Zero Billable Time

[Harbor Tech]

Hello!

We are trying to customize our CRM 4.0 install to fit our IT services
portion of the business. As an example, let's say I'm taking on a hosting
client and I want to track my actual time spent on migrating this customer
away from their prior hosting vendor and under our services.

In the Case we have created, I have service activities that detail time I
spent building the client's domains and accounts in our mail server as well
as time spent with the client ensuring their services were functioning
properly after the migration has completed.

When resolving the Case, it tallied up 5hrs of Actual Time spent on the
project and automatically set Billable Time to 5hrs.

I can change this amount all the way down to 1 Minute of Billable Time, but
not to zero. In this example, we wouldn't want to bill our client for
services as we are taking them on at a set monthly fee. We *DO* however,
still want to track our actual time spent on this Case.

How would we go about doing this? I've searched various avenues of
information but I'm not finding a lot of results on this matter. Surely there
has to be some way to modify this to add an entry for "0 hours" billable time.


Regards,



--Jason

[Scott Moore: JourneyTEAM - EASI]

Post by Harbor Tech
Hello!
We are trying to customize our CRM 4.0 install to fit our IT services
portion of the business. As an example, let's say I'm taking on a hosting
client and I want to track my actual time spent on migrating this customer
away from their prior hosting vendor and under our services.
In the Case we have created, I have service activities that detail time I
spent building the client's domains and accounts in our mail server as well
as time spent with the client ensuring their services were functioning
properly after the migration has completed.
When resolving the Case, it tallied up 5hrs of Actual Time spent on the
project and automatically set Billable Time to 5hrs.
I can change this amount all the way down to 1 Minute of Billable Time, but
not to zero. In this example, we wouldn't want to bill our client for
services as we are taking them on at a set monthly fee. We *DO* however,
still want to track our actual time spent on this Case.
How would we go about doing this? I've searched various avenues of
information but I'm not finding a lot of results on this matter. Surely there
has to be some way to modify this to add an entry for "0 hours" billable time.
Regards,
--Jason

Jason,

Can't you type over the picklist for billable time? Try putting your
cursor in the drop down list and backspacing....you should be able to
type 0 minutes and the picklist will accept this value. The CASE
resolution record in the history will then show 0 minutes in the
billable time field (which is read only at that point).

I think service activities are the same way - but this type of
picklist (the kind you can type into) is non-standard in CRM so it's
not obvious that it works that way.

Scott
www.microsoftcrmhouston.com

[Harbor Tech]

You know what.....you're exactly right! I really have no explanation as to
how I missed this one... I could have sworn I tried typing into this field
and so did another person here that I'm working with on it, yet neither of us
had it letting us enter data manually.

Chalk this one up to a bad end of the week last week :P

Thanks for the tip!

--Jason

Post by Scott Moore: JourneyTEAM - EASI

Post by Harbor Tech
Hello!
We are trying to customize our CRM 4.0 install to fit our IT services
portion of the business. As an example, let's say I'm taking on a hosting
client and I want to track my actual time spent on migrating this customer
away from their prior hosting vendor and under our services.
In the Case we have created, I have service activities that detail time I
spent building the client's domains and accounts in our mail server as well
as time spent with the client ensuring their services were functioning
properly after the migration has completed.
When resolving the Case, it tallied up 5hrs of Actual Time spent on the
project and automatically set Billable Time to 5hrs.
I can change this amount all the way down to 1 Minute of Billable Time, but
not to zero. In this example, we wouldn't want to bill our client for
services as we are taking them on at a set monthly fee. We *DO* however,
still want to track our actual time spent on this Case.
How would we go about doing this? I've searched various avenues of
information but I'm not finding a lot of results on this matter. Surely there
has to be some way to modify this to add an entry for "0 hours" billable time.
Regards,
--Jason

Jason,
Can't you type over the picklist for billable time? Try putting your
cursor in the drop down list and backspacing....you should be able to
type 0 minutes and the picklist will accept this value. The CASE
resolution record in the history will then show 0 minutes in the
billable time field (which is read only at that point).
I think service activities are the same way - but this type of
picklist (the kind you can type into) is non-standard in CRM so it's
not obvious that it works that way.
Scott
www.microsoftcrmhouston.com
.