Reviewing knowledge base articles and technical documentation.
* Updating technical documentation
ALL of these phrases are fair game, for while your THINKING about the ticket while getting coffee, or peeing. I mean who doesn't THINK about the currently time ticking ticket while they are returning the coffee to the water cycle?
said it's not for punitive measures it's to see where the business is spending time.
Absolutely. I led the time review meeting with my staff, and would show general trends. If a Jr. Redshirt PFY was spending wayyy too much time on something it wasn't time to yell at them it was time to assign some training, or assign someone else to help them in that area. If billable were low across the board it was time to review who had pre-paid hours and pitch needed upgrades or project improvements. Like we could have a month where payroll was straight up in the red in the summer and that was fine, we just added extra training and knew it was the gap when everyone was on vacation. (We also reminded sales to pitch more projects to schools who LOVED major overhauls in that time).
AniBMagal@reddit (OP)
Thanks. Tried posting on msp I don't have enough reddit sprinkles or whatever.
I appreciate your comment. Billable rate is the same whether you get me or an L1. I have no billable target or minimum. Just the requirement to track all 40 of my hours.
signal_lost@reddit
So be clear, you don’t have to have a status update generally every five minutes, you can have a 30 minute walk that says doing whatever was how we operated.
If you tried to say you spent three hours on “ miscellaneous things” I was literally gonna ask you to make your notes a lot more thorough
IAmSnort@reddit
Creative writing comes in handy.
Bearded-Wacko@reddit
I work at an MSP with the same requirement - 10 years so far and it's not improved, it's only gotten more granular. "Utilization" is VERY important apparently. The only reason I haven't jumped ship is the job market and the fear of being the new guy and the first to go during 'restructuring'.
JustFucIt@reddit
Eh newest guy doesn't always get cut
Signed, the jaded admin
Bearded-Wacko@reddit
Booo
FantasticBumblebee69@reddit
they alwyas want 15 minute increment tracking normally used for lawyers that charge 400/ hr without paying 400 / hr. every email from a lawyer is 15 minutes even if it was 5. Do the same, then ask legal how much they charge to check email. Then proceed to ask fir thier rate card....
punkwalrus@reddit
I just did grouping like:
I have never done 5 minute increments, but 15, yes. And since my work was all over the place, I wrote a perl script (yes, this was a while ago) that generated random activity in a csv, which I could cut and paste into a spreadsheet, which was how we submitted weekly.
It didn't matter if it was mildly inaccurate, because there were ten of us, and there was no way this manager was reading 1800 line items (4/hr x 9/day x 5/wk x 10 employees) at 15 minute increments every week.
Now, AI might change that, but this was in 2002.
Opposite_Bag_7434@reddit
It’s understandable for billable time like time at a client, for attorneys, etc.
The company I work for is very data focused. As in using data to inform. We track a lot of things about our technology team members but never to that degree.
At some point it is important to also trust your employees. If you can’t trust them why did you hire them.
Personally I would say pass. Unless I was tracking billable hours. But I am not going to track every detail of my day, especially when I have so many 15 to 20 hour days. I am also not going to track my team. They are too busy, and I have too much on my plate already.
Hande-H@reddit
I had this at a job, quit it pretty soon for obvious reasons.
I just added 30-60 minutes every day for "updating the timecard". It never got brought up so either they were happy with the waste of time or didn't actually read any of it.
punkwalrus@reddit
The latter. Trust me, although AI might change things.
gtbeakerman@reddit
Eject!
the262@reddit
This. I work at a cyber consulting firm and we don’t even track billable time. We discuss as a team weekly the projects/engagements everyone is working on to make sure we are all loaded fairly, not get burned out, and doing enough billable work to cover our salaries. Everything else is professional development, Flex Time for home/family needs, doing fun side projects for our firm to grow the practice, etc.
sir_mrej@reddit
LOL that's NOT normal. Most consulting places track billable time.
colenski999@reddit
I am tracked down to 15 minute interval I have 6 assignments all different timesheet is brutal
FreakySpook@reddit
Yeah that sounds awesome. Professional services/consulting teams PnL's are almost always measured on billable utilisation.
