Prepaid Time

Some companies sell blocks of time in advance. This might be for support, consulting services or whatever you want.



TSM lets you easily track and manage such Prepaid time. As you enter time into the time sheet, TSM will let you use a portion of any prepaid time found until you have used up all of your prepaid time. Prepaid amounts can also be applied to Parts and Prepaid incidents used to against whole jobs.

TSM supports 4 types of Prepaid time:

1. Prepaid hours - Pre-sell a fixed number of hours of a particular labour type. Eg sell 10 hours of consulting time in advance.
2. Prepaid value - Pre-sell a fixed value of time in advanced of any labour type. Eg sell $2000 of labour in advance to use up for installation, training etc.
3. Unlimited time - Sell unlimited time until an expiry date. Eg annual telephone support contracts.
4. Prepaid incidents - A fixed number of incidents to be consumed. Excellent for limited telephone support (as opposed to the unlimited option above).

Information includes:

The date the Prepaid time block was purchased.

The labour type that is automatically assigned time sheet entries linked to this pre-paid time entry. Leave the Type field blank for Prepaid time by value.

The number of hours or incidents that have been purchased.

Sometimes, prepaid time can take the form of unlimited services for a predetermined period (say one year). Selecting the Unlimited Quantity option will ignore any quantity purchased. Select a Labour Type to display this checkbox.

Select this option if you are selling Prepaid Incidents, This is useful for pre-selling a fixed number of support calls.

You can set a reorder point whereby TSM will warn you whenever you use some Prepaid time and the quantity available falls below the reorder point.

Displays the number of Prepaid time hours that have already been used.

Displays the number of Prepaid hours left. This is calculated from the difference between the Quantity purchased and the number of Prepaid hours Used.

The amount that was paid by the contact for the Prepaid time.

You can optionally have an expiry date on Prepaid time in conjunction with the maximum hours allowed. In this scenario, Prepaid support concludes when the available time reduces to zero or when the expiry date comes to pass, whichever happens first. For example, you might sell a block of prepaid time that must be used within a 12 month period.

Any remarks specific to the Prepaid time.