I need help with Time Billing. We are a service business and bill clients only for our time, we have no products and no inventory. We have a very basic file where employees enter their activities by creating a new record each time they work on something. Fields are: 

Date  |  Employee  | Job Number  | Client  | Activity  | Time  | Rate  | Total

 

I need to generate invoices from the records in this file. What is the best way to find all the time posted to a particular job number, sorted by activity? Should this be in the same file with 2 layouts or in 2 separate files?

 

Invoice should show a single dollar figure for all employees who performed a certain activity on the job. Using a sub summary part (sorted by job number) I can get totals, but I can't figure out how to also summarize the activities and turn all that into an invoice.

 

Invoices need only the following:

Bill to/address/date (which it obtains from contact file)

Job number 

List of Activities: (2 examples listed here)

  –Proofing . . . $00.00 

  –Research. . . $00.00 

GRAND TOTAL (of all proofing + research for this job number)

 

No need to add a file.

 

Probably the easiest way to generate an invoice is to sort the time entries like you want them and then loop through them and add things up, turn around and create an invoice.  You probably should also mark each time entry record with the invoice ID (or invoice line item ID) so you can drill down when needed.

 

What tables do you currently have in your solution?

You can use FileMaker's subsummary feature to help with this. Create a layout with a subsummary by activity. Then when generating the report, do a find for the relevant time entries, and then sort by activity. You can include a summary field in the subsummary part that shows a total for that activity.

 

This can be easily done in the same file which holds the time entry table.