Track Billable Hours using the Billable Hours field

You can use the Billable hours field to track billable hours per project to invoice a customer. The Billable hours field is controlled at the Jira project level with the Set Billable Hours permission. When enabled, the Billable hours field appears in the Log Time form for the team members with the permission enabled.

You can track billable work using two methods:

• The Billable hours field

• Billable Tempo accounts

These steps walk you through using the Billable hours field.

Before you begin

• Create a Jira Project Role and add the team members who contribute billable hours to the project. We refer to this role as Consultants in these steps.

• Create a Tempo Team that includes a team lead and at least one member of the Consultants Jira Project Role.

• Optionally, create a Jira permission scheme so you can grant the Set Billable Hours permission on all Jira projects that use it. This provides you more control than if you're using the Default permission scheme.

Create a Jira project

Create a Jira project to use to track billable work for a project.

Grant the Set Billable Hours permission to the consultants

Team members need the Set Billable Hours permission for the Jira project they're working on.

1. From the Jira project, open Project Settings > Permissions, which opens the permission scheme created for those Jira projects that need to use the Set Billable Hours permission.

2. Click Edit beside the Set Billable Hours permission in the list, and grant it to the Project Role called Consultants.

Log the billable hours to the project

The team logs billable time to issues in the Jira project. They can log time in My Work or from the Jira issues they're working on.

1. In Tempo Timesheets, click Log Time on the current day in My Work to open the Log Time form, then select a Jira issue from the Jira project.

2. Enter the total number of hours worked in the Duration field.

3. To see the Billable hours field in the Log Time form, click Show hidden fields.

4. If necessary, modify the Billable hours. By default, the same number of hours appears in the Billable hours field as in the Duration. These can be different, for example, if you work 5 hours, but only 3 hours are billable.

To keep the Billable Hours field visible, you can customize the Log Time form: click the Settings icon at the top-right, drag the Billable Hours field into the Visible fields section of the Log Time form, and then click Save.

Track the billable hours logged to the project

One method of monitoring project progress is to look at the number of hours logged to the project, including the billable hours.

1. Select Teams in the Tempo sidebar, and then select your team's name to open the Overview.

2. Click Timesheet to open your team's timesheet.

   

3. In the Timesheet, all logged hours done by each team member are shown by default.
   To view the billable hours, open the menu at the top-right, and then select the Billable option.

   

Create a report of billable hours for the project

Generate a report that shows the billable hours versus total hours logged for the time period, such as a month. You might need to wait until more work is logged to your project.

You can use this report as the base of a monthly invoice.

Before you create a report, ensure that the team has submitted their timesheets for approval for the period and that the team lead has reviewed and approved their timesheets. This is especially important for getting accurate billable hours for invoicing.

1. In the Tempo sidebar, select Reports, and then click the Logged Time tile.

2. In the report wizard, select PROJECTS from the Filter by field, and then select your project. 

3. In the Group by field, select User and Issue. The time logged to each Jira issue is grouped under each team member. 

   

4. Click Create. The report is created, showing all the hours Logged by each team member to each Jira issue in this project.

5. Change the time period shown using the date picker in the top-left. Click Last and then Month to display only that month.
   This creates a dynamic-period report where the data shown is always for the last month relative to the current date. Dynamic-period reports make it easy to create report templates for regularly-run reports.

   

6. To view the billable hours, open the menu at the top-right, and select the Billable option. Only hours that were logged in the Billable hours field in the Log Time form appear in this Billable column.
   You can compare Logged versus Billable hours per team member and per issue, as well as the totals of each at the bottom of their columns.

   

7. Click in the Group by field, select Worklog, and then click Apply to add details that your customer wants to see in the invoice, such as the individual worklogs for each team member on each issue.

   

Save, share, and export the report for invoicing

Export the result as a spreadsheet to use as the starting point for invoices sent to your customer.

1. Click the Save button at the top of the report and enter a name for this report. Run the report monthly.

2. After saving the report, click Share in the top-right, and then select the people you want to share the report with. They need the same permissions as she does to see the same data in this report.

   

3. Select Export > XLS Report Data in the top-right to export this report as an Excel spreadsheet, and then send that file to whoever invoices your customer.