[2] PSAImpact – Episode 2

Welcome to PSA Impact, your podcast for all things PSA, RMM, and MSP, with your hosts, Rae Ann Buccianico and Chris Tim. Learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency within your MSP business. Let's listen in. Hi, and welcome to the PSA Impact podcast with your hosts, Rae Ann and Chris. I'm Rae Ann Buccianico, and I have Chris Tim with me here.

We're a PSA independent series with corresponding YouTube channel to help MSPs worldwide on all things PSA. You can get your questions answered by Chris and me, and learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increase efficiency in your MSP. We will have a phone in where folks can call with their questions or problems, and we will do our best to answer them. You can also get in touch with us via our Facebook and LinkedIn groups and on Twitter. Hey, Chris, how are you today?

I'm good, thank you. How are you, Rae Ann? I'm doing great. Hey, listen, there was a question on our Facebook group this past week from Derek in Illinois, and he was curious about whether people were using third-party time-tracking applications and importing them into their PSA, and I thought that's a really interesting thought. Why would somebody want to track their time separately and then import it into the PSA if the PSA actually tracks time on the tickets?

So what are your thoughts on that? Wow, that's a great question, and you know, it's one of my favorite questions to answer. Personally, I would say, well, if you've got a PSA tool and you're using a PSA tool, why would you track your time in any other tool and import it in? You know, 90% of the PSA tools, in fact, I think every single PSA tool that I know of on the market already has a timesheet and time-tracking ability built into the product. So you know, it's just a very simple case of either going into the timesheet section on that and adding your time, or of course, you can add your time to a ticket or a project and have that automatically then feed through into the timesheet.

So I really wouldn't think that there's any reason for you to do it outside of the PSA tool, but that's a very interesting question. It would be interesting to kind of, you know, if Derek is listening to this, maybe he can reach out to us. It would be interesting to try and understand from him why he asked that question. So one area that I struggle with in PSAs, right? So let's talk about this from a service desk position.

Let's say that you have two tickets running simultaneously on the service desk, right? So you're running some patches on one machine and you're letting the clock run on the ticket. You're actively redoing a backup on another machine on another ticket, and both tickets are running simultaneously. So here's what happens at the end of the day when you have technicians at the service desk that are multitasking often. Now they have 10, 12 hours on their timesheet for that day when they were really only in the office for eight.

Now some PSAs, most PSAs, do not allow for negative admin time to be posted to the timesheet. So then what do you do? So in some cases, what I've been doing is using a third-party app like TSheets or, you know, some other third-party time tracking app just to track clock in, clock out time because the PSA is tracking just the billable time. Is there a way to marry this? The way I would answer that really is, you know, tools like Autotask, for example, has the ability for you to run multiple clocks.

What you can then do is you can do all of those multiple tasks at the same time, right? So you can have your clocks ticking away on your ticket work list. What you can then do is pause it when you stop one task and restart it again. What that will do is just bring that worked time through essentially into the timesheet. The other option it gives you is anyway, you know, if you then get to a point where you have, you've left that clock running, for example, you've forgotten to stop it or forgotten to pause it, you know, it still has the ability for you to then enter the exact amount of time that you've worked anyway.

So you can override that clock time and you can say, you know, I worked from 9 until 12 and you can manually go and enter that time in, which then pushes that time into your timesheet. You know, that's a really interesting idea. Let me just walk through what I think I heard you say. So you start the patching over here on this bench and now you've decided to leave this bench, go to this other bench and start setting up the backup system or whatever it is that you're doing, replacing a hard drive, you know, running testing or whatever. So what you could do is even though you want to bill that client for the patch time, whether or not you're paying attention to it, you can pause it, start the other ticket so that you're not running the clock simultaneously, but at the end, you could make a billing adjustment to increase the billable hour by an hour without increasing the technician's hour or actual time.

Is that what I'm hearing? You could, yes. I mean, that's definitely, you know, one way to do it from the billing offset. So you can certainly use that option. But what you could also do, you know, you were talking about kind of patching on the bench and, you know, building a machine or doing some other work somewhere else.

So you're going to have those two clocks running simultaneously, right? Now, even if you left both those clocks running simultaneously, what will eventually happen is the time will just keep ticking away. And there'll be at some point, you're going to have to record that time into your timesheet against the ticket. So when you click on the record button, it will bring up, you know, maybe you've left it running and you've got your clock displaying 10, 12 hours, but you've actually only worked on there for two hours. All you would simply do is then, you know, at that point, it's going to be a little bit tricky to know exactly how much time you spent, but you're going to know on average that you probably only spent a couple of hours on that call.

So at that point, I would then just clear out the timer and not use the time from the timer and then manually enter the time of how long you've actually spent on the actual billable work of, you know, whatever work it is that you've done. But you can get at least a good indication of how long you've spent on that because the timers will be telling you that. And, you know, I mean, it happens to me all the time, right? So I leave my timers running and I come in the next day, the timers are still ticking. So I end up getting 24 hours sitting on my clock.

