Manage Billable Time

Do you want to track billable time in Salesforce and understand how much time it’s taking your teams to do something?

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Tracking time in Salesforce can help you understand the amount of time your employees spend on tasks that can be billed to your customers or clients. This can include time spent on consulting, project work, or any other activities that are directly related to generating revenue for your business.

Tracking billable time in Salesforce is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it allows you to accurately track and bill your customers for the time that your employees spend working on their projects. This can help you ensure that you are charging your customers fairly and accurately, and can help you avoid any disputes or misunderstandings about the amount of time for which you are billing.

In addition to helping you bill your customers accurately, tracking billable time in Salesforce can also be a valuable tool for optimizing your business’s productivity. By analyzing the amount of time that your employees are spending on billable tasks, you can identify areas where they may be able to work more efficiently and improve their productivity. This can help you maximize your revenue and increase your profitability.

Here is an example of how a consultant firm tracks billable time in Salesforce today, using Fostering’s Time Tracking App. This client tracks the entire client journey in Salesforce, from purchasing prepaid time/block time, tracking time, and then sending weekly reports to their clients with their time summaries and balance.

Here is how they do it:

1. Create a new Opportunity Record Type to track the block time that you sell. Let’s name the new record type “Block Time”.
   
   

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2. Create a new field on the Opportunity object to track the number of hours that the client purchased. This will be a Number field. Let’s name it “Amount of Block Time”.
   
   

    

3. Create a field on the Account object that tracks the amount of time your client has purchased. Let’s name the new field “Block Time Purchased”. Create a Roll-Up Summary field that SUMs the Amount of Block Time field from the Opportunity object. Filter on Opportunity Record Type to include only Opportunities with the Block Time Record Type. You may also want to filter on Opportunity Stage.
   
   

    

4. Create another field on the Account object to track how much block time your team has spent. Let’s name this field “Block Time Spent”. Create a Roll-Up Summary field that SUMs the Hours field from related Time Tracking Summary records.
   
   

    

5. Finally, create a field on the Account object that gives us a balance of the client’s Block Time. Let’s name this field “Block Time Balance”. Create a new Formula field that subtracts Block Time Spent from Block Time Purchased.
   
   

    

6. Add the fields to the appropriate Page Layouts/Lightning Record Pages.

7. Let’s check it out! Now, on the Account record page, you see the three new fields. As your users track time and close opportunities, these numbers will automatically update.

From here, you can schedule reports for your clients using 3rd-party tools like Cloud4J Report Builder, add a view for your clients in their Experience Cloud site, and get great data on Salesforce Reports and Dashboards.

In addition to tracking billable time, Salesforce also provides a number of tools that can help you analyze and optimize the time that your employees are spending on billable tasks. For example, you can use the reports and dashboards feature to create custom reports that show you how much time your employees are spending on different types of billable tasks, or you can use the forecasting feature to see how much time your employees are likely to spend on future billable tasks based on their past activity.

Overall, tracking billable time in Salesforce is an important tool for businesses that want to optimize their productivity, bill their customers accurately, and increase their profitability. Whether you are a small business owner or a manager at a large corporation, Time Tracking for Salesforce features can help you optimize your business’s performance and drive better results.