Easy from a tracking/billing perspective but makes it difficult to have those resources doing internal things like continuous improvement programs, go to market/product development, education & training etc as its seen as a profit loss to that team.
the262@reddit
Yeah, I am super fortunate to be where I am.
sardonic_balls@reddit
Some things that count, cannot be counted. Like your metnal health. Trust your gut
MortadellaKing@reddit
Classic MSP micromanagement. Is this your first time at an MSP?
AniBMagal@reddit (OP)
No... Like 3rd. And it's never been like this. Was always billable only.
MortadellaKing@reddit
I'm sorry to hear that, hopefully you can ride it out or maybe they concede.
Spirit117@reddit
Make sure to add at least 30 minutes a day on the time sheet card for time spent updating time sheets.
colenski999@reddit
This is the way.
signal_lost@reddit
Absolutely not, you add 5-10 minutes to every ticket to account for documenting it at the end. If OP is using auto task you open the ticket window and you document AS YOU WORK. Don't try to catch up at the end of the day or week. It's a terrible idea. *Yes I'm the problem it's me, I'd try doing that it's not the way to do this).
Rough_Doughnut_5525@reddit
Yep. Use the timer on autotask to your advantage and don’t assume you’ll remember exact figures at the end of the day/week.
Open a ticket, start working on it and even if you get sidetracked doing other things (which is very normal and realistic), let the total time be added.
BTW I think it’s very unrealistic for them to say you need to account for 40 hours each week. Somewhere between 60-80% is more reasonable. They may have just said this so you aim to do as much as possible. Maybe get a feel from other engineers on that.
LicksGuitar@reddit
^ This is the way
ProfessionalEven296@reddit
I used to add an hour a week for timesheets. Thankfully don’t need to now.
fnordhole@reddit
Same. I judged it. The numbers were all bullshit. Fuck micromanagement. When I get micromanaged, I get stupid and difficult and slow. Fuck 'em.
tr3kilroy@reddit
Admin time! Have you talked to a Jr about a ticket? Bill it. Talked to a customer? Create a ticket and bill it! Trying to decide what ticket to work on next? That is billable to the next ticket you work on. Our billable goal is 80% and I regularly hit 90 to 100. Just pay attention to what you are doing and make sure to bill appropriately. In the end no one cares about metrics unless they are missed.
accidentlife@reddit
It’s extremely common.
> They want 40 hours on my time card
A lot of places will allow you to do a payroll wrap of up to 5-10 hours a week. This covers things like grabbing coffee, using the restroom, and day to day admin. Payroll wrap should not be used to cover meetings, trainings, or time spent doing work internally.
> Multitasking
There is no such thing as multi tasking, it’s just really fast context switching. Your management should discuss with you how to bill time that could apply to multiple clients (IE vendor outage).
> Context switching
You should be working on one thing at a time. If you need to switch your task, you wrap your time entry for task 1 and begin a time entry for task 2. All time should be entered on time all the time.
In a true emergency (like O365 is down), you will usually get some leniency in doing paperwork a little bit late.
> Mentoring a junior [and training]
My employer requires time spent training yourself or others to be documented. For things like self training or workshops that would be a training ticket billed to ourselves.
For multi-hour to multi-day job shadowing and mentoring, I typically create a ticket for each day where I bill the time where I am not directly working on the ticket. This ticket also contains notes on what I learned.
For shadowing and mentoring of a single ticket, the person who actually was working on the ticket bills their time as normal. The person shadowing/mentoring creates an “Internal” admin entry (non-billable) discussing their work and what they taught/learned.
__how@reddit
> You should be working on one thing at a time. If you need to switch your task, you wrap your time entry for task 1 and begin a time entry for task 2. All time should be entered on time all the time.
Absolutely this. You train your brain to learn and, more importantly, forget things in intervals that are not healthy.
Have a limit on different topics that you work on on any given day, bundle tickets by topic if you can, but do not heavily switch between topics all the time. Minimize interruptions as well you can.
Back to topic: Its your (OP) decision if you like or dislike time recording, but please ignore all people who say that time recording is your enemy. There will be a day when someone will insult you and ask you were your time is going, and you will be glad when you have some sort of idea what that is. There will absolutely be days or weeks where you will ask yourself: what have i done all week? And again, you will be glad if you can somehow have some summary which tells you what you have achieved that week. It is also good for weekly meetings where people might ask you what your plan is for this week or what you have done this week. If any of this happens? That depends on your workplace and what your actual job is, but from what i gather from your post its not doing eight hours straight the same thing.
