Time billing is a good billing system that usually involves the recording of time and use of rates to calculate a fee to charge for services. The time billing system is usually used by professionals providing services, like lawyers, accountants, designers and mechanics. To accommodate this requirement, MYOB has introduced time billing features that everyone can use. If you are new to these features, here’s what to know:

What you can do

MYOB time billing allows you to specify the billing rates you want based on activities, hours, and customers. You can delegate which activities are chargeable and which are non-chargeable, enter them individually or grouped in slips, generate invoices and more! Time billing reports are easily customisable- you can filter them to exactly how much information you need in order to see how time is spent and measure profitability.

Set Up Preferences

Before your can get started with time billing, you need to set up at least 4 preferences- time billing units, your descriptions, general preferences and time sheets. To set them up, access the Setup menu on your MYOB software and choose preferences to open up the option window. Look for the system tab and choose the last four preferences in the window (these are the ones that apply to time billing).

Set Up Rates

Set up your billing rates so that they can automatically appear whenever you need to make activity slips. You can set up billing rates for multiple different people like customers, employees, suppliers or just the activities itself. To set up billing rates for activities, look under the Activity information option window.

For customer billing rates, look for the card information of the customer and choose the selling details tab. You will be able to locate the customer billing rate section and manually type in hourly billing rates for your customers. Once done, choose OK.

For suppliers or employees, you can do so by choosing to bill activities at different rates instead and also track costs of said activity. Look for the card information for your suppliers and choose buying details. For employees, choose payroll details and locate time billing. Once you have keyed in the relevant information, click OK to apply the changes.

Create Activity/Activity Slips

In MYOB, activities generally refer to the services/tasks that are provided by your corporation. Activities are used to track costs in time billing systems and defined by hourly/non-hourly as well as chargeable/non-chargeable. You can create activities in MYOB by looking for your Time billing command center and choosing the Activities list to open up the activities list option window. Choose new and proceed to create by filling in the relevant information- Activity ID, name, description, type and status. You can then choose the billing rates you want applied for the activity.

To create activity slips (useful for payroll), you can do so by locating the time billing command center and choosing the enter activity slips option. Click on the activity slip tab and enter the activity details as required. For hourly based payments, make sure to pick the include hours option under Employee’s pay. Make sure that the hourly wage is entered in the payroll category area. Once you are sure of everything, choose record.

Create Time Billing Invoices

MYOB also allows users to prepare time billing invoices to bill to customers. Locate the time billing command center once again and choose prepare time billing invoice so that the dialog window would show up. Find and choose the customer you want to create the invoice for and choose OK so that the options window opens with a list of the activity slips for the customer. If there are no further adjustments, choose prepare invoice and your invoice should be generated. If satisfied, simply choose record.

Bonus tip: You can choose to bill for both activities and items using a single invoice as long as you choose the include items option under the time billing invoices section in your preference window.