What must be set up for successful calculation of the Time & Material billable lines?

Created by GM Support, Modified on Thu, 06 Jul 2023 at 08:26 AM by GM Support

For successful calculation of the Time & Material billable lines, processed worklogs and posted Job Journal Lines are required.

Also, in the JIRA Connect Setup, the following field must be indicated:

TnM Job Task No.

There are two ways of using this Contract Type, depending on whether the Auto Create Billable Planning Lines option is enabled or disabled in Jira Connect Setup:

For Auto Create Billable Planning Lines disabled:

Jira Connector creates Budget Job Planning Lines in a Job Journal every time you post a worklog. Suggest Billable Lines should be used to calculate and create billable lines.

How the Suggest Billable Lines functionality works in this case:

1. After worklogs are posted through Job Journal with Line Type = Budget, Budget lines will be created in Job Ledger Entries and Job Planning Lines. Ledger entries will be the basis for Billable Proposal Lines.

2. On the Calculate stage, Job Ledger Entries posted in the period will be grouped depending on Worklog Bilable Lines Grouping in Job and added to Proposal lines.

3. On the Approve stage, Proposal lines are transferred to Job Planning Lines as Billable. Ledger entries that were linked to Proposal lines are marked as processed, so they do not appear on the next run.

Important!

If some lines are deleted from Proposal Lines, then linked Job Lenger entries will appear on the next run of the Calculate action
If some lines in the Proposal lines are marked as non-billable, then linked Job Ledger entries will not appear on the next run of the Calculate action

For Auto Create Billable Planning Lines enabled:

Jira Connector creates, updates, or deletes Billable Job Planning Line every time when you post a worklog Job Journal Line.

1. At the stage of Job Journal Line posting, Jira Connector checks if we post a line under Time & Material Contract Type. To do it, Jira Connector checks the contract type of the Job Task that we post a line to. If the contract type is empty, then Jira Connector checks the parent Job Task or the Job. It proceeds until it finds a non-empty Contract Type. Later, JC will create a billable line in the found Job Task or a new line with TnM Job Task No.

2. Jira Connector checks how the information should be grouped: by worklogs, and by resources. This depends on what is set in a Job Card in a Worklog Billable Lines Grouping field.

Grouping by worklogs is preferable in case we need to create an invoice for the customer later, that should be detailed on a worklog level. Thus, we will have one billable Job Planning Line for every worklog posted. Otherwise, we can choose to group by resources.

So, Jira Connector checks if the billable line already exists. If we group by Worklog No., then it tries to find a line with Document No. = Worklog No. If we group by Resource No., then JC finds a line with an empty Document No. and the same resource number.

3. Jira Connector uses Quantity not from Job Ledger Entry, but from the GMJ Billable Hours field. This field stores the actual quantity of hours to bill from Tempo in the case when the import of billable hours is enabled in the Jira Connector Setup.

Otherwise, this field stores hours logged in Tempo in case we do not import billable hours.

4. If there is no line found, then Jira Connector creates a new line.

5. If there is a line, then Jira Connector tries to change it. In this case, different situations can occur. First, we either need to increase or decrease the quantity in Job Planning Line. Second, the billable Planning Line can have posted or non-posted invoices, or credit memos attached to it. The algorithm of correction is as follows:

Diagram
Description automatically generated

For example, we have a Job Planning Line with Quantity = 10:

Qty. in Posted Sales Invoice = 5;
Qty. in not posted Sales Invoice = 3;
Qty. to transfer to invoice = 2.

We need to decrease the quantity by 8.

First, we try to reduce the quantity that has not been transferred to the invoice yet. We change “Quantity to transfer to invoice” to 0. There are 6 hours more to decrease. Next, we try to get quantity from non-posted sales invoices. There are 3 in it. We delete the line (and the invoice itself if it was the last line in it). And then we have 6 - 3 = 3 to decrease. We cannot decrease the quantity in the posted sales invoice, so we will create a credit memo with quantity = 3.

Then we need to increase the quantity by 5.

First, we take 3 from non-posted credit-memo. There are 2 to go. We will just put it in a Job Journal Line without creating any invoice. It will be created manually later.

In Time & Material contracts we link Job Ledger Entry lines that were used to calculate billable Job Planning Lines to have information about what lines have affected the state of the Planning Line.

It is done with the help of two new Job Ledger Entry’s extended fields Linked Planning Line No. and Linked Job Task No.

We need Link Job Task No. alongside with Linked Line No. because for Time & Material contracts, we can gather into a given task usage lines from all its subtasks, so the number of the task the usage was posted under is not necessarily the same as that, where this usage will be billed.

You can always check Job Ledger Entries linked to a specific Job Planning Line by drilling down to the Worklog Usage Quantity field:

For the Time and Material contract type, the type of journal lines (Line Type field) must be empty to create billable lines automatically.

It is recommended to enable the Auto Create Billable Planning Lines option if all lines must be billable and not to change the type of the lines manually. But if the Auto Create Billable Planning Lines option is disabled and job lines were created with the Budget type, it is possible to clear this field.