does your law firm need to track time activities of the associate
attorneys that work for you well don't worry this video is all about time activities for a law firm
if you have any questions about this topic you can leave them in the comments section below and
i'll do my best to help you and of course if you feel the video helped you i hope you will click
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if you need to track your associate attorney's time for calculating pay or billing the client
you can use the time activities to record and track these work times a single time activity is
an entry that records the time that an associate attorney worked for you for a particular client
a weekly timesheet is simply a set of single time activities grouped by week these are not
transactions if it is billable or excuse me if it is not billable they will only appear on
one report in quickbooks online the report called time activities by employee let's add that report
to the list of reports that we work with in quickbooks online we click reports
now this time we will click standard because we're pulling out one of the standard reports
and putting it in the custom area so we can find it more easily scroll all the way down to the
bottom of the area of reports until you find the area of employees and this bottom one here time
activities employee detail double click now notice by default it opens month to date
but in our class we want to see the results of all transactions regardless of date so we click
the pull down arrow click all dates and then click run report now we can click save customization and
we can keep the name that they suggest and click save now when we click reports custom
reports we can see time activities by employee detail is now added to the custom report list
associate attorneys are licensed lawyers whom we employ they could be either employees or
independent contractors that means we would give them a 1099 at the end of the year instead of a
w-2 we will show how to record time activities as if they are 1099 workers that will be the example
in these videos let's imagine we have lana the lawyer and andy the attorney now the way
to manage them if they are 1099 workers is to add them to the vendors list because they are simply
people who we pay for a service if they're not if they don't fit under the category of employee
so do you remember how to do that go to the left where it says expenses and come across to vendors
now we can go to the top right and click new vendor and type in the company field lana the
lawyer
push the tab key and it populates the display name and later you can come back and add the
rest of lana's information click save and then again click new vendor click the company field
andy the attorney push tab and again you can come back later to put in the rest of the information
including any notes you might have about andy the attorney click save
the two types of time activities that you can record in quickbooks online are single
time activities or weekly time sheets they only keep track of workers time you can see what jobs
the workers spent time on recording them will not affect your financial reports or balances
as soon as you record a time activity it will show up on the time activities by employee
detail now we have already added that report to the chart to the set of custom reports
so these examples that we will now record are not billable to the client
and we have to make sure that we check the settings in the account settings window
to make sure that when we record time it does not automatically mark it as billable
we click the cog wheel in the top left and go over to accountant and settings
we click the bottom left category of settings advanced then scroll down
to the section of time tracking now you may have both of these off but right now we will not use
this feature in this current video so click the pencil tool to be able to edit the section
then make sure that we click here and that it is not green and that the little button is to
the left then we have to save the section then we have to go to the bottom right and click done
now we're ready to enter our first time activity we will do the individual time activities first
for example let's imagine on june 7 lana the lawyer worked five hours for client alan arby
so how would we record that well we go to the top left and click new
then we come across to where it says employees and go down to single time activity
now we know the date was june seventh of twenty twenty one
and we know that we worked for uh alan arby uh oh sorry the name of the worker
is lana the lawyer and the job that she worked on was the allen rb client
now we will not put in the uh enter the start time and the ending time so we will
remove this check mark and we will just put in the amount of time and it says five hours
of course you can explore and experiment with entering the start time and end time in the break
this is a nice little feature and it's very easy to use but we put five hours and then we describe
whatever we want to in this field regarding this specific date and these hours work for this client
this way we can reopen this activity sheet and find out exactly what lana did
at alan on june 7th now when we click save and close the only proof
will be if we click reports and we go down to time activities by employee detail and double click
and of course it shows not only the the worker and the date and the
number of hours but it also shows each client that was worked on as she accumulates time slips
a weekly timesheet is simply a set of single time activities grouped by week you can enter
time in the weekly sheets or individually and they will be listed the same way in the report
if you reopen the time activity from the report you will only see the individual time activity
one by one the only way to see the whole weekly timesheet you recorded is to go back to the window
that you entered the weekly timesheet and choose the week of the time sheet you entered and then
choose the worker for the timesheet you entered and then you will find the sheet that you recorded
but there's usually no need for that usually you can reopen it in a single activity window
and that should be enough for our second example let's imagine for the week of june 13th
to june 19th of 2021 andy the attorney worked the following time and the following jobs and we can
enter them one by one in the same weekly timesheet the weekly timesheet for this week and this worker
so from the top left we click new go over to employees and go down to weekly timesheet
notice the columns we have a columns for the customer and what we did for the customer for each
day of the week for this particular time sheet now we know in our example it's andy the attorney june
13th to june 19th of 2021 andy the attorney and we click the pull down arrow now this will look
different depending on when you are watching this video but i know i'm i'm doing the example of 2021
so for me right now this is in the future and i'm scrolling down to this week the week of june 13th
to june 19th of 2021 so the combination of this worker and this week make exactly this time sheet
and this will be the way to reopen it in the future now let's take a look at the weekly time
june 14th two hours for betty three hours for allen well that's very simple june 14th
two hours for betty and in the same column of monday three hours for alan
now let's take a look at the next day's work june 16th three hours for alan one hour for betty so
three hours june 16th was three hours so we go to the row of allen three hours for alan
and how many was it now um one hour for betty on that very same day
now four hours for alan and four hours for betty on june 18th so we go to the column of june 18th
that's a friday in the row of betty we put four hours in the row of allen we put four hours so the
column represents the date and the row represents which job this worker did now all we have to do is
click save and close and let's check the results in the report click reports and scroll down to
time activities by employee detail you can see everybody's activities listed right here
here's lana the lawyer from before with one single time activity but notice andy
each individual time activity that we put in the weekly timesheet is listed here
separately as a separate single time activity in fact if we double click and open it up you
will go back to the single time activity window and you will not go back to the weekly timesheet
this gives you an an easy way of zooming in on the details of that particular time activity
on that day for that client however if you want to see the time sheet itself
you would have to open the timesheet window and input the same worker and the same week
and then the recorded time will be displayed so right now on this report i can only reopen
each individual time activity even though it was recorded in the timesheet window if i want
to see the sheet itself i have to click new weekly timesheet i have to recall that exact week in time
june 13th to june 19th and it has to be for that worker and only then will i see
exactly what i put on that whole sheet for that week