External billing is important because it controls the invoices of the company, internal billing is important to understand where does time go, where is good automation potential, where do we need more (self-service) documentation or workflows? Where are we sinking time uselessly? Which system, customer or user does cost more than they provide? And honestly, if you care for your job these questions are not only important for your management, but for you as well, they are a part of your reflection.
Find a way how timerecording works for you in the moment where you do things, when the ticket system takes care for you, good, otherwise use a calendar, excel, a local textfile, a wiki, a sheet of paper on your desk, get one of those cubes which do things when you turn them, write your own toolset, utilize AI to cobble something unique for you: You need to find the flow that works for you. and if once a week you then need half an hour to transfer those records in your companys tool, then thats an accepted overhead. Autotask has an API, maybe you can utilize that to feed your local data automatically. (a quick pictures google also showed a tool that promises to make timerecording with autotask more easy, but i havent seen it before, so i dont mention the name, and let you do your own due diligence)
Finally, for internal billing: write exactly that, "Training" is an important category to record time against. Otherwise, ask for "internal projects" to record this against - more likely there is already an asortment of "internal projects" which give the frame for you. For small things like coffee/leak, they go into the previous/next task that get recorded. Everytime that doesnt has a category goes into some "overflow" internal task.
Also, there shouldnt be a checking mail, because again, mails need to serve a purpose - if its generic communication, put it under training, if it is a task for you - well a task will have some timerecording anyway, if its glancing in the inbox, it will go under in whatever youre recording again right now anyway. if its a customer that needs an answer, record against the customer - depending on your setup, it might still be recorded as non-billable, but see above: if its too much, it may need talking to or doing something about the customer, but without recorded time, its hard to argue with the customer.
Timerecording is not your enemy, its your best way to prove your value to your manager, and it will help you utilize your time, and it will help improve yourself.
sylvester_0@reddit
We introduced non-billable tracking recently as well. I just log time against a single general "work" task and haven't gotten in trouble yet. With all the context switching that this profession does, anything more is a massive PITA.
nickski18@reddit
I used OneNote to keep track of what I do during the day. Something like below and I'd just enter everything at the end of the day. Say I got morning and after coffee I'd put in 10 minutes instead of 2 two minutes. Hopefully they don't need to track by clock time. Also I'm guessing anything like mentor a junior teammember would be billable time if it's a specific ask for a customer. Once you get used to it a lot of things are billable and not non-billable. I'm sure they just want to make sure anything you thought would be non-billable would be billable.
8 - started work/grab coffee
8:10 - caught up on emails (note any customer work for billing purposes)
8:45 - specific customer work
9:10 - get interupt by something urgent
9:20 - back to customer work
etc, etc
At the end of the day I would tally up time spent and use that for my timesheet.
Master-IT-All@reddit
What the shitty software do you use to receive and work on tickets from your users that it doesn't have time tracking for tickets built in?
kilkor@reddit
That is so depressing.
nickski18@reddit
It becomes habit after a while. It's also a personal log as well so I know what I did if a question comes up about a specific items. It's basically an audit log for myself. Organization goes a long way when trying to work on 10-15 things at a time.
nickski18@reddit
It becomes habit after a while. It's also a personal log as well so I know what I did if a question comes up about a specific items. It's basically a audit log for myself. Organization goes a long way when trying to work on 10-15 things at a time.
AniBMagal@reddit (OP)
Just found out you have to put start and end time. It's not just blocks of hours it's sequentially entered. Wtf.
kilkor@reddit
Malicious compliance is the only way.
Set a timer to go off every 4 minutes, or perhaps 4 min 30 sec.
Every time it goes off, you stop everything you're doing and log your time.
You don't start working again until the next 5 minute window opens and your timer chirps at you.
On a call? Just interrupt it every 4 minutes to log your time. If you're not the one speaking then it's not that big and deal. If you are speaking, excuse yourself for 30 seconds and let the whole thing be paused awkwardly.
