This Guide explains how to make effective use of the Time Tracking and Billing features in Naverisk. Manage the Service Desk, Billable's and Invoicing all from one place. Save Time and Money by automating Reports and ensuring no loss of Billable Hours.

The basic workflow steps we will cover in this Guide are:

Naverisk now offers billing integration with QuickBooks and Xero. To ensure that Naverisk logs all dates, time entries and billable's through these billing platforms, the integration between Naverisk and QuickBooks or Xero must first be set up.

Please go to the Naverisk Resource Center to read our guides on how to configure QuickBooks Integration and Xero Integration.

The following also needs to be setup and entered before running any Billing Reports.

If the billing integrations are not setup or used correctly, this could lead to incorrect data being entered in the Naverisk Reports and lost billable hours.

Naverisk has the ability to record support Agreements for all Clients under management. Agreements can be assigned to group of Devices to allow issues to be addressed in accordance with the current Agreement with the Client.

Create new Agreements to represents various billing rates for Services. These can be configured in Settings > Service Desk Setting > Agreements.

Different Agreements can be setup against each of the clients for different rates and services. For example - an MSP has a different billing for Managed Clients vs Ad-hoc Clients.

Otherwise the 'Copy' and 'Clone' buttons found in the top right can be used to propagate agreements down to all of your sub-clients if required.

New agreements can be created using the appropriate button 'New Agreements' also found in the top right:

Note: To change the Time and Date format format Agreements, navigate to Settings > Users & Groups > Edit User > User Settings.

A single Agreement will be one of the Agreement Types listed here. It is reasonable for a client to have several Agreements running at the same time in order to create the services you want to provide.

Naverisk offers the following Agreement Types:

For example, a Client may have a block Agreement for hours with a Time and Materials Agreement in place for any over runs or items that are not included in the block Agreement. Or a client may have an AYCE Agreement for some Servers and a Time and Materials for workstations.

There is no limit on the number of Agreements that can be running at the same time for a Client. When there are multiple Agreements, it is up to the person entering the ticket to get the time under the correct Agreement

1. Block Agreement

This Agreement is used for clients that have pre-purchased a number of hours in a block. A block Agreement consists of unlimited contract time, unlimited Devices, limited hours.

The Block Agreement below starts on 09-10-2018 which offers service for 20 hours charging $120 per hour. Block Agreement time entries should not be billable. This is due to the Agreement being billed once to the client when it has been purchased.

Starts At - The start date of the current Agreement.

Hours Purchased - The number of hours that have been purchased for this Agreement.When all hours are used the Agreement will end or roll over into the Renew Amount.

Hours Consumed - The number of hours that have been used for services whilst this Agreement is active. 

Cost Per Hour - Is the cost of resources used on this Agreement.

Renew Hours - The number of hours that this Agreement will be renewed for.

Alerts for Block Agreements:

Only one type of alerts is needed for Block Agreements: An alert for consumption of hours. When an alert is triggered it will create a sales ticket in Naverisk.

The example below shows Warning, Threat and Failure alerts for 75%, 85% and 95% of the block hour usage.

2. Term Agreement

This Agreement is used for clients that want to be charged for a specific number of hours over a specific period, for example, a 6 month contract. A Term Agreement consists of limited contract time, unlimited Devices, limited hours.

The Term Agreement below starts on 09-10-2018 which offers 20 hours of service for a month until 09-11-2018 charging $120 per hour of service. 

This Agreement should be renewed before 09-11-2018 for continuous uninterrupted service.  

This Agreement will have ‘Billable’ and ‘Require Time on Ticket to Close’ enabled as the client is invoiced via the financial integration. 

Starts At - The start date of the current Agreement

Ends At - The date at which the current Agreement expires/ends.

Hours Purchased - The number of hours purchased per week, month or year.

Hours Consumed - The number of hours that have been used for services whilst this Agreement is active. 

Cost Per Hour - The default price per hour to be billed.
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Note: If you setup a Term Agreement and specify that X number of hours should be purchased per Week/Month/Year, then each month the number of available hours will reset to X.

In the screenshot below, each month the number of available hours for this Agreement will reset to 20. There is currently no rollover of hours. The date of the reset is based on the Agreement creation date. So, if it were created on the 26th of October, then the hours purchased would reset to 20 on the 26th of every subsequent month.

Alerts for Term Agreements:

Two Types of Alerts are needed for Term Agreements: An Alert for hour usage and an Alert for the renewal date. When an Alert is triggered it will create a sales ticket in Naverisk.

