Best Practices for NetSuite OpenAir Timesheets

Revenue for a professional services organization relies on customer payments, and payments rely on correct billing. That isn’t easy to do without timely and accurate timesheets from your teams.

While there are still no silver bullets to achieve compliance on timesheet completion, there are best practices for timesheets you can put in place within OpenAir. Your PSA platform offers features and functions that make this as easy and informative as possible to support timesheet compliance objectives.

Three Professional Services Timesheet Best Practices

OpenAir is a powerful tool, but the best it can do is support your time tracking. Your organization needs to use OpenAir to support several timesheet best practices to keep you on top of billing and to make sure that your record-keeping is accurate. Plus, good timesheet practices let you ensure time is being handled fairly for team members and that they aren’t being overworked or underutilized.

To achieve timesheet compliance, your organization needs to put three important best practices in place. OpenAir can support these best practices due to its powerful features and functions.

• Timesheets should be timely: Whatever time period you use for timesheets, you should do what you can to make sure your teams keep to it. Timekeeping is how your organization gets paid, and invoicing can’t go out until consultants’ time has been recorded properly.
• Timesheets must be accurate: The time that your team’s record should align with the time worked and with your expectations. It’s crucial that timekeeping is accurate for billing and reporting purposes. Accurate timekeeping will also allow for the evaluation projects and their alignment with booked hours.
• Timesheets should be easy and user-friendly: Getting teams to complete their timesheets is almost universally challenging. Do everything you can to automate what you can and make the process as painless as possible. In most cases, completing a timesheet isn’t billable, so the more time your team spends doing it, the less time can be charged to the client.

Supporting Best Practices with OpenAir Timesheet Features

OpenAir is a powerful tool, but the best it can do is support your time tracking. Your organization needs to use OpenAir to support several timesheet best practices to keep you on top of billing and to make sure that your record-keeping is accurate. Plus, good timesheet practices let you ensure time is being handled fairly for team members and that they aren’t being overworked or underutilized.

To achieve timesheet compliance, your organization needs to put three important best practices in place. OpenAir can support these best practices due to its powerful features and functions.

• Timesheets should be timely: Whatever time period you use for timesheets, you should do what you can to make sure your teams keep to it. Timekeeping is how your organization gets paid, and invoicing can’t go out until consultants’ time has been recorded properly.
• Timesheets must be accurate: The time that your team’s record should align with the time worked and with your expectations. It’s crucial that timekeeping is accurate for billing and reporting purposes. Accurate timekeeping will also allow for the evaluation projects and their alignment with booked hours.
• Timesheets should be easy and user-friendly: Getting teams to complete their timesheets is almost universally challenging. Do everything you can to automate what you can and make the process as painless as possible. In most cases, completing a timesheet isn’t billable, so the more time your team spends doing it, the less time can be charged to the client.

Supporting Best Practices with OpenAir Timesheet Features

OpenAir offers extensive functionality to support these best practices and more. The following are just a taste of what the platform provides. Check out our webinar, NetSuite OpenAir Best Practices for Timesheets, for even more suggestions and best practice tips.

Use Timesheet Rules

Timesheet rules are something to think about right from the start. They allow you to enforce your business rules on users as they are entering their time. For instance, you may want to require that everyone enter at least 40 hours into their timesheet a week or require a minimum number of hours a work day. Rules can require compliance or alert or warn users that they aren’t following the rules.

Note that timesheet rules are global settings, so everyone must follow them. That means that if you require 40 hours a week to be entered, your contractors or other part-timers will also have to do so.

Timesheet Alerts

Timesheet alerts can help with compliance and with keeping records timely. Alerts come in different severities and multiple alerts can be used. Alerts can be used to:

• Remind that timesheets are due, including multiple alerts leading up to the due date
• Notify that a timesheet is late
• Signal that approvals are due
• Alert to overdue approvals

The OpenAir Timesheet Tab

OpenAir’s time entry tab was deployed just a few years ago and has become a best-kept secret of the platform. Without needing to run a full-timekeeping report, the time entry tab will allow you to drill down into time entry data. Within the tab, you can filter by client, user, date, service, and more, and get the answer to time questions that, in the past, required a report.

Correcting Timesheets

The ability to correct timesheets is important since it helps you keep your record keeping accurate and within bounds. OpenAir offers multiple ways to correct timesheet errors, and these are just a few:

• User recall: The platform can be configured to allow users to recall their own timesheet to make corrections, essentially letting users self-reject a submitted timesheet before it’s approved.
• Un-approval: With the right permissions, a user can un-approve a timesheet they have already approved. This must be done before billing commences, and the setting is user-based, not role-based.
• Overlapping timesheets: Although this option can get messy, an overlapping timesheet allows for a second timesheet for the user that submits negative and positive hours to, in effect, correct a timesheet.
• Timesheet adjustments: This role level permission allows you to alter a user’s timesheet without the need to proxy into OpenAir as that user.

Extending OpenAir Timesheets

Top Step has helped a number of clients create custom scripts to make timesheets more usable within their organization. For example, we have created a script that automatically does a budget check on a submitted timesheet. This script automates the process instead of executing a highly manual process involving reports, validation, and approval or rejection of time. This frees project managers from needing to check themselves.

We’ve also scripted the addition of company holidays into timesheets. These scripts lessen the burden on users who have holiday hours specific to their organization already entered into the timesheet. It eliminates the possibility of submitting a timesheet with errors because the wrong time codes were entered for those holidays and ensures compliance with holiday record keeping.

Conclusion

Timesheets are necessary, but they don’t need to be burdensome or complicated. NetSuite OpenAir helps tame timesheets for management, billing, and team members. For more ideas on customizing OpenAir to streamline your timesheet process, check out our webinar, NetSuite OpenAir Best Practices for Timesheets.

Top Step is also here to help. If you have questions about your OpenAir instance and how to make it work better for your organization, reach out to us. Our experts can get your PSA platform running smoothly for you and working well with your business rules and needs.