Automated Time Capture: Billable Events Dashboard “Billable Activities”

The Billable Events Dashboard now supports the display of “Billable Activities”, which are defined as either

1. Appointments that are linked to some Matter and are past their end date, or
2. Tasks that are linked to some Matter and are marked as complete.

This allows users to easily create and keep track of Time Entries from their Tasks or Appointments.

*Note that there can be multiple rows on the dashboard for a single Activity, because each Activity row on the dashboard represents an Activity-Timekeeper pair.

The behavior of Activities on the Billable Events Dashboard can be configured using some new System Settings in the Automated Time Capture settings.

• The Contact Field setting specifies which Activity Field will be used to populate the “Contact” column on the Billable Events Dashboard.
• The Description Field setting specifies which Activity Field will be used to populate the Description field on Time Entries generated from Activities on the dashboard.
• The Task Default Duration specifies the default quantity in hours that will be used when generating Time Entries from Tasks on the dashboard.
• All Day Default Duration specifies the default quantity in hours that will be used when generating Time Entries from All-Day Appointments on the dashboard.

With this new feature, some additions have been made to the existing filters on the Billable Events Dashboard

The “Billable Event Type” filter now has two new options: Appointment and Task.

• The “Billing Status” filter now has a new “Excluded” option. Currently only Billable Activities can be “Excluded”. What this means is that this unbilled Activity-Timekeeper pair has been flagged to be excluded, so that it will no longer be displayed on the Billable Events dashboard UNLESS the Excluded filter is specified. This can be useful if you do not intend to bill for the Activity-Timekeeper pair.
  NOTE: You may notice that numerous old Activity-Timekeeper pairs were automatically excluded. This was a one-time occurrence, and all future Activity-Timekeeper pairs will need to be manually excluded.

• On the Billable Events Dashboard grid, Billable Activities are displayed slightly differently. Note that the “Description” column is not populated by an actual Description, but rather by a link to the Billable Activity itself. Also note that for unbilled Activity-Timekeeper pairs, there is a Time Entry action to “Exclude” (the meaning of this action is explained above), along with the normal Time Entry actions

• When viewing Excluded Billable Events, there is a Time Entry option to “Include” the Activity-Timekeeper pair, which makes the Activity-Timekeeper pair no longer marked as Excluded, making it viewable by normal filters.