Create a Clockify Invoice for Customer Service Effortlessly

Clockify invoice for Customer Service

in this video I'll show you how to seamlessly track work hours for your team stay on top of complex project budgets and meet looming deadlines hi I'm Olga and I'll show you how to run an organized and successful agency by using clockify to smoothly manage teams projects and budgets but first what is clockify [Music] clockify is an intuitive easy to use time tracking tool that helps you stay on top of your team's progress so why would you need clarkify first clockify can help you comply with timekeeping laws in the US and EU this allows you to be stress-free when tracking employee overtime absences and working hours second clockify shows you beautifully crafted detailed reports on projects tasks billable hours and more with a single click and oh did I mention that you can export reports share them with clients and manually add time well now I did and third clockify allows you to effortlessly manage your team assign projects approve time off and do anything else you can think of sound good alright when you open clockify you land on the time tracker page but we'll cover that later in this video for a quick setup you can use the top bar to collapse and expand the sidebar switch between workspaces access clockify's help center see notifications and change profile settings but all the magic starts at the left hand sidebar that's where you can see clockify's features neatly divided into the main section analyze section and manage section to help you have all features where you actually need them you can drag and drop any card to where you see fit in the bottom right corner you can even enable a real-time chat with your team to shoot a quick message Emoji or file Kudos now you're familiar with clockify's layout next up we'll get into all the benefits you can reap from our time tracking tool [Music] one of the countless reasons clockify stands out from other time tracking software is to have unlimited users for free when you add users you can set their working days daily work capacity billable and cost rate in fact you can categorize users by adding them to groups now let's take a look at how you can do that adding a team member is quick and easy you just go to the team page and click on the add team member button input the email address and voila the user you invited will receive an invitation by email just like this one once they accept they're good to go now back to clockify for each user you can choose between three member roles first an admin can see and edit everything for all the other users second the project manager can edit all projects they manage and see all time on those projects third the team manager can see all track time of users they manage and approve their timesheets when a specific role isn't assigned to a user they are a regular user and they can only track time across projects a thing to keep in mind is that only the owner can remove the admin role the owner is like the gatekeeper to the coolest Club in town if your team members have different rates and they probably do here is where you can adjust their billable rates to make your life easier and avoid assigning people to projects one by one you can assign each user to groups you can find your own system whether each group will represent a team or a specific role like HR or content marketing or better yet you can assign a single user to several groups you get to work your magic your way and here's your team in all its Glory but you wouldn't want them all alone in your clockify workspace we need to add clients because somebody has to pay you duh [Music] in clockify you can tie your projects to clients so when working on a specific task you can attach your work to your client's name but you can also leave them out if the project is internal adding a client is as simple as adding a team member all you need to do is type your client's name here and click add congrats your client has found a Cozy home in your clients card now each client has a name but you can also add their contact information and invoicing address and other details you may need to note the three dots here show the option to Archive a client you may not be working with anymore so you can view only active clients but you can also change your view to Archive clients or even see all past and current clients in the same list however if your Client List is longer than the line at the DMV you can search for a specific client by typing the name in the search bar to make your staff more effective you need to set up projects but how do you do that in clockify each project has a name a client and a color assigned to it to visually separate projects to create a new project you click create new project and input all the relevant information once that's done you can dive into the nitty-gritty if needed taking on a project can feel like diving into the unknown but breaking it down into bite-sized chunks is like bringing a map and a compass we refer to these chunks as tasks with each task you can note who is assigned to the task if the task is billable what's the hourly rate for that project and the cost rate as your team begins to track time on each task you can follow their progress in the dashboard to keep track of the progress for each track or a project as a whole you can set project estimates equally important you can forecast how the rest of the project will evolve when setting the Project's estimate you can choose between having no estimate a time estimate and a budget for estimates let you see if you charge enough for projects plus estimates can help you get better at estimating future projects if you choose to set an estimate you can choose between inputting manually for the entire project or task based where you can set an estimate for each plan task once you have your estimate set you can track relevant progress in the status tab on the project page you can now clearly see how much time has been tracked against the time estimate as well as any expenses so far you can see a detailed breakdown of Track Time by each task so you have a clear visual representation of what has been done so far what about what still needs to be done forecasting helps you visualize your Project's progress based on track time you can see how you've performed on recurring projects each month and make predictions based on scheduled assignments in fact you can add the set estimate to see if the project will go over or under it you can find us in the forecast tab right here here you can see a graph that shows the track time compared to the schedule time this lets you see if you're ahead or behind schedule and you get a forecast line that tells you if you'll reach the time estimate in a certain amount of time or at all remember if you want a precise forecast you'll have to roll up your sleeves and do some scheduling but we'll get there in a minute so pick a time frame that you need and choose how you want that graph sliced and diced by day week or month let's take a look at a few projects graphs this one shows you that your team members have not been working on the project for the schedule amount of time and as a result you will not reach the estimated time that you have planned this entails an awkward correspondence with your client yikes here we can