ClickTime Blog

Mileage Reimbursement Rate for 2011

For our U.S. customers, we want to remind you that the federal mileage reimbursement rates will be different starting at the beginning of the year. Thus, as of January 1, 2011, the federal mileage reimbursement rate increased from 50 cents per mile to 51 cents/mile (see the IRS web site for details).

We recommend that you change your company's mileage reimbursement rate in ClickTime if you haven't already done so. In order to edit your company's mileage rate, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to ClickTime (you need to be an administrator).
2. Click the "Expenses" link on the menu bar under the Company tab.
3. Click the "Expense Types" link.
4. Click on the name or "edit pencil" icon of your "mileage" expense type.
5. Edit the rate value. For example, enter 0.51 for the new federal rate.
6. Choose whether to apply the rate change to expenses that haven't been approved.
7. Save your changes.

If your company has multiple mileage expense types, remember to repeat steps 4-7 above for each appropriate expense type. You can also choose to apply the rate change to expenses that haven't yet been approved.

Check out this Wikipedia article if you're interested in how the federal mileage rate has fluctuated over time.

Google Chrome version 8 and its new PDF viewer

Google released version 8 of its Chrome web browser earlier this month and it works great with ClickTime. The new version of Chrome includes many improvements and now defaults to using its own PDF viewer plug-in. Google, however, has confirmed that there is a bug with this PDF plug-in that can prevent the "save" and "print" options from appearing when right-clicking on the PDF.

If you run into this bug while viewing a PDF report in ClickTime, the workaround is to select either the "Open frame in new window" or "Open frame in new tab" option when right-clicking on the PDF.

Google has officially prioritized this bug to get fixed in their next release so hopefully this inconvenience will be gone in a few weeks.

QuickBooks on your Mobile Phone

If you want to access the information in your QuickBooks file while you're out of the office then Intuit's QuickBooks Connect service may be for you. The service currently works with the iPhone and some BlackBerry models. Support for Android phones is expected soon.

For more information, check out Lisa Bloch's review of the iPhone and QuickBooks Connect at the Sleeter Group's web site.

Quickly Add Similar Expenses

Do you find yourself entering similar expenses one after another? Perhaps you get reimbursed monthly for the same set of expenses (cell phone, etc.) and end up entering a few months at the same time. Here's a tip to help you quickly add those expenses to your expense sheet.

Once you've created your expense sheet, just follow these steps:  

1. Enter your expense by specifying the date, the type of expense, the amount, payment method and any description necessary.
2. Click the "save" button.
3. Hit the "back" button in your browser. Your browser should show you the "add expense" form that you just filled out with all the values pre-selected.
4. Change the date or any other details needed for the next expense and click "save" again.
5. Continue repeating steps 3 and 4 for each similar expense you need to enter.

This can save you lots of time if you have a big pile of expenses to enter and many of them are similar to one another (i.e. you haven't turned in an expense sheet in a few months).

Do you have a tip about using ClickTime? Please let us know!

Screencasts

We recently updated several of our informational screencasts. These short videos can help you learn more about specific features in ClickTime. The topics include project estimation, QuickBooks integration, and more. There are also some introductory videos useful for people new to ClickTime. Check out the videos on our screencast menu.

Mileage Reimbursement Rate

For our U.S. customers, we want to remind you that the federal mileage reimbursement rates were revised at the beginning of the year. Thus, as of January 1, 2010, the federal mileage reimbursement rate decreased from 55 cents per mile to 50 cents/mile (see the IRS web site for details).

We recommend that you change your company's mileage reimbursement rate in ClickTime if you haven't already done so. In order to edit your company's mileage rate, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to ClickTime (you need to be an administrator).
2. Click the "Expenses" link on the menu bar under the Company tab.
3. Click the "Expense Types" link.
4. Click on the name or "edit pencil" icon of your "mileage" expense type.
5. Edit the rate value. For example, enter 0.50 for the new federal rate.
6. Choose whether to apply the rate change to expenses that haven't been approved.
7. Save your changes.

If your company has multiple mileage expense types, remember to repeat steps 4-7 above for each appropriate expense type. You can also choose to apply the rate change to expenses that haven't yet been approved.

To see how the federal mileage rate has fluctuated during the past several years, check out this Wikipedia article.

Advanced Customization Options for Timesheet Entry

There are many ways to customize your company's ClickTime timesheet entry screens. Most of these options are configurable in your Company Preferences, including custom terminology, and job and task list controls. There are also several advanced customization options that your account representative or our support department can configure for you at your request.

