Timeslips “Tailored to Fit”

Timeslips is a highly customizable program. The more you can tailor it to your needs, the more value you will get from using the software.  Sure, you can use it “as-is”, but most likely there are a bunch of features you don’t ever use, making your screens extra busy and causing you to click in extra places, slowing down your workflow.  Here are some tips on how to customize Timeslips so that it is “tailored” to your specific needs. 

We’ll start with the first thing you see when opening the program for the first time – the Navigator.  The current Timeslips version defaults to an “Enhanced” Navigator, which includes several reports and lists surrounding the navigation buttons.  There are four “Enhanced” Navigator templates that you can choose from: Timekeeper, Office Manager, Business Owner, and Tutorial.  You should choose the template that best suits your role, so that your buttons and reports will correspond to the functions that you typically perform.  You can customize each of the panes to a considerable extent, but we’ll save that discussion for another day.  To choose an alternate template, click the “Change Template” button in the lower left corner of the screen.  

If you have upgraded from an earlier version of Timeslips, you may want to see the “Classic” Navigator that you’re used to.  When you click the “Change Template” button you can choose “Classic”, and then choose from the list of classic navigators: Basic, Advanced, Tutorial, and Custom.  Some of the Enhanced Navigator features have been known to slow down Timeslips when it first opens, so that may be a reason to opt for the “Classic” Navigator. 

There are other tricks you can perform if you like the Enhanced Navigator, but are unhappy with the performance hit it sometimes causes. We’ll address that another time….

The “Change Template” button actually takes you into the Preferences screen for your login, so while we’re there, let’s look at some other Preferences settings.  On the Startup/Exit tab you can control what screens automatically open up when you open and close the program.  We typically recommend unchecking the majority of the boxes on this section of the Preferences screen.  If you are a solo practitioner, or the last one who usually leaves the office, it’s not a bad idea to be reminded to make a backup, but if you have the automatic backup enabled it’s unnecessary. 

The “Open Window” dropdown on this screen will allow you to choose a screen that automatically opens as soon as you start Timeslips.  For example, if you are just entering time you may want to have it open to either the slip entry screen, the slip list screen or the timesheet entry screen. 

We’ll briefly review a few of the other preferences that we typically customize when performing a new install.  On the “Interface” page in the Preferences area there is a dropdown menu that says “Save when closing or switching reports.”  We typically set this to “No”, since  many users find it confusing, or annoying, or both.

On the Slips page of the Preferences area you can choose which slip entry fields copy from the previous slip as you are performing data entry.  If you enter slips for multiple people, and have a data entry backlog dating back a few days, you’ll definitely want to check “Copy dates.”  Unless this is checked, Timeslips defaults all new slips entered to the computer’s system date, and you’ll have to change the date on every new slip entered. 

Another great way to tailor Timeslips is to disable features that you don’t need.  Click the Setup menu at the top of the screen and choose Features Enabled. We typically disable “unused” fields on the slip entry screen, including Custom Fields on slips (the so-called “Extra” field), the End Date field on slips, the Time Estimated field on slips and the Reference field (unless of course you are using references).  This will make your screen look cleaner and speed up the slip entry process. 

Unless you use the Timeslips-Outlook link, which we  find very few people do, you should disable that feature as well. This prevents Timeslips from spending extra time during startup trying to initiate a link for something that isn’t there. 

For most features listed in the Features Enabled list, there is a Usage column, which tells you how often you use a feature.  If it says Never, then it’s a safe bet that you can disable it. 

These are just a few examples of how you can tailor Timeslips to suit your needs.  If you’d like to learn more about Timeslips customization, please contact one of the experts at TriStar Data Systems.  

Timeslips 2010 begins shipping at the end of June.  Pre-order from TriStar now to take advantage of significant discounts.

Timeslips Custom Reports

One of the more under-used features of Timeslips is its powerful user-defined reporting capability.  Over the last few versions, and continuing with the 2010 edition, Sage has added a lot of functionality to this area, making it much easier for users to customize their own reports.  User-defined reports allow you to see your information exactly the way you want it, instead of the way Timeslips thinks you want to see it. 

From the Reports menu, choose Create a Report, then Create a completely new report.  You can choose to create a detailed or summary report for Slips, Clients, Accounts Receivable or Funds.  The report wizard makes it easy to add fields, sort keys, and filters.   you can also simply click Finish at that point, to go right into design mode and drag any fields you need onto the report. 

The advantage of using the designer is that you have almost total control over report formatting.  Simply drag fields from the list on the right side of the screen into the desired column.  You can easily add columns and rows, and modify the width of each column if you so desire.  Once you have a field on the report, you can get really creative by using Field Display Criteria to filter the information that appears in each column or row. 

An accounting firm client recently asked us to create a report that compares how much they billed their tax clients this year compared to last year.  To build this report, we pulled the Billed Slip Value onto the report twice and used Field Display Criteria to filter the first field for the current month and the second field for the same month a year ago.  We then sorted the report by client, to get a clear comparison between this year’s and last year’s tax billings.  We then took it a step further by sending it to Excel, where the user could easily subtract one field from the other to see the difference (you can’t do this directly in Timeslips….yet).     

Calculated fields, which was a new feature in Timeslips 2009, and has been enhanced in Timeslips 2010, gives you another powerful tool for building custom reports. 

Say you want to know your firm’s “profitability” for a specific timekeeper; that is, how much the firm actually nets after paying the employee.  You could create one calculated field that multiplies the time spent by the Timekeeper’s overhead rate.  We’ll call that field “Overhead Slip Value”.   You could then create a second calculation that subtracts the Overhead Slip Value from the Slip Value, giving you employee “profitability”. 

In Timeslips 2010 you’ll be able to use the new number-type custom fields in calculations as well, giving you even more power and flexibility. 

In larger law firms, associates frequently have billable hour targets from 1,900 to 2,200 hours per year.  You could store this “target amount” in a timekeeper custom field.  You could then create a calculation that compares the target number to the actual billable hours, giving you the timekeeper’s utilization percentage. 

These are just a few examples of how you can take your reporting to the next level.  If you’d like to learn more, please contact TriStar Data Systems to have us help you with your specific reporting needs. 

Timeslips 2010  begins shipping in July 2009.  Pre-order now to take advantage of significant discounts.  As a “Platinum Level” Certified Consultant for Sage Software, we are able to offer special pricing  on license upgrades through June 30, 2009.