see that there has been more track time than initially scheduled which means either of two things that the team members needed more time than planned to reach a project Milestone and you'll have to have a dreaded conversation with your client to approve more working hours or and I think we'll all like this one you will be finishing the project ahead of time as the team was able to allocate more hours on the project lastly let's look at this beauty this graph represents that everything is going ing to plan and you did a great job estimating and your team did a great job working ing to schedule if you focus entirely on tasks sometimes you can lose sight of the budget and deadline as a result you must find a way to keep everyone aware of the overall progress one of the many ways you can do this is to set alerts and clockify you can activate alerts in your workspace settings which will notify admins project managers or team members whenever a project reaches a certain percentage of its estimated time this way team members can get a taste of the sweet smell of success as the project progresses but suppose you continuously work on similar projects in this case I suggest you save projects as templates this saves you time creating tasks estimates assign teams billable rates and other custom fields now you can focus on the Moolah making tasks instead of wasting your precious time on non-billable activities if you run an agency you know resource management is Paramount so whenever you learn a new project you first consider which team members get to work on it start by determining the overall number of people needed to complete the project this ensures you don't break your teams back or your wallet's heart if you haven't done so already you need to set billable and cost rates for each person working on a project because that's the basis for billing your services also you need to Define who's the lead for each part of the project and delegate some parts of the process to other team members by setting a manager for each specific project thank you all right now that you've put your dream team together it's time to figure out when they'll show up for work and how much coffee they'll need to whether any storm effective distribution of employee time cuts down the time you need to complete projects with looming deadlines complex information is much easier to manage when represented visually than is written text so we made all aspects of project management and clockify Visually appealing anyway when scheduling team members and organizing them per project you need to have a visual overview of two things how many hours you dedicate to each project which team members are working on which projects and for how long when you go to the schedule page you'll see the projects and team tabs they both show your team's assignments just from a different angle for example the projects tab shows you all the projects you have scheduled in this period their milestones and total signed hours you can expand some projects to view who's assigned to work on it when and how much at the bottom of the expanded section you can add another member to the schedule in fact you can search for a particular project or client here and choose a different period here like next week or a custom period like the next 10 days for example if someone from your team needs time off you must reorganize your team and reschedule their tasks for that reason you should keep it hard the working capacity of the whole team and each member for illustration your team's capacity is calculated based on the time tracking targets you set daily weekly or monthly when you switch to the team tab you'll see the same data only broken down by team members and their capacity you will be able to see if your employees have free time or over scheduled you can expand some users to see their assignments in more detail to better see the schedule you can zoom in and blocks will become larger so you can see the full text time tracking targets you set for each person or team will tell you as we say behind the scenes and clockify who are the overachievers the free spirits and those in desperate need of a vacation or a clone once you split a project into digestible tasks and decide which team members to include the next step is to provide them with the right time tracking system however you track your time you need to differentiate between billable and non-billable tasks to invoice your clients later after you agree with the client on what will be billable and what won't your team can then track the time spent on both types of tasks just remember this if you don't separate the billable from the non-billable you might end up having to pay your clients instead well that's a pity to activate billable hours head to the workspace settings and find the permissions tab [Music] there it is you can also choose who can see hourly rates and more importantly who can see and change the billable status of time entries and expenses to enable specific billable rates for tasks head back to the general tab scroll down and find the task rates an easy way to see if your project is marked billable is the currency sign on the time tracker page a blue sign indicates that the track time is billable and a gray sign signifies a non-bellable task on the project page however you can manipulate the toggle switch to Mark a task as billable or non-billable as well as set that specific task rate working on a project sometimes requires additional expenses you have to bill let's say your client would like an in-person meeting with the whole team before the project starts if that's not your usual practice the cost of that trip will probably be something you can charge for clockify lets you record all your expenses which you can later include in an invoice you send to clients once activated you can track any expense you can think of just add categories like mileage licensing day rate and more expenses can be recorded by some or by unit for example if you choose meals you can write a total amount like one hundred dollars but if you choose mileage you can specify the unit price or price per mile then when you track expenses you input the mileage and clockify calculates the rest to track an expense you need to specify the project category and amount you can even set an expense as billable so you don't lose a penny when you create your invoice in clockify finally you can attach receipts for proof of payment to avoid awkward situations when justifying expenses [Music] as you're probably figured out everything in clockify revolves around time entries you track the time you spend working on things and then analyze work weeks and reports there are several places you can track time buckle up and let's take a look at them one by one there's the web app the browser extension for Chrome Firefox or Edge the desktop app for Mac windows and Linux and the mobile app for both Android and iOS you can track time using any of the apps and your precious data syncs online so all your track time is available from anywhere besides all the different devices and apps you can use clockify lets you create time entries in infinitely many different ways Okay this may be an exaggeration but you get the gist anyway you can use a timer as you work add time manually after you've finished working and you