And I know I haven't done that kind of work for 24 hours. So at that point, I'm going to have to make an estimate of how long it's taken me to actually do that work. But really, I think getting into the habit of saying, you know what, if I've got multiple bits of work that I have to do and I've got multiple timers running, you know, I try and get into the habit of saying, OK, well, yes, if I'm running some patching and I want to actually bill the customer for how much time I'm patching, I start that timer going, so to speak, and I go on, I log into the machine, I do the patching, etc., etc. And I let the timer run. Now, another task, you know, takes up my time and I have to jump on and do something else.

Customers called in or I'm just going to go and build a machine or do whatever it is, the other task that I'm doing. And at that point, I'm going to start that timer again. But I'm going to pause the timer of the patching. And the reason I'm going to do that is because I'm not actually physically looking at the patching problem anymore, right? I've actually started that task off in the background and it's still running.

But then I'm going to have to come back to it later and give it some more of my time. So at that time, I'm going to go back in and start the clock again. And that's going to record some really accurate time, because what it's going to have is the time I spent in actually running the patching process. It's then going to have paused the clock. It's going to run in the background.

And then I'm going to go back in, you know, and check on it and make sure it's gone through OK and do whatever other tasks I need to do. And that time will be recorded as well. So those two times will then get added together and get added into your time sheet. Interesting. Back to the original question.

Do you think that there's any value for using a clock in, clock out, third party software or application? Let's say you have a company with 20 people in the service in the service department and, you know, and some of them are doing multiple tickets and some of them, you know, are stopping the clock, starting the clock, manually entering the time. Do you think that there's a good argument for management to put into place? You know, we all hate time clocks, right? We're all adults here.

We know what we need to do. Nobody wants to punch a clock when they get to work in the morning or punch the clock out when they leave at night. But is there a space for it still in the world of IT for some sort of time tracking system? Great, great question. And my personal opinion would be no.

I think, to be honest with you, I think it's too much Big Brother. You know, like you say, we're all adults and I think, you know, very often people will come into to the office and they will, you know, they'll do the work that's allocated to them and they'll record the time that's allocated to them. But, you know, I think the whole clock in, clock out system is to me is just really archaic. And it reminds me of the actual physical cards by the door that the staff come into. And you literally clock in when you, you know, when you come into the building and you clock out again, when you go for lunch and you clock in again.

I personally, I just don't think there's there's a place for that, certainly not in in the modern day IT world. I would have to agree. There's nothing more loathsome than a time clock by the front door. Absolutely. And do you know what, to be honest with you, and I know this might might be a bit of a controversial subject, but hey, it's our podcast.

We can talk about whatever. But to be honest with you, if I worked for a company that made me do that, I wouldn't work at that company very long. I am probably the same. I, as a matter of fact, I think I quit a job years ago because of the time clock thing. Just it seems so ridiculous to me.

There's nothing more that makes me feel like a kindergartner than having to tell somebody when I'm leaving for the restroom or, you know, going to lunch. And and did I spend an extra three minutes at lunch? Or maybe I didn't take the last two minutes of my lunchtime. I just don't have the time for that, you know, minutia. Absolutely.

And again, here's a here's a shout out, I think, for for for all of our listeners. Is there anyone out there that's actually doing that? I'd be quite interested to know if there are any MSPs out there that actually have that kind of system in place. And if so, let us know and let us know why you've put that into place. You know, I think it'd be very interesting to talk about in, you know, in a future episode.

I think so, too. I hope we didn't offend anybody by our disdain for time clocks. I'm sure that there are people out there that use it. You know, otherwise, T-sheets wouldn't be as popular as it is. So I agree.

Right. And, you know, and I think I think the thing about T-sheets is it's I think it's really designed for people that haven't got a PSA type system. Right. If you're not using a PSA system or you're not using any kind of application that has time tracking built in, then I think there's absolutely a place for for applications like T-sheets and what have you in, you know, in the industry, because you need to capture people's billable time. I get that.

I understand that. But, you know, capturing every single second of them when they leave their desk and when they, you know, when they go to the restroom or go and grab a cup of coffee or go out for lunch, you know, why why do you need to do that, you know, for every single second of time? So. Right. And I can see the need for that in places like call centers, you know, where you've got a thousand people sitting on telephones, you know, calls in, calls out, you know, sales sales centers and that sort of thing in the IT world.

I'm just not sure that it belongs. Certainly not in the MSP sector. It may belong in the enterprise sector of IT, but I don't know that the small business MSP really has a need for, you know, that level of oversight. Yeah, no, I fully agree. I think we're both in in full agreement on this.

Right. Well, that was a really interesting topic, Chris. I think that's what that's all I have for today. Did you have anything else you wanted to touch on? No, I think that's that's really, you know, really good topic to talk about.

But, you know, I'd be very interested to know what other people are thinking. I'd be interested to know, are there other people that think any differently to us in terms of is there anyone that's using this, like I said before, or is there anyone that, you know, will totally disagree with us and maybe say there is a reason for this and this is the reason they do it. So, you know, let's start the conversation on on one of our social channels. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us on this episode of PSA Impact. You can find us at PSAImpact.net.

My name is Rae-Anne Boccianico, just call me Rae-Anne, it's much easier. And I'm Chris Tim. So thank you very much, everybody. Your PSA is the key to your MSP success. Go out and make an impact on your world today.

Thank you for joining us today on PSA Impact. We hope you've learned something and that you'll join us next time when we answer new questions posed by our listeners.