The example below shows Warning, Threat and Failure alerts for 80%, 90% and 100% of the hour used. Another Alert will be generated 7 days before the Agreement's renewal date.

3.  All You Can Eat (AYCE) Per Device Agreement

This Agreement is used for clients that want unlimited number of hours against a device or a number of devices for a specific period. A common example is supporting all of a client’s servers for a fixed amount per month. An AYCE Per Device Agreement consists of limited contract time, limited Devices, unlimited hours.

The AYCE Per Device Agreement below starts on 1-6-2020 to monitor 100 devices for a month. This Agreement cannot be applied to more than 100 devices. The Agreement should be renewed before 31-5-2021 for continuous uninterrupted service. 

Starts At - The start date of the current Agreement.

Ends At - The date at which the current Agreement expires/ends.

Max Device Count - The number of devices this Agreement can be used for. Use 0 for unlimited.

Devices Count - The number of Devices that have been assigned to this Agreement.

Hours Consumed - The number of hours that have been used for services whilst this Agreement is active. 

Cost Per Hour - The default price per hour to be billed.

Alerts for AYCE Per Device Agreements:

Only one type of alerts is needed for AYCE Agreements: an alert for the renewal date. When an alert is triggered it will create a sales ticket in Naverisk.

The example below shows alert that will be generated 7 days before the Agreement’s renewal date.

You can also alert on the % of the time that has passed withing the Agreement.

In order for them to be covered by the agreement, all relevant devices must have the agreement assigned to them. To assign the agreement, go to the required device and select the Attributes tab. From the Agreements drop-down menu, select the agreement from the list.

Once the number of devices specified in the agreement have been assigned, it is not possible to assign any further devices. You will need to either increase the number of devices in the agreement, or unassign another device first.

4. All You Can Eat (AYCE) Per User Agreement (coming in 2020 R1)

This Agreement is similar to the Per Device agreement, however it provides an unlimited number of hours only for tickets raised by specified users. This would be used where you wish to provide unlimited support for a client on a cost per user basis. An AYCE Per User Agreement consists of limited contract time and unlimited hours for a specified set of users.

The AYCE Per User Agreement below starts on 1-6-2020 to monitor 100 devices for a month. This Agreement cannot be applied to more than 100 devices. The Agreement should be renewed before 31-5-2021 for continuous uninterrupted service.

Starts At - The start date of the current Agreement.

Ends At - The date at which the current Agreement expires/ends.

Max Device Count - The number of devices this Agreement can be used for. Use 0 for unlimited.

Devices Count - The number of Devices that have been assigned to this Agreement.

Hours Consumed - The number of hours that have been used for services whilst this Agreement is active.

Cost Per Hour - The default price per hour to be billed.

Alerts for AYCE Per User Agreements:

Only one type of alerts is needed for AYCE Agreements: an alert for the renewal date. When an alert is triggered it will create a sales ticket in Naverisk.

The example below shows alert that will be generated 7 days before the Agreement’s renewal date.

You can also alert on the % of the time that has passed withing the Agreement.

Assigning Users to the Agreement

Users are assigned to the agreement on the Clients page. Select the desired client, and go to the Contacts tab. You can either edit a single contact and select the agreement:

otherwise you can select multiple contacts in the list, choose Bulk Update Contact Attributes:

Then select the agreement, which will be applied to all selected contacts.

5. Time and Materials:

This Agreement is for tracking simple time and material for billing. All existing Naverisk Agreements become Time and Materials Agreement. Use this Agreement if you do not want any of the additional Agreement functionality provided in Naverisk.

The Time and Material Agreement below charges 120 dollars per hour of service.

Hours Consumed - The number of hours that have been used for services whilst this Agreement is active. 

Internal Cost Per Hour - An overview of company expenditures to compare with the ‘Cost Per Hour’ being charged to Clients.

Cost Per Hour - The default price per hour to be billed.

Alerts for Time and Materials:

The example below shows an Alert will be generated 7 days before the Agreement’s renewal date.

After defining Agreements, map them to the Devices by configuring the Device Types to include them (Settings > Device Types).

Naverisk also recommends assigning Default Agreements to a Client under Settings > Agreements. Default Agreements are used in those cases where a Device is not associated with a Ticket (i.e. when a Ticket is created form an email being submitted by a Client).

Note: Device specific Agreements set under Devices > Device Details will not be affected by the changes to Agreements under Settings > Device Type.

In Naverisk, Billable's (Time and Expenses) are logged against Tickets. The steps for doing this are as follows:

2. Add Time and Expenses to the Ticket. From the Activity Panel, click the down arrow on the Notes button to open the Note Types drop-down list.