forgot to track the time or add time entries by the auto tracker [Music] ah utilization right the standard performance metric for any agency it's like the bread and butter of measuring productivity but how do you make it happen in clockify the term utilization refers to the effective use of resources and demonstrates profitability a utilization rate shows the percentage of billable hours compared to the total number of available hours employees have at their disposal when you get insights on utilization rates you realize which departments and or people are oriented toward non-profitable activities that are lower than the optimal utilization rate yes they are necessary but ultimately non-billable tasks and profitable activities which are higher than the optimal utilization rates or close to 100 percent along these lines you need to consider hiring new people the most common formula for calculating the utilization rate is this divide the total billable hours by the total available hours then multiply the result by 100. the result shows you the utilization rate represented by a percentage this Nifty little number tells you just how efficiently you're using your resources speaking of numbers the optimal utilization rate for agencies is around 85 to 90 percent but it depends on what's the ideal situation for you your ideal utilization rate should enable the right balance between billable tasks and non-billable tasks for example suppose your team works on a new project with a new client in this case your team might need a few extra hours for non-billable activities like research client meetings and revisions but if you take on similar projects from the same client most of your team's time will be dedicated to billable tasks this results in a higher utilization rate now an ideal utilization rate will vary from Project to project but it should always ensure your agency stays profitable keep in mind that a 100 utilization rate is not feasible or desirable but an uptick will result in increased profitability if you know which team or team member generates which amount of costs and profit you can better allocate resources real-time reporting helps you realize if you need to change something mid-project to stay on top of deadlines or budgets and gives you insights on how to organize your team for future projects ideally when summarizing work on a project reports should show the track time for each user along with the profit they earn based on the billable rate and the costs associated with their work based on the cost rate you need to keep your clients in the loop and there's no better way to do that than with clockify's detailed reports alright let's Now cover those reports the summary report crunches all the data and shows you the billable versus non-billable breakdown by date down here you can see the actual billable amounts either by user project and more the detailed report lists all time entries along with their amount and billable status and the weekly report shows you a weekly breakdown either by time or amount you can download any report as a PDF or Excel or share the report by a link both export and sharing reflect what you're viewing for example you can filter a report by client or user and the export and the sharing link reflect that you can also hide financials if you need a report without the amounts but what do you do with the time that you've already invoiced or built when you export a report you can bulk at it all the time entries in the detailed report and add a build tag to create a tag head over to the sidebar and find the tags card there we'll just type build here and add now our tag is ready to be used go back to your detailed report select the entries you have built click bulk edit and find your newly created tag later you can exclude entries with the build tag and Report filters to avoid overcharging suppose you are charging a retainer fee for some clients in this case it's good to know how many hours you have used from the total billable hours of the project in clockify you can filter the tracked billable and non-billable hours choose a client and the project you are referring to and display estimates to compare tracked hours with the total number of hours in addition to calculating billable amounts clockify can also calculate labor cost and profit which you can enable in workspace settings let's do that now once enabled you can set cost rates the same way you set billable rates everywhere you can set billable rates you can set cost rates in parallel in fact cost rates work the same way as the billable rates and follow the same hierarchy the main difference is that the costs are calculated regardless of whether an entry is billable or non-billable in cases you actually need the cost to be zero for some activities you can set 0 as the cost rate on projects to actually see costs and profit go to any report and choose cost in the drop down now you can see cost amounts everywhere instead of the billable amounts alternatively you can select profit to see the difference between the two this means you can compare your profit Levels by project client user group and date and see how your business is doing and on which activities you should focus more in the future [Music] after you've done the work it's time to send an invoice and collect some sweet sweet payment from your valued client creating and managing invoices is done on the invoices page here you can see all created invoices and their issue and due dates build amounts and status from here you can change the status download the invoice in a PDF format or duplicate to save time on creating invoices that are similar filtering is Handy especially if you have a large amount of invoices you can filter by time client status amount as well as the invoice ID here are a few must include details of any invoice you share with clients your company information Services provided additional expenses date range taxes discounts issue date due date and client information qualify's invoice can also include your company logo which you can upload in workspace settings once you tie an invoice to a client and choose your currency and dates boom you see a visual representation of the invoice that's still editable remember when you inputted the client's address before well when you select the client you want to send an invoice to the address automatically populates the invoice to add what is owed to you you can add items manually or import all the valuable data you have tracked in the form of billable time and expenses from here you can send the invoice directly to the client's email you specified before which will automatically change the status of the invoice to sent yes you can even download the invoice and send the PDF at your convenience thank you we have now reached the end of this video explaining several of clockify's features from me to you time tracking takes a lot of time and work but just keep at it and you'll be able to see what brings in the money and what doesn't and the data will help every part of your business especially in making better estimates and keeping track of your projects but that's not all we have to offer jump into the description to find links towards our helpful business resources blog as well as all our in-depth tutorials that's it for now and thank you for watching foreign