The advanced timesheet entry customization options include:

• Separate Client Selector - Enables people to select from a list of clients before specifying the job/project. This is especially helpful for people with long lists of jobs/projects.
• Customize Values in Client, Job and Task Selectors - Define what values appear in each selector. For example, your task selector normally shows the task code as well as the task name. If you only want the task name to appear, we can change this for you. This same type of customization can also be done to the client and job selectors.
• Customize Width of Client, Job and Task Selectors - We can make the client, job and task selectors wider or narrower to better fit your company's values. For example, if your job/project names tend to be quite long, we can make the job/project pop-down selector wider on the timesheet entry screens for your entire company.
• Add Sub-Jobs - If you would like to break down some or all of your jobs/projects into smaller entities like phases and sub-phases, we can add up to two additional levels for project tracking. Sub-Jobs is an optional module that can be added to your account by our Professional Services team.
  
• Allow Zero-Hour Time Entries - This allows people to create and save timesheet entries with a zero in the hours field. This feature enables people to add comments to a job/project without associating it with a specific number of hours worked.
• Hide the Task Selector - If your company doesn't use tasks, we can remove the task pop-down selector from your timesheet entry screens.

If you'd like to customize your ClickTime account, please let us know.

Quarterly comparisons with Report Builder

Are you interested in comparing your time worked on projects from one quarter to another? Or perhaps comparing your company's billable totals for one or more clients from one quarter to the next. Here's a quick example of how to do quarterly comparisons using Report Builder.

1) In the Company tab, click on the Reports option and then click to run Report Builder.

2) Select the date range you want to report on, and click the "update" button.

3) Click the "sort" icon and select the "Entry Date" column with the order direction set to "Ascending."

4) Click the "add" icon to add a column with a formula, enter "Quarter" as the name and "Text" as the Data Type. Then paste in the following formula:

Year([Entry Date]) & " " & IIF(Month([Entry Date]) <= 3,"Q1", IIF(Month([Entry Date]) >= 10,"Q4", IIF((Month([Entry Date]) >= 7 And Month([Entry Date]) <= 9),"Q3","Q2") ) )

Click the "Add" button and the new "Quarter" column will appear in your report.

Now you're ready to create any chart or graph to compare your data across quarters. Click the chart icon and select from pie charts, bar graphs or other charting options to visualize quarter-to-quarter comparisons.

Don't forget to click the "Save As" button so that you can easily review this report again later.

End-of-Year Reporting and Excel

Reporting becomes an important tool at the end of the year for evaluating your company's progress and ClickTime includes many pre-defined and customizable report options for this purpose. For the Excel gurus, we also provide the option to export raw data to build your own charts, graphs and other complex reports. If you regularly export data to use in custom Excel spreadsheets, we can make it easier for you with our Excel Linking feature. This feature adds the ability to have Excel pull data directly out of ClickTime into your spreadsheets.

The Excel Linking feature is included as part of the optional Web Services module. Once the module is added to your account, define the data your Excel spreadsheet retrieves by signing-in to ClickTime and clicking on the Customizable Data Export report. Provide a title for the saved report in addition to selecting the date range, fields and other options and then run the report. This creates a saved custom export that can be requested directly from Excel. See the online help for further details about retrieving your saved export in your version of Excel.

If you'd like to try out the Excel Linking feature, please contact our Professional Services group. Also, if you're using Google Spreadsheets, ask us for a sneak peak of the forthcoming "Google Spreadsheet Linking" feature.

Adding Holidays to Employee Timesheets

Many of you may already be thinking about the upcoming holidays. Whether spinning dreidels, sugar plums dancing in your head, or a tryptophan-induced food coma is in your plans over the next few weeks, we can help you get your employees' timesheets ready for the holidays.

Administrators can easily add company holidays to all employee timesheets or just full-time employees using the Bulk Changes feature. Just sign in to ClickTime, go the Company tab and click on the Advanced option. Then click the "Add time entries to timesheets" link in the Bulk Changes section and follow these steps:

1. Select the date (e.g. December 25, 2008)
2. Select "Company Holiday" (or your company's appropriate leave type) as the type of time off.
3. Enter "8" for the number of hours.
4. Select the condition "Add time to each person's timesheet only if no similar time entry exists on the specified date" in case some of your employees are ahead of you on doing this.
5. Specify all or individual employees (you may be able to pick full-time employees using the Employment Type option).
6. Click the "save" button.
7. Click "OK" to confirm you want to add the holiday time.

Then just repeat these steps for each date your company is on holiday (New Year's, etc.).

If you don't see the option to add Time Off after clicking the "Add time entries to timesheets" link, contact support for help adding the free Time Off feature to your account. Hopefully the rest of your holiday plans will go as smoothly as updating your timesheets.