Workflow Basics

The workflow tools that BigTime relies on can be grouped into five basic areas, and we'll take a look at each of these areas in this section of the System Guide.

EMail Notification

Throughout the system, BigTime can be configured to alert your users or your management team if specific situations pop up. Users, for example, can be alerted if they are assigned to a new project or to a new task. Managers can be alerted if their project's approach or exceed their budgeted amounts. A user's new timesheet can be submitted for approval, and an email alert can let managers know that there's time to approve, or it can let the user know if a manager asks them to make a change to the timesheet in the system.

While email alerts will be addressed as an integral part of many of the processes within BigTime, we'll touch on how you can configure those alerts in this section. We'll also show you how to edit the content of the emails that BigTime delivers, and we'll show you how to tweak the schedule used to deliver them.

Budgeting Settings

BigTime supports three different types of budgets, and firms typically mix and match budgeting styles to fit their specific needs. We won't talk about budgeting styles in this chapter, but the Budgeting chapter will help you review BigTime's budgeting options.

Settling on the budgeting format(s) that your firm expects to use is an important "workflow" decision. You can also use the security/general settings to turn ON the budgets you'd like to use and turn OFF the budgets you don't.

Time/Expense Entry and Review Workflow

When a user logs into the system, they can enter either time or expenses. And both of those entries travel along a "typical" path once the user clicks the save button.

That path has a number of "workflow" settings that can be turned on or off depending on your firm's needs.

• Enter/Edit. If you don't plan to have users enter employee expenses in the system, then you can turn off that section of the daily routine. Take a look at the Tools...System Settings...General Settings page.
• Manager Review (Reject/Approve). Once time/expenses are submitted, you can have your managers review/approve those entries before doing anything else with them. Manager Review is an optional step (for both time and expenses), and you can configure that review as well. We'll talk about how to activate that process in this chapter, and we'll also talk about the email notifications that can be setup alongside of the process. If you'd like to see how the review process actually works, take a look at the Timesheets or Expense Reports chapters.
• Invoicing. You can use submitted time/expenses to produce invoices in BigTime as well, or you can turn off the invoicing engine altogether. We'll touch on the invoicing engine configuration options. We'll also talk about some specific invoicing workflow options (see below). To see how invoicing works in BigTime, take a look at the Invoicing chapter.
• Posting. Finally, you can post your employee time/expenses into QuickBooks. Many firms elect not to post that data into QuickBooks (especially if they are going to create draft invoices in BigTime), and other decide to keep all of the time/expense detail in both systems. Timesheet/Expense Posting can be turned on or off, and we'll talk about how to do that in this chapter. For a complete review of posting time/expenses to QuickBooks (including step-by-step instructions), you'll refer to the appropriate sections in the System Guide or online help.

Invoicing Workflow Options

BigTime's built-in invoicing engine can be used to create/review and print a wide range of invoices based on the budgets, time/expenses, accounting and contract data that you enter or store in BigTime. Once again, invoicing isn't a required feature, but it's one that a large number of our customers choose to take advantage of. The invoicing engine has its own set of configuration options, and we'll touch on several of these in this section. For more information on how the invoicing engine works, take a look at the Invoicing chapters of the System Guide or online help.

When you create invoices in BigTime, the system follows a fairly simple workflow.

Your firm can decide to turn off one or more of these steps (e.g. - email notifications, manager review/approval, posting, etc.), and we'll cover how those settings are adjusted in this chapter.

QuickBooks Integration, Worflow

Your firm can control the type of data that is posted to QuickBooks (as well as the type of data that is pulled into the system during the nightly sync). There are a number of optional settings within that process, but they're difficult to cover out of context. So, your QuickBooks settings will be reviewed within the chapter dedicated to QuickBooks integration.

You should note, however, that you can tweak how BigTime deals with things like timesheet data, vendor expenses, invoices and more. So, as you are considering which parts of the system to activate, it may make sense to explore the QuickBooks integration settings.