In the middle of a task? Get used to losing your context and flow to make sure your time gets logged. You're going to get severely less done throughout the day, but hey... that time sheet will be perfect!
Dealing with a severe downtime incident? Let the people on the bridge call know that your msp managers need you to spend your time documenting a time sheet instead of fixing their issue as quickly as possible.
All of this is terrible advice that is just as absurd as having to log your hours in 5 or 15 minute blocks.
One way to actually handle it is to simply.... not do it. See how they react.
You can also ask your coworkers what they do. I guarantee the majority will simply say they guess and don't track them correctly.
I personally vowed to never ever work for a company that tracks time in 15 minute blocks like this after my last experience with it. I was allocated to a single client at an msp. I sat in that client's office. I never had to bill anyone else and I was always billable for the time I was in the office. My msp manager asked me to start accounting for what I was doing in 15 minute increments. I told them no thanks and that I'd be happy to take 20-30 mins at the end of the day to summarize my work for the day and that for anything else they could just review tickets i worked on and notes made there. That worked for a couple weeks and then i got more pressure to do it in 15 minute increments so I found another job.
Master-IT-All@reddit
LOL, dude it's not track every five minutes it's attribute nonbillable time in five minute blocks.
So if the OP is tracking time for a project, if they spend four hours and thirty-eight minutes they will be expected to document 4.75 hours billable to the customer. When they go into a team meeting for 52 minutes they'll be expected to record that as 55 minutes of non-billable.
Your MSP expected you to track the hour you spent on ticket X separate from ticket Y. That is normal too. Not sure why you'd get butt hurt over being asked to be accountable for the time you were supposedly working. Did you really think the customer wouldn't be constantly asking the MSP to justify the amount they're charging for you to be onsite? How is the MSP going to win if all they have to go from in documentation is: "Worked on tickets" - 8hrs
accidentlife@reddit
Our process is pretty simple:
When you start working on a ticket, you mark it in progress and start the clock (in our PSA). As you work on the ticket you keep note of what you have done. When you are done working, you stop the clock and save your notes. The ticket itself (title, category, etc) then is supposed to get updated.
If any additional work needs to be performed on the ticket, the ticket gets scheduled for that work or annotated with any blockers (such as waiting for vendor, waiting on client, etc). If the ticket is completed, it gets marked as such.
Master-IT-All@reddit
If its just:
3 hrs - Research Entra Farts P2 (Non-billable)
Research and learning Entra Farts P2 for project for CustomerX to introduce AGP services to environment.
3 hrs - Setup and configure Entra Farts P2 - Advanced Gas Protection - CustomerX - P8675309
Setup and configuration of Entra Farts P2 - AGP
2 hrs - Internal Meetings (Non-billable)
Daily standup
Daily huddle
Meeting with team to discuss advanced gas protection
Then it's normal. And that's what it sounds like.
I prefer a system where you're automatically logging 7.5 or 8hrs each day to ones where they just record billable time.
-But not for a service desk role, SD is a seat in chair role as much as work produced.
screampuff@reddit
I used to work T3 at a MSP. Many of my tickets were complex ones that took 5-40 hours to resolve.
I usually made just a 5 minute entry as I wrapped up my time in a ticket each day. Then at the end of the day in autotask I could basically drag to resize my time entries and I'd just use my judgement to set where one started and the other ended til I made up 6 or 7 hours.
This was also a big factor in why I quit. I went on to work as a Systems Engineer and now Architect for a medium sized company. We don't track anything like this, we use ticket counts, ticket category and scope of impact to measure this kind of thing.
r1kupanda@reddit
Heres how it works for me at a relatively friendly msp. We are expected to be at eork for 8 hours. When working a client ticket, a timer starts running. Little minutia like filling water, dog barking, take a leak, all happen with the same timer running. Same with quick teams messages, just leave the current ticket timer running and it all evens out across clients. Longer chats and interruptions, you swap tickets and the timer runs on the second ticket instead.
Internal stuff can still be "billable", but to your own company, like updating docs or internal projects.
