Time Activities

In MYOB Advanced, you can enable a feature that gives employees the ability to report the time that they spend on each time activity.

Enabling Time Reporting

To enable time reporting for activities, you need to enable the Time Management feature on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, which makes the Track Time and Costs check box available on the Activity (CR306010) form. This check box, when selected, enables a group of elements on the same form which you can use to report the total time spent on the activity. Also, by using this group of elements, you can mark the activity as billable and specify the information required for billing—that is, the amount of billable time and the earning type of the activity (for details, see Managing Cases).

If you want the Track Time and Costs check box to be selected by default for activities of certain types, you need to select the corresponding check boxes in the Track Time and Costs column on the Activity Types (CR102000) form.

Using Earning Types

In MYOB Advanced, you have to specify an earning type for each billable activity; the earning type determines how the system calculates the cost of employee labor.

The system recognizes two classes of earning types: those defining standard working hours and those defining overtime. On the Earning Types (EP102000) form, where you can add new earning types and adjust the available ones, you can also specify whether an earning type defines standard working hours or overtime by clearing or selecting the Overtime check box, respectively. On the same form, you can update the multiplier value for any overtime earning type—the system multiplies the employee rate by the multiplier value when calculating the cost of employee labor. For standard working hours, the multiplier is always 1.

By default, the following earning types are available in the system:

  • Regular Hours (RG): Standard working hours whose cost is calculated based on the standard employee rate.
  • Overtime (OT): Overtime working hours whose cost is calculated by multiplying the standard rate by the value of the overtime multiplier.
  • Public Holidays (HL): Non-working hours of public holidays, which are non-billable. You can use this earning type to indicate that certain days included in the time card are public holidays when no work is done.
  • Vacations (VL): Non-working hours of vacations, which are also non-billable. You use this earning type to indicate that the employee is on vacation and thus not working.

Approving Activities

A time activity can be associated with a project task that has an approver specified. If this is the case, the time activity must be approved before it can be released for billing. Either the project task approver or the time activity approver of the project can approve the time activity.

You can use the Approve Time Activities (EP507010) form to approve activities that require your approval. If you use time cards, you can approve time activities in groups by approving time card summaries on the Approve Time Activity Summaries (EP507030) form.

When the activities are released, the system tracks costs for specific customers, cases, contracts, or projects and generates the corresponding project transactions or customer invoices.