3. From the Note Type drop-down list, choose either Time Note or Expense Note.
4. When entering Time against a Ticket, most of the Fields are self-explanatory apart from the Duration and Cost per Hour.
     -     The Time (Hours) Field denotes Time spent on a Ticket in hours, so one hour             and 15 minutes is written 1.25.
5. The Cost per hour can be either manually specified or defined by the Agreement Type.

When entering Expenses against a Ticket, the process is similar, but the Expense Type and Cost need to be supplied instead.

6. Create new Expense Types or modify existing ones from the Settings > Expenses Types.

There are 2 general methods used for billing within Naverisk where those Agreements are not pre-paid such as Time and Materials Agreements.

It is possible to use both at the same time by using Agreements in the Report selection. When this is being done the Agreements for each type need to be added to the Report criteria for each run. Also, the restrictions on Tickets changes need to be carefully managed.

Engineers need to enter their Time and Expenses against Tickets they are working on. All note entries must be entered with the correct date and before any Reporting is run.

When using the Work in Progress billing method, engineers must not enter Time or Expenses Dates prior to the start date of the Report as this will result in lost billing. Should it be necessary to enter Time prior to the last Report the Report must be re-run to cover that Time period and Ticket number.

The Invoice Job Detail Report is used to generate billing information. For Work in Progress billing the full Billing Report is to be used with the following options:

This will generate a Report which shows all amounts that are billable for the period.

Note:

Each of these Reports contains only a part of the total amount that has been entered as billable. So, when using additional selections, ensure that no items that are intended for billing are missed. This full Report can be used to confirm any detailed Reports contain all of the items marked as billable.

Engineers can enter Time and Expenses against a Ticket at any time up until the Ticket has been Closed. Once this Ticket is closed no further Expense entries can be made against the Ticket as they will not be billed.

**Naverisk Recommendation – Enforcing Time on Tickets: the enforcement of Time being added to a Ticket before saving or closure, this will ensure that engineers will not forget to add in any billable hours.

To enforce time on Tickets, navigate to Settings > Agreements and create a new Agreement or click on the green ‘edit’ arrow for the appropriate, existing Agreement:

**Once Closed or Archived, don’t re-Open Tickets or they will be billed a second time.

If further work is required a new Ticket needs to be created for the billable entries to be entered against.

The Invoice Job Detail Report is used to generate billing information.

With Completed Ticket Billing the full Report is to be run in the following way.

This will generate a Report which shows all amounts for Ticket closed during this period.

Note:

Run the Report with different option to provide more focused billing. These Reports will not have all of the billing entries on them.

If Clients are billing based on the number of Devices (or Agents) they have, then use the Client License Allocation Summary (Reports > Client Facing > Client License Allocation Summary) to quickly tabulate how much to bill them for.

A sample Report is shown below:

There are several invoicing arrangements that are in widespread use by MSPs and IT Service Providers. These are:

Naverisk supports these billing schemes, so businesses can generate Invoice Reports to suit.

To generate Invoices in Naverisk, it is recommended to use of the Invoice Job Detail Report (located in Reports > Billing > Invoice Job Detail). The typical configuration for this Report (based on a monthly billing cycle) is shown below:

When you choose Billable All on this report the report will show items selected as Non-Billable with a $0 amount. This is to prevent confusion where time has been billed via an Agreement and a 3rd party. By just choosing Non-Billable the value of the time will be shown in the report allowing the report to be used to identify the actual cost of an Agreement over a period.

When time and Expense notes are added to tickets that are added to Projects, by default they will not appear in the Invoice Job Detail Report. This allows you to invoice separately for groups of, or individual Projects.

NOTE: Project billing is unavailable for 'All Clients' and must be generated on a per Client basis

Make sure to mark a check against Projects: 'Include Projects' and hit 'Select Projects'. Choose the required Projects in the popup as below. When running the Invoice Job Detail with the below settings, only time and expenses notes from that Project will be invoiced.

1. Device Agreement Status

This Report shows all Agreements applied to Devices

2. Agreement Status

The Agreement Status Report shows the current Agreements and current status for a specific Client.

3. Resource Utilization Detail 

This Report displays all the Time and Expenses (both billable and non-billable) logged over the selected time period. It is a versatile Report, providing insight into Time and Expenses logged based on Agreement, Billing Type, Client, Device or User.

4. Resource Utilization Summary 

Very similar to the Resource Utilization Detail Report, the Resource Utilization Summary provides the same information on logged Time and Expenses but does not include notes on what each logged entry is for. Suitable as a quick summary for a Client and can be used in conjunction with the Resource Utilization Detail Report if the Client requests a breakdown of the invoice.

