Introducing Work Types in TMetric

This article explains how to define and use work types in TMetric. Work types allow counting billable time with maximum flexibility and remove manual calculations when invoicing.

What is Work Type

Basically, work type is a tag with an attached billable rate. It's used in the time tracking process to mark a certain type of work you perform for your client. Work types allow users to have multiple billable rates per project. Work Types are available in the Business plan.

Tasks vs Work Types

Work types are indispensable for projects including tasks that are highly variable in complexity and effort. But work types are not tasks because tasks are used to control project development and work types simply show the nature or value of tasks.

Task (typical properties)

• Implies a specified amount of work
• Has an assigned person responsible for the execution
• Once completed, is no longer valid (recurrent tasks are an exception)

Work types

• No specified amount of work
• Can be applied by any team member
• Can appear throughout the whole project

In TMetric a work type can be attached to a task.

Default Work Type for Team Member

Oftentimes, a certain type of work is associated with specific team members who do it. For example, the testing work type (in software development) can be associated with 3 QAs in a team.

In TMetric, you can assign a specific work type to each team member according to the role of a person. Software developers may get a coding work type as a default one, QA engineers may get testing.

This default work type is automatically assigned (unless overridden) to every time entry logged by a person. Then, you open a report and get the work type split for your projects with no effort.

Example: Video Animation Project

Creating a project

Let's create a sample project in TMetric to illustrate how work types can be used.

To create a project:

1. Select Manage->Projects menu item and click the New Project button.
2. Enter a project name and, optionally, select a client.
3. Mark the project as billable and enter the default project rate.

Billable amounts for time entries with no work type are calculated using the default project rate.

We've created a project named 'Konstos Promo Video'. The General tab of the project is on the following picture.

Customizing project's work types

Now, let's go to the Work Types tab. Here we see that all work types we created in the account (see the picture at the beginning of the article) are added to the project. This is the default behavior.

We have a 2D animation project, so we remove 3d animation and video shooting work types.

Also, we want to customize the storyboarding rate for the project. We set it to 12 USD per hour.

Tracking work time

When you track your work time, you treat work types as tags. Here's how a work type looks in the time entry editor.

Note: A time entry can have only one work type. You can use tags along with work types.

When you log work time for the project, you should set a work type for each time entry. To avoid extra manual work, you can:

• Use  TMetric tasks. You can preset a work type for a task. All time entries for this task will have the same work type (unless you manually change it).
• Use default work types for account members (see above).

Running time reports

When you run a report you can use work types as filters for your data. In our case, we want to see time entries marked with the editing tag and time entries with the 2d animation work type.

The following picture displays a filtered report. You can see that billable amounts are calculated using different rates.

Conclusion

The Work Types feature provides great flexibility for billing your client for the work you do. Don't hesitate to try this feature as well as other functionality.

TMetric is a time tracking web app for both freelancers and big companies. Great control over time intervals and projects’ budgets, flexible billable rates, crystal clear reporting, transparent team monitoring and lots of integrations, all wrapped up into a light interface.

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