At the end of the day you will still have gaps in between tickets, admin tasks, etc. The timecard might say 7.5 hours after youve been working for 7 hours. The last .5 is filled with a charge code like "admin" or "payroll wrap" and there is an expectation of around 30 minutes per day of this unbillable time. If someone repeatedly hits 45m-1hr of unbilled time, we figure out where the time goes. Most common is people just forget to start the timer on their next ticket or the "quick call" they get dragged into.
r1kupanda@reddit
And some people are saying its stupid, or not worth it, whatever. From a business perspective, mgmt needs to see which clients are time sinks and not making any money, so you can focus on fixing those inefficiencies or dumping bad clients. Its way more about the client efficiency than tracking employees, in my experience.
screampuff@reddit
I worked at a MSP that only required 6 hours of tracked time per day, and they didnt care if it was billable or non-billable. And it still sucked and was a big reason I quit.
They can absolutely get this kind of information to a reasonable degree with reports of ticket priority, scope of impact, and category, compared across clients, because these things are always going to be relative from one client to the other.
Time tracking to such a degree is absolutely about micromanagement.
rdwing@reddit
A lot of the times this is because the business is properly classifying IT employees as Salaried Non-Exempt. So time tracking is required, because you should be getting paid overtime for any hours of 8 in a day and any hours over 40 in a week.
Salaried exempt is not supported by the FSLA for general sysadmin type work, and especially not for L1/L2/L3 helpdesk.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-computer
cyberman0@reddit
The msp I left wanted close to 40 also, but I typically hit 32-35 a week. My manager was barely getting to 8 hours, I kinda got tired of carrying his ass. Same work he was just "lead".
StoneyCalzoney@reddit
This is pretty rational for an MSP...
Consider it this way: if the active task you're doing is not for a client or does not lead to doing work for a client, consider it non-billable.
If you checked your email and see an issue from a client? Billable time.
You're mentoring a junior on a client's environment? Billable time.
You're doing documentation of general procedures/systems? Non-billable.
Nobody cares if you take a piss or make a coffee while working on something, just lump that in to the time for the greater task you are working on at that moment.
strike-eagle@reddit
Fuck all that noise. I did the MSP thing for 5 years then moved onto the enterprise. My first few weeks I was unconsciously trying to put in my time, but then I realized how much I had been freed.
SupraCollider@reddit
Do you plan your work a few weeks out? It’s not as difficult as it seems if you book yourself ahead. Give yourself a few hours a day for incidentals and email checking and block the rest for productive work. 2-3 hours daily should be plenty as a baseline.
If they are trying to measure what their people are doing down to the specific minute of the day the way a call center does, then my ADHD having ass is resigning next week. If they require forty billable hours consistently, then hell no to that as well, that’s the job of the business development to generate those opportunities at that scale.
Some places will gamify the hours - did you get offered anything like bonuses for billable overages or most billable hours? If not, then I would never go over 35 billable on the busiest week, personally. That’s a hard stop and if you are that valuable then they can compensate you for anything above and beyond.
Soggy-Attempt@reddit
Make it up. That’s what happened at my company. Or take an hour doing it and state that.
goshock@reddit
They did this at my job for a while. I got everyone to add at least an hour a day for time tracking. They didn't implement the policy for very long. I like to think I had something to do with that.
dosman33@reddit
Ages ago doing service calls at IBM we had to do this, down to 10ths of an hour - I reported all my time for over 5 years like this. IBM had an entire manual for coding your time (QSARs), and we were always concerned about showing too much "administrative time" between calls. They had metrics for what was an acceptable amount of time to code against every machine type we serviced, and there were annual reviews of your coding metrics. We were using a 2-way data radio device to do all our reporting with. This was the predecessor to Blackberry, then known as RIM (our device was the RIM 900, we called it "the RIM", outside the joint apparently this device was called the Bullfrog). And there was an earlier device called "the brick" co-developed by IBM and Motorola that used the same wireless data network too, but that was before my time. RIM era was late 1990's to early 2000's. However, this was essentially a remote terminal into a mainframe application. We marked our status on calls in real time using this (statuses like called customer, on-site, completed, rescheduled, etc). Since we could do real-time reporting with our RIM, they were always pushing us to write and submit our QSAR reports immediately after every call, but in practice most of us actually waited until the end of the day. This way you could adjust your service call reporting time to reduce your apparent downtime between calls. Writing these reports could take an hour or two depending on how busy your day was. Every year they made small changes to reporting metrics to slice things differently, and every year we figured out new ways to work around them.
