Logging Time/Expenses Against Your Estimate

BigTime ships with dozens of standard time/expense entry forms. To enable your users to record their time against each of the budget items you create, you'll want to select one of the formats that include budget items. Below is a typical "grid" timesheet format that includes budget item data.

Note that they've logged time against our "evaluation" sample project this week, that they've selected a specific budget item ("phase 1") against which the time should be accrued.

If you've selected a timesheet format that includes budget items, your users will be able to select an item to bill time against when they choose the project. Obviously, budget items are tied to a specific project (there isn't a "universal" set of budget items for all projects. Just the specific items we create in each project's dashboard). In addition, users will only see certain budget items when they are logging time.

• User assignments determine what budget items each person sees. A user will see items that are not assigned to anyone, so leaving out the budget item's user assignment is just like assigning an item to everyone. A user will also see items that are assigned to them specifically. Keep in mind that budget items can be assigned to a specific user, or to several users.
• Inactive Items won't show up. If you change a budget item's status to inactive (e.g. - mark that item as "completed" or "cancelled"), then users won't see it when they try to pick a budget item.
• Users can't log time to an "expense" budget item. Remember that we created several expense budget items in the example at the start of this chapter. Those items will show up in the expense entry form(s), but not in the time entry form.

Logging Expenses

Users enter expenses the same way as they enter time. If you've selected an expense entry format that allows a user to specify a budget item, then the user can link each expense that they enter into the system to a specific budget item. The same "rules" that are outlined above for time entry also apply to expense entry. Obviously, users can see expense items (not time entry budget items) when they log expenses.