Using Time Tracking

The Time Tracking system allows you and your employees to enter the actual time spent on individual tasks on each Work Order, allowing you to (1) automatically capture time entries for Payroll purposes and/or (2) track time for tasks/customers in order to validate profitability and other business measurements.

To turn on the Time Tracking system, on your Preferences screen you’ll find the following fields to edit. Note that there are two options to select from:

If you just want to track time entries for profitability, etc. select “On” whereas if you want this to sync to QuickBooks for payroll purposes, or to utilize the time reporting in QuickBooks, select “Sync to QuickBooks.”

Regardless of which you select, you will need to make sure that each User on the Home Watch IT system is mapped to an Employee on QuickBooks. Even if you do not sync, Method validates this entry and stores it in the database. If you ever encounter an “Entity Missing” error when saving in Method it is because you have not assigned a QuickBooks employee (Entity) to your Method Users.

If you have QuickBooks Payroll in place prior to creating the Method Users, the users are probably already mapped. If you add employees to QB after Method, or if you are not using QB Payroll, you will need to enter the Employees in QuickBooks in order to link them up. Use one of the following two methods:

• If you use QB Payroll, enter as a new Employee. Once this syncs you’ll be able to address things in Method.
• If you do not use QB Payroll, the simplest way to add a new Employee in QB is as follows

Click the Time menu option on the left menu, and then Single Time Entry.

Type in the Employees name and click “Add”

Save the Employee Name and exit the screen in QuickBooks.

Once those Employees have synced to Method, you can now select them in your Users screen (go to Preferences, and click Users in the upper right). Select the User and you can find the new QuickBooks Employee in the dropdown field labelled QuickBooks Entity.

At this point your system is set up to use the Time Tracking features.

You’ll see that you have the ability to enter time on each line of a Work Order (this allows you to specify how much time you spend on the home visit, the car drive, etc. individually).

You and your field staff will also be able to enter the same information on the Route Technician app by clicking on each line and entering in the time.

For reporting, you’ll find this information at a total level on the Work Order List, and in detail in the Business Planning app using the Time Analysis graphs.

Click through each graph for more details, all the way down to the original Work Order.