OVERVIEW
How to enter actual hours and time tracking
How to enter start and stop times
Entering inventory/non-inventory costs
Video tutorial: Method Mobile

Overview

Tracking how much time your employees are on the job can be hugely beneficial to your company, from internal auditing to customer satisfaction to job costing. Particularly in field services, where jobs are often paid out by the hour, time tracking can really help you and your company keep on top of costs and, when combined with the rest of Method Field Service's software pallette, can make a real difference to your work flow. This section will cover how to use Method time tracking from various areas of the Field Service environment.

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How to enter actual hours and time tracking

1. From Method Field Services, either choose an existing work order from the Work order list and click edit, or click on New work order. Both of these options will open the Add/edit work order screen. If you are editing an existing work order, any information associated with this record will be automatically populated within the fields.
2. Under Tasks and materials, either add new job items to the grid or click on Details next to a selected job item to bring up the Enter details & costs screen.
3. From this screen, navigate to the Enter actual hours / time tracking subtab.
4. Choose the employee(s) and/or vendor(s) responsible for this particular job from the drop down menus provided. These may be taken from your Default team members (if you have set up this feature), which you can change by clicking on Edit team member defaults (please see Dashboard for more information).
5. Choose a start time (when the team actually arrived) and end time (when the team actually finished) for the job and fill it into the requisite fields. Tabbing or clicking away will update the Duration automatically, as expressed in minutes.
6. Choose a date and class for the job, identify any pertinent payroll items, and choose what billing criteria will be associated with the job.
7. If you want to keep this information from being synced to QuickBooks, click on "wait for sync approval". This will not allow this time tracking entry to be synced until that check box is unchecked.
8. Include any pertinent notes you feel are important to the job and click Enter time (or Enter time and close). This will update the Time In/Time Out subtab of the work order with the new information. When you return to that subtab, click the Refresh icon on the grid to see the changes displayed.
9. You'll be taken back to the Job Item Details tab. You should see the Act Man Hrs has been updated for you.
10. Click Calculate to compute the total Cost for the Job Item.
11. Click Save & Close.

Billing by the hour

If you charge your customer an hourly rate based on how many Actual Man Hours were performed on the job, simply do the following:

1. Go to the Job Item Details tab on the Enter Details & Costs screen.
2. Click Copy to Qty.
3. You should now see the Qty and Amount have been updated on the left hand side.
4. Click Save & Close.

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How to enter start and stop times

Recording the actual time users arrived at a property, and the actual time they left, fulfills two purposes: (1) the start and stop times can be used for job costing, so you know the profitability of your services; and (2) the duration of the times can be sent to QuickBooks as a TimeTracking transaction, useful for payroll.
All start and stop times related to a work order should be entered into the Enter Actual Hours / Time Tracking tab of the Add / Edit Work Order screen. To get to this area:

1. Edit a work order from either the Work Order list, or My Calendar screen.
2. In the Tasks & Materials grid locate a service item you want to record time for, and click Detail... in the grid.
3. Click the Enter Actual Hours / Time Tracking subtab on the Enter Details & Costs screen.
4. Select a job item from the drop down list. If there are existing job items for this work order, they will be filled in below.
5. Fill in a start time and end time for the job; tabbing or clicking away from these fields will automatically generate a duration (in minutes).
6. Be sure to include a date for the job, and indicate whether or not the job is billable.
7. Click Enter time to save the record in the grid above, or Enter time & close to save the record and return you to the Work order list.

Entering times for multiple services at once

1. In the Work order list, select the work orders you want to enter start and stop times for.
2. Click More actions > Job Cost Selected…
3. In the Enter Actual Times / Time Tracking tab, choose the employee(s) to enter the start and stop time for (see above for details), and click Enter Time.
4. Click Save & Next to move onto the next job item.

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Video tutorial: Method Mobile

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