5. Time Tracking Detail

This Report displays only Time logged by Engineers grouped by Client, Device, User, Ticket Category, or Agreement. It is similar to the Resource Utilization Detail Report but does not include Expenses.

6. Time Tracking Summary

The Time Tracking Summary Report provides a graphical representation of Time logged by Engineers, Clients and Devices. It can provide helpful feedback on which Clients should consider upgrading to a more expensive Support Agreement, or whether any specific Devices need to be replaced due to a large number of ongoing problems.

This Case Study will be covering an easy to use billing structure over the 2 scenarios below;

NaveriskTFSBuild wants to pay an upfront fee for 100 hours of support for theirs servers and workstations. They want be notified when their hours are close to running out. The proposed Agreement is $6000.00 for a 100 hour block, Naverisk's Ad-Hoc price is $110.00 an hour.

2. Thresholds are added to the alerts section of the Block Agreement so that tickets are generated, this will allow us to inform NaveriskTFSBuild when they have used a certain percentage of hours out of there prepaid balance.

3. The new Block Agreement is added to all of NaveriskTFSBuild's Devices under Settings > Device Types > NaveriskTFSBuild

4. A large project has just been completed for NaveriskTFSBuild and a ticket has been created for this.

5. Time (non-billable) must be added into the ticket for NaveriskTFSBuild before it can be closed.

Note: With the added 10 hours in the time note above, NaveriskTFSBuild has now used 100 hours of Naverisk’s support services, a failure ticket has been created to alert the engineers that NaveriskTFSBuild have almost run out of hours. The engineers can contact NaveriskTFSBuild to inform them that they will have to renew their Block Agreement to avoid the Ad-Hoc fees.

This has now created further sales opportunities for NaveriskTFSBuild to renew their Agreement with Naverisk.

6. By running an invoice Job Detail report under Report > Billing > NaveriskTFSBuild they will now be able to see how much they have saved in costs. This report will be generated as a 'Draft' in QuickBooks or Xero billing platforms.

Note: NaveriskTFSBuild were charged $6000.00 for a 100 hour I.T. Support block, Pseudo Coffee (under NaveriskTFSBuild) have saved $5000.00 as Naverisk charge Ad-Hoc fees at $110 and hour.

Bob's Bakery wish to have access to Naverisk's support services for 50 hours a month. They will be set up with a monthly Term Service Agreement and charged $1800.00 per month.

2. Thresholds and ‘Renew Before’ alerts are added to the alerts section of the Term Agreement so that tickets are generated, this will allow us to inform Sales when they have used a certain percentage of hours out of their prepaid balance and when it is time to renew their monthly service Agreement.

3. The new Term Agreement is added to all of the Artificial Construction' Devices under Settings > Device Types > Artificial Construction

4. Artificial Construction's Term Agreement has reached the renewal date, only used 30 out of 50 allocated hours have been used for Naverisk I.T. Support.

5. By running an Invoice Job Detail report under Report > Billing, Bob's Bakery will be able to see how much they have saved in costs and how many hours they have used withing month. This report can be generated as a 'Draft' in QuickBooks and Xero billing platforms.

Note: Artificial Construction has saved $1500.00 and have only used 30 of 50 hours. They now have the opportunity to change their Term Agreement if they feel that 50 hours is excessive for a month.

Mountebank Global have a custom Service Agreement with Naverisk with different arrangements for Servers, Workstations and phone support. For $15,000 per annum Mountebank Global will have an 'All You Can Eat' service for 50 Server Systems. They will have 1,000 blocks hours available for remote Support and Workstation maintenance. Mountebank Global will also have the 1st 15 minutes of every support call at no charge, any time over this 15 minute period will be charged in block hours.

2. Under Settings > Device Types > Mountebank Global, the AYCE and Block Agreements have been added to the Servers and Workstations.

3. An employee from Mountebank Global has called a Naverisk Engineer to get assistance with setting up a wireless printer and a ticket has been created with the 1st 'Time Note' having a zero dollar value, the time being a quarter of an hour (0.25) and the chosen Agreement being the Time and Materials Agreement.

4. The service call has gone over the '15 Minutes Free Calling' limit. A new 'Time Note' has been added to the ticket deducting 15 minutes form Mountebank Global's Block Agreement.

5. A new ticket has been created for a database backup task on server NAVPC09 using the All You Can Eat Agreement for Mountebank Global's server support.

6. An invoice Job Detail report has been created for Mountebank Global.

Note: All 3 Agreements are present in this Report with the description of work done.