Setting Up Timekeeping in System Preferences (Admin)

An admin can configure the many different elements around how you and your staff create timekeeping entries. 

To do this:

1. In Actionstep, go to Admin > General Settings. The System Preferences page appears.
2. In the Timekeeping section, enter the following information:
   • Matter association: Choose whether a matter is Required or Optional for time entry. 
   • Quick- code: Choose whether a quick-code is Required or Optional for a time entry. For more information, see Setting Up Quick Codes in System Preferences (Admin). 
   • Description: Choose whether a quick-code will automatically update the time entry description.
   • Track 'start' time: Choose whether a Start time field appears on time entry forms. When toggled to on, a start time will be attributed to the time record. 
   • Track hours worked: Choose whether to track hours worked appear in the time entry, which can be used for reporting purposes. 
   • Tasks require time entry by default: Choose whether the Add time entry after this task is completed  option is selected by default when creating a new task. 
   • Tasks require quick-code: Choose whether a quick code is required for a task. 
   • Create time entry by default: Choose whether the Create time entry checkbox is selected by default in a new phone call record. 
   • Start call timer automatically: Choose whether the Phone call timer will start automatically in a new phone call record. 
   • E-Billing description field: Choose what appears in the e-billing description when creating a time entry.
   • Minimum billable hours: Enter a minimum for billable hours entered. Billable hours entered below the minimum will round up to the minimum. This only affects billable hours and not hours worked.
   • Minutes per 1 "unit": Enter a number that represents how long a unit is when recording time. Time can be entered with a “u” after the number, which means that if a user enters "5u" in the hours field for a time entry, that would be five units, or five times the number of minutes you enter in this field. 
     NOTE:  Using this setting, Actionstep stores the fractional number of hours based on the unit entry that is converted when the time entry is recorded. If the number of minutes per unit results in any number of units being a fraction of an hour that requires more than two decimal places to represent, then the Rounding method setting (described below) is used. For example, a single 5-minute unit is 0.08333... hours. This gets rounded to 0.08 (for the Round down option) which is actually 4.8 minutes, not 5 minutes. For the Round up option, it will be recorded as 0.09, which is 5.4 minutes. It is therefore not actually possible to accurately bill in units where the 1 divided the number of units per hour requires more than 2 decimal places.
   • Time Precision: Controls whether time can be entered to one or two decimal places.
   • Rounding method: Choose how time will be rounded. Your options include Round to nearest (numbers 1–4 round down, while 5–9 round up), Round up (always round up), and Round down (always round down).
3. When you're finished making your changes, click Save. 

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