Request time calculation for invoicing
Request time calculation for invoicing
When an engagement is billable, the time spent on requests associated with this engagement are also billable, depending on the request processing rules and the service level agreement (SLA). For example:
The SLA of the customer is from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. If the customer requires support outside of the SLA hours, for instance at 6:00 pm, the responsible support desk in your organization can track the request time, which is then billed to the customer.
Support analysts in your organization enter the time they worked on a requests in their time sheets. If the request is billable, customers are billed according to the rates defined in the engagement.
The actual amount of time that is billed to the customer depends on the grace period and minimum billing increments defined for the responsible support desk. For more informations, contact your system administrator.
Example 1: Request time with grace period calculation
When calculating billable request time, the system verifies if a grace period has been set up for the support desk in charge of the request resolution. For example:
The SLA of the customer is from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with a grace period of 30 minutes.
If the support analyst in your organization starts working on a request at 3:50 pm for 1.5 hours, the work ends at 5:20 pm, that is, 20 minutes after the SLA end time. Because the grace period is 30 minutes, these additional 20 minutes will not be billed to the customer.
If the support analyst starts working on the request at 3:50 pm for 2.5 hours, the work ends at 6:20 pm. The 30-minute grace period starts after the SLA end time at 5:00 pm. Therefore, only the time from 5:30 to 6:20, that is 50 minutes, will be billed to the customer.
Example 2: Request time with minimum billing increment calculation
Minimum incremental billing is the practice to bill the customer for blocks of time no matter how much time was actually spent on work. If minimum increments have been defined for the support desk in charge of the request resolution, every block of time is billed in full to the customer, even if the entire block of time was not used up. For example:
The SLA of the customer is from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with 15-minute minimum increments.
If the support analyst in your organization starts working on a request at 3:50 pm for 2.5 hours, the work ends at 6:20 pm, that is, 80 minutes after the SLA end time. The customer will be billed for 90 minutes (6 increments of 15 minutes).
Example 3: Request time with grace period and minimum increment calculation
The SLA of the customer is from Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with a grace period of 30 minutes and with 15 minute time increments.
If the support analyst starts working on a request at 3:50 pm for 2.5 hours, the work ends at 6:20 pm, that is 80 minutes after the SLA end time. With the 30 minute grace period, only 50 minutes are billable. The customer will be billed for 60 minutes (4 increments of 15 minutes).