It seems like I'm the only person with this ''problem"- Kaseya Ticketing, Autotask and Connectwise all choose to live with it. They track tickets- and the tickets are presumably accurate in reporting the time the Tech spent on the work. This is a faulty assumption because in reality when I run a report- showing all the VNC time for my billable clients there is still TONS of time unbilled for.
So I've thought of a couple of options that somebody here might know something about..

Option 1:
Recreate the VNC REPORT using BCP and export the data into csv- then imported into TIMELOGGER.


Option 2:
Use a Screen Scrapping utility to disassemble a VNC Report and put the data into CSV for TIMELOGGER.

Any other options?

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: BizTek

BizTek

It seems like I'm the only person with this ''problem"- Kaseya Ticketing, Autotask and Connectwise all choose to live with it. They track tickets- and the tickets are presumably accurate in reporting the time the Tech spent on the work. This is a faulty assumption because in reality when I run a report- showing all the VNC time for my billable clients there is still TONS of time unbilled for.
So I've thought of a couple of options that somebody here might know something about..

Option 1:
Recreate the VNC REPORT using BCP and export the data into csv- then imported into TIMELOGGER.


Option 2:
Use a Screen Scrapping utility to disassemble a VNC Report and put the data into CSV for TIMELOGGER.

Any other options?

Make your techs account for 100% of their time (using something like Connectwise or Autotask). Track time by the minute and don't allow gaps. All time must be entered in realtime. Period. When you can get your team following this then your problem is solved.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: far182

So, your techs are remoting into your clients' machines, fixing stuff and then not inputting the time correctly...right? Why are they remoting into machines that don't have an open ticket? Alerts can generate tickets, clients can generate tickets, and your techs can generate tickets.

Maybe you need to change procedures a little and require your NOC team/techs to open a ticket for any and all service. It takes what...30 seconds to a minute to manually create a service ticket? What about going through the history of Alerts that were causing the need for manual (VNC) attention and creating event sets that auto-create the tickets for you? If your techs complain about the need to spend a whole thirty seconds to create a ticket, you need to remind them that they work for you...not the other way around. There are plenty of techs out there that would be more than willing to take their job that won't "forget" to do their job.

If you don't want to be that "***" boss, then maybe offer up performance bonuses regarding billed time. Offer a standard base pay, and for each hour they bill they then earn an additional $X.XX. Even something like $1 per hour can be significant enough to motivate that lowly $10/hr. tech to bill as much as he can.

As an employer you have the right to change how you want to pay someone as long as you remain within the minimum wage. Reduce their salary, and offer up a performance incentive where that employee can earn a little more than they were.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: CeruleanBlue

Hi

This is a non-negotiatable issue. Time is reported 100% when the work is done. There is no if/and/or/but/ about it. Not maybe, not later; WHEN THE WORK IS DONE. You don't bribe your techs to do what they are supposed to do.

The solution: start firing techs until you have techs that will do their job. This is as much part of their job as is fixing client problems. What would you do about a tech that repeatedly did not resolve client issues? Sooner or later they would be terminated. Same with time tracking.

By the way, this is not just a billable issue. It is more visible with T&M clients, but is probably worse with agreement clients as you can show show those clients how much effort you are expending to support them or if you are spending too much time.

In our shop, tickets are automatically created in ConnectWise for everything except phone calls (which have to be manually created). We have Kaseya send tickets/alerts/ anything that we care about to CW and we track the tickets there.

hc

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: howardc

This is a cultural problem, and requires procedures to be in place. I know that some techs charge more time to clients they don't like and undercharge clients they do! Requiring techs to report 100% of their time helps, but it really requires a manager to check (a random sample) of tickets.

The other issue I can think of with running a vnc report is that a tech may have a remote session open but not doing anything in it. For example they could be waiting for a large download on the remote pc to finish, and in the meantime are working on something else but still have the session open.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: eddy@dgs.com.au

eddy@dgs.com.au

The other issue I can think of with running a vnc report is that a tech may have a remote session open but not doing anything in it. For example they could be waiting for a large download on the remote pc to finish, and in the meantime are working on something else but still have the session open.

That's what I was thinking. There have been countless times that I've left a VNC session going for hours while I wait for a DB to defrag or a disk check to complete. When you're generating these reports, who is accountable for what's being charged to the customer? If the customer asked you what that 2 hours of billable time on their server was used for, and that time was pulled from VNC reports and not tickets, how do you justify it to them?

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: arobar

arobar, you hit the nail right on the head, that what i was thinking

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: dfenn

Having well defined and easy to follow procedures is the key to getting staff to do what you want. We have also gone a step further to encourage accurate time recording. At the start of each month I calculate how many work hours there are in the month and work out how many billable hours I would like to achieve. I then put together a pool of money that will be distributed amongst the team when the target is met. It gets distributed by how many billable hours each engineer achieves. We have found that they all work as a team to first achieve the target, then as individuals to get a bigger piece of the pie.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: Kim

If you don't have a PSA package then simply have your techs keep a daily log book. If not permanently,then at least for a week or two. This will not only show you what is going on but will make them think too.

Howard is correct in you need to make them show 100% of their time. I know techs hate doing this as they think you don't trust them, la la la, I know as I was one of them. It all comes down to communications, period. My boss back then had a hard time explaining and it didn't make any sense to us why we needed to show our bathroom break.

What seems simple to us might not to others, educate them to why this is such a big issue for you. If they balk still then as Howard says, get rid of them.

I strongly suggest looking at www.successwithpeople.com for some ideas. His book is definantly one to get and read, and read over a couple more times.

Don

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: Don.Bentz

Hi

This is an other reason why techs should not be salaried. If they were paid by the hour, you would be amazed at hour much time would be logged. What is their incentive? They get paid the same if they log their time or if they dont log their time.

If they think that they are special and should not be bothered with logging all of their time, you might want to mention that most lawyers/CPAs (who have more training/licenses than techs do) log every minute of their time for billing purposes.

hc

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: howardc

For techs that don't mind wasting your money, remind them there's a guy in India who would work for a few cents an hour.



Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: j.lee@carceron.net

Cultural problem definitely. You need to use something like Autotask and have someone centrally dishing out tickets and allocating them to techs. You need to have someone monitoring tickets, creating tickets, and you need a central end point that your clients go to and let you know about problems so tickets are created from one person and then distributed instead of trying to rely on everyone to create their own tickets. You should not have to rely on your techs to create their own tickets...I can see how its getting messy

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: stevegarriques

Would anyone care to share a VNC time script?

I've been interested in this for some time but am not sure where to begin.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: nevesis

nevesis

Would anyone care to share a VNC time script?

I've been interested in this for some time but am not sure where to begin.

Go to the agent logs on the machine and there is a log for remote control. You can see connected time there.

Legacy Forum Name: IT Procedures,
Legacy Posted By Username: GDRBrian