Kinetic Data’s time tracking conventions
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BILLABLE
New Implementation and Retainer Projects
Active projects will have a Harvest project setup with tasks aligned with the Monday project board. Depending on a customer’s billing needs, there may be additional task items for billing. Select the task that best applies to the work performed and ask for clarification if it is unclear where to bill. Additionally, add notes to the time entry for reporting if needed or requested by the Delivery Lead or Project Manager.
Remember, billable work also includes:
Context switching and ramp-up
Estimation, strategy, and approvals
Customer meetings and communications
Internal collaboration sessions and standups
Project Monday board cleanup and task management
Project management and status reporting
NON-BILLABLE
Time Off
Admin and Internal Meetings
The Admin and Internal Meetings tasks in the [ADMIN] Internal - General YYYY should be used sparingly. Use the Admin – Add Notes for Tasks for non-billable administrative time such as travel, time tracking, and file and email cleanup. The Internal Admin Meeting tasks are for team meetings and other non-billable meetings that don’t align with another category, such as company and pre-sales meetings. Note: Comments and notes are helpful and appreciated when leveraging generalized tasks.
Internal Projects
Use the [INTPROJ] Internal Project and Initiatives category for non-billable, internal projects. Select the correct project underneath for accurate billing, and work with your manager if you do not know the correct subcategory. Some helpful categories include:
Pair Programming / Collaboration — This is used when multiple resources work together on a project or initiative, with one person in a learning role. The primary resource should bill the correct project for the work, while the learning resource should bill under the pair programming/collaboration subcategory.
Professional Development (Training and Education) — This category should be used to bill for downtime spent on research, taking classes, or working on professional development tasks. This includes attending workshops, completing online courses, reading industry-related materials, or any other tasks to enhance professional skills and knowledge.
Customer Success — This category encompasses all activities that support customer success plans. It includes client outreach, training sessions, workshops, newsletters, and other tasks to ensure customer satisfaction and success.
Marketing Support — Use this category for activities related to marketing support, such as creating blogs, engaging in promotional activities, and assisting with cross-collaborative marketing efforts. This includes developing content, coordinating campaigns, and supporting overall marketing strategies.
Note: Comments and notes are helpful and appreciated when leveraging generalized tasks. Additionally, when two resources are pair programming on a customer project, the trainee uses this task while the other resource is billable to the project.
Pre-Sales
For Sales support, time should be billed to the [SALES] Pre-Sales project. Tasks include General (SOW building, scoping calls, supporting customized demos, etc.), POC (self-funded Proof of Concepts. If a customer pays for it, it will be under that Client as its own Project) and RFP (Request for Proposal bids)
Note: When tracking time here, add what Sales initiative the assigned work was for. Kinetic Data may move these hours into the project later, and hours should be easily found and moved.
I can't find my project or task in Harvest. Who do I talk to to get it added or help me find it? Request the project be added from the project PM or Operations.
Better understand customer needs in our various support categories: customer-managed support for customers with a paid agreement and customer-managed support for customers without. Why are we tracking support time if we aren't billing the customer based on hours spent? We want to understand better customer needs in our various support categories. Customer-managed support for customers with a paid agreement, for customers that don't have a contract, and general application support.
Why are utilization rate and margin per project so important? As Key Performance Indicators for our group, these are easily captured metrics to help us identify what we are doing well and what might need improvement. When coupled with the efforts during the breakout sessions, we can evaluate whether our "stop, start, continue, and needs" are assisting us in achieving our targeted goals.
What are the differences between the "internal" entries, and how should I use them? Similar to tracking effort spent on support, tracking time against an internal effort will allow us to calculate utilization goals and improve forecasting properly. Harvest projects prefixed with:
[ADMIN] is to track typical activities utilized by the company week over week.
[INTPROJ] denotes an internal initiative we've chosen to track time against likely because of the size/visualization of effort expended.
[SALES] is in support of sales team efforts (usually pre-sales activities such as demo setup)
[R&D] is for internal initiatives intended to increase efficiency for ourselves, partners, or resellers
All time off should be logged under the [ADMIN] Internal - {General YYYY} project. This does not replace logging time off in iSolved, only to confirm time was taken for resourcing and utilization calculations.
Each customer with a customer-managed (formerly on-prem) support agreement will have a project specifically for them in Harvest. If a customer doesn’t have customer-managed support time should be logged to [SUPPORT] Customer Support - Customer-Managed Maintenance. This task is used to provide support related to upgrades and maintenance for customers. Initial installation for new customers or new usage needs should be managed as part of a separate project.
