Question

Ad-Hoc Work

  • 15 December 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 72 views

Userlevel 4
Badge +5

I currently use to-dos mainly to track email follow up, as there is no time and billing for to-dos.  That leads me to how to best setup ad-hoc work.  For example, client emails me and want me to find an old lease document.  I want to bill for this, so it will have to be a work item.  Do people recommend:

  • Using an ad-hoc project with no tasks to track the work and remember to bill at that end of the work, or
  • Do you have a generic work item where there are vanilla type tasks may not always be on point, but they help keep work on track.

Thank, Tom


4 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +5

@Tom Kneeland In those situations, we do create one-off work items (with no tasks) with a work type dedicated to that type of work. 

For example, our client receives a notice from the IRS. When they send it to us, we create a work item with work type Payroll Notices and Corrections. It’s assigned to team member to follow up on and they can both track time for that project, create notes, attach emails, etc. This process also makes it easy for our payroll team to review all ‘project’ work to see what has been handled and what still needs attention.

Does that help? Would love to hear how others are handling these situations.

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hi @Tom Kneeland 

We would do something similar to what @jens described.  I think having a work type would be key to filter and find the one-offs. 

We are subscription based not time and billing though, so it becomes more important for my team to identify scope creep leading to a decision on change orders or modifications to the next engagement cycle then actually capture billable time.

To do this we do have generic work orders.  The value here would be to add some ‘process tasks’ that may get missed with an ad hoc - no task work order.  For us this would include tasks like

  • Make a note on the Re-engagement WO 
  • Advise your lead of the client requests that are out of scope

We have also converted some of the ad-hoc work orders to templates and added tasks when we find a similar request is happening over multiple clients and a list of tasks would be helpful to keep the team on track.  An example of this is now call One Time Advisory.

Hope that help!

V

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +7

@Tom Kneeland 

For document requests, we have a template setup to provide or obtain the documentation depending on the needs case. Greatly streamlines the request and allows us to track the work and/or bill.

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

We have a Special Project template with generic tasks listed. 

  • Research the project
  • Prepare a response
  • Notify the client of work completion/solution
  • send invoice

You could add an optional client task to the template to send or request documents as well. If you want to track specific one-off work items, make that a work type and use it with the template.  By changing the work type when using this template, we can filter in a dashboard to see specific things.  Special project - one-offs or special project - tax notice, etc.

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