As to what all this accomplished, I'll never know. But I have QSAR activity and status codes permanently embedded in my brain from over 20 years ago.
CriminalSavant@reddit
So glad I don't work for an MSP, nightmare.
KingSummo@reddit
This is annoying and semi micro-managing. I worked at an MSP that required this also
I would personally just bloat the hell out of each time entry, if a task took 10 minutes I would put it down as 30 minutes
ljr55555@reddit
I work for a private company where there's no such thing as billable time, and they do this nonsense time tracking "to see where the business is spending time". Not down to 5 or 15 minutes. Two years in, no one seems to have balked at my multi-hour blocks that fall under "system support" or "application development". But it makes me think time tracking is pretty common.
Quick answer is ask your manager how to classify a lot of that stuff. There should be a bucket akin to our "other non-support time" - bathroom break, three reboots to get the laptop back to a state where it connects to the network, checking e-mails, etc. We've got a "professional development" bucket that I was told to use when I'm professionally developing other people too (i.e. mentoring). Generally it ends up being a little silly, and I absolutely book an "other non-support time" hour every week for filling out the stupid time sheet.
kagato87@reddit
Ask.
If they expect 40 hours, billable plus non billable, there will be time codes or a specific procedure for it.
If they expect 40 hours billable, then you're right you don't want to work there. Keep applying like you're still looking and treat this like a temporary job.
Now, most MSPs expect a certain amount of overlap in your billing. If doing a task takes 2 hours for each client, but you can do it for 4 clients in 4 hours, you don't drop your time to 1 hour each. Maybe 1.5. Maybe.
For billable and sla time, if they bill in 15 minutes you claim it in 15 minutes. They're charging the client for 15 minutes of your time. Don't give the bossman that discount. If they ask, "really? I hadn't noticed."
And that's it. Looj over your employment and check your local state or provincial laws - many msps mess up the no compete leaving it completely unenforceable. If you meet some stellar techs and want to recruit them at your next gig, now what you need to do and what you need to avoid doing.
Stylux@reddit
I'm a lawyer so billing to the tenth of an hour is my life. Here's a tip, being able to bill to the quarter of an hour is insane. Keep a doc with all of your repeat entries. You can do 8 hours of "work" in about 3 if you're effectively capturing your time. You will do "10 hour days" in your sleep. Make your entries verbose so nobody will question them. Are these actually being submitted for billing purposes or just internal tracking? If nobody is paying out of pocket on them, go nuts. My typical day has about 30-40 entries. Then again, I hate myself.
sir_mrej@reddit
I mean I've had to track time as internal IT before, because we billed departments.
What categories have they provided for things like coffee breaks? Mentoring? Email? Etc?
If they expect that coffee breaks DONT count, then dont put them down. Checking email for 30 mins always includes a coffee break that isnt mentioned. Etc.
MetalEnthusiast83@reddit
My time has to add up to 40. But I’m also a team lead/manager so I only have a couple of directly billable hours most days and we have a wrap-around status to fill in the blanks.
ex0ducks@reddit
40 - billable = non-billable 🤷
Hoggs@reddit
This. Also idgaf if management want 5 minute resolution in my timesheets. They'll get 30 minutes minimum if I'm feeling nice. 1 hour blocks if I'm not.
Aless-dc@reddit
I’ve done that. It sucks, good luck.
BasementMillennial@reddit
40 hours required on timecard?
Hard pass, that's toxic.
gwatt21@reddit
It’s normal and I don’t miss it from my last MSP job.
unobtainaballs@reddit
I'm in a Support role, sort of hybrid ops/app support. We have to do timesheets, no one said to what specificity, so I generally do 0.5 or whole hours. I just over estimate and cut all the fluff. So a general day might be recorded as 3h meetings, 2h this product support, 2h that product support, 0.5 general admin. It depends how many codes/whatever you have to log against. I also add in 0.5h every week for "timesheet admin".
SkittyDog@reddit
🤣🤣🤣
Sucks to be you, my friend!
But at least you got a job.