Eightmeters

Table of Contents

• What is Eightmeters?
• Getting Started
  • How to Enter Your Time
    • Entry Fields for Recording Time
  • How to Handle Timesheet Corrections
  • How to Enter Your Expenses
• Describing Your Work In Eightmeters
  • What Time is Billable
  • What Time is Not Billable

Purpose

To identify how to use our in-house social timesheet application.

Scope

Currently a basic draft, with room for further detail and feature exploration.

What is Eightmeters?

Eightmeters is a “social timesheet” web app that we created internally at Countable to help us feel more connected as virtual workers. It allows us to see the stream of what others are working on, within our projects and teams.

Getting Started

Once you have a countable-issued email address, you can use that to log in to eightmeters.countable.ca via Google Login.

Reach out to operations@countable.ca or the Slack #operations channel, if you do not see any project you are working on after login - they may need to add you!

How to Enter Your Time

First, navigate to the affiliated team, then select the specific project or category you worked on for this time period.

These are lists of standardized slugs; clarify with your direct manager if you’re not sure what some of the slugs you see are for.

Entry Fields for Recording Time

• Date:
  • Select the date on which the work took place.
• Hours Worked:
  • Enter the time you spent on the project in this time period. Enter time in decimal format (1 hour and 30 mins should be entered as 1.5 hours). Please do your best to accurately record or estimate time worked. It need not be perfect, but if you are concerned about being accurate, please use Toggl or another tool to assist you.
  • When recording your overtime hours, simply enter the actual number of overtime hours worked. There is no need to calculate the overtime rate, as our payroll will handle this. Overtime policy can be found here.
• Work Description:
  • Describe the work in a few words that indicate specific progress and outcomes you worked on for most of that day, in a language clients will understand. Between 3 and 20 words is the right level of detail. If you’re entering the same phrase every day, you’re not being specific enough.
  • Never combine line items between projects. If you worked on 2 different codes (project slugs) during the day, they must be separate line items.
  • Client pay us to do work and does not care about your environment setup, training, or who works with who. Just indicate what task/objective the client requires that you were working on, any progress or setbacks, and status. Note: this does not mean you should not log your setup time, just include it within the hours worked that you report for the related task.
    • Bad example: “attended meeting X”. Nobody cares if you were at the meeting. Mention what you learned, contributed, or what was decided or accomplished in the meeting. This goes back to requiring different descriptions each day.
    • Bad example: “sprint meeting”. Instead, mention a key decision at the meeting or topic that helped accomplish our assigned tasks and goals.
    • Good example: Completed Trello Task “Title copied here”. Changed deployment parameters so that we could meet our goal of reducing downtime during deploys. Prepared report on test coverage, based on request from client.
    • Good example: Finished voicemail, website and google maps setup for Customer X.
• Trello or BitBucket ref:
  • Also include at least one of: references to issues in Trello, Commit IDs. Link to trello cards can be found in “Share and more…” after opening a card.
  • If you are working on a given client all day, or two clients, you can bill 5 to 15 minutes for time administering time entry or OKRs. Do not record that you are doing in this in the notes, or anything else that we know you’re doing every day.

How to Handle Timesheet Corrections

• We understand that mistakes can occur, and it’s perfectly acceptable to make corrections on submitted timesheets. However, it is essential for employees to take responsibility for reporting their time accurately. The Company, in turn, is committed to paying based on the approved timesheet at the time of submission.
• Please note that changes to timesheets after submission will not be automatically approved, as the original approved submission serves as the official record. However, we do acknowledge that there may be exceptions in certain cases. If you ever need to correct your timesheets, please make sure to inform Clark first.
• Furthermore, if the company makes an error, rest assured that it will be promptly corrected based on the approved timesheet at the time of submission. Our aim is to ensure fair and accurate compensation for everyone.

How to Enter Your Expenses

• Just as with time entries, navigate based on team and project codes (for most expenses, this will be countable > admin)
• Descriptions of expenses can be brief, but should be detailed enough that it is understandable to your manager and accounting. If expenses were not incurred in Canadian Dollars, please include the original currency amount in the description as well.
• Upload an image of the receipt using the “Choose Files” button before submitting
• In order to be eligible for reimbursement, it is essential to submit a receipt for every expense. Failure to do so will result in the expense not being reimbursed.

Describing Your Work In Eightmeters

Include time spent on both admin and technical overhead (see the bottom of this section for definitions of these domains). Missing either of these two, or both, will lead to underbilling (which we do not promote).

On paper, it may seem like underbilling is good because it saves the company money, but in the long-run, it creates frustration and can cost us valuable employees.

However, while you should include the time from these, focus your work descriptions in eightmeters on the higher-level tasks and goals the overall work was in pursuit of:

• Describe the work in a few words that indicate specific outcomes you worked on for most of that day. Between 3 and 20 words is the right level of detail.
• Do not enter the same description for multiple days. Indicate what was different about each day you worked. This is easy if you enter your time every day.
• The countable > training project pays for your time training and learning things you need for your job (must be official training materials, or approved)
  • Training necessary for a specific project should be coded to that project.
• Use the countable > training project for time discussing how Countable operates with team members.

#TODO - break down main countable billing tags and explain what should go under each

Admin overhead is any non-technical work or research done in order to complete tasks (e.g. gathering relevant information through Slack or email, clarifying requirements, confirming if the bug is reproducible).

Technical overhead is any technical work or research done which isn’t directly a part of the work you are delivering but is necessary for its completion (e.g. local environment setup, reading code documentation, Googling code/tech issues).

What Time is Billable

• Generally, anything the company asks and/or expects you to do.
• Rendering services (offered by the company) to clients or customers.
• Administering your work, such as entering timesheets, doing OKRs, updating your work hours in your calendar, and time spent conversing with your team about work (ie, any time on Slack, your work email, Trello) is all billable.
• Lunch break (or other leisure activities), virtual or in person, is billable up to 30 minutes, if attended with a client or colleague.
• 2 daily breaks up to 15 minutes each.
• If a client urgently asks for help when you are not already working, record a minimum 30 minutes of work to compensate for the disruption of your time off.
• Paid time off, use the “Leaves” project in our social timesheet to track the team’s leave efficiently.
• Professional development directly related to what you’re working on, creating systems to improve our performance, documenting items in the Ops Manual.
• Professional development time, requested by the company or approved by your manager.
• Travel time is billable if you are travelling with a client or colleague, OR doing work while you travel.

You are expected to continuously develop your judgement to approach problem solving. Researching, testing, prototyping, discussing and any other activity you believe important for having great results in your work, are all billable activities. This includes failed attempts, because those result in necessary learning. In general, if you are able to explain to the team how it’s helping the company (as opposed to doing it for some other primary reason), then it should be billable.

What Time is Not Billable

• Leisure activities or meals, in excess of half an hour, or done without a colleague/client.
• Some team events, conferences, etc, will be paid and for others we might just cover admission. This is case by case. Generally team building activities are paid. If you request to go to a specific conference yourself, it usually will not be paid time.
• Commuting is not paid unless it’s to a client’s office, travelling with colleagues or completing work during your commute.
• Breaks from work over 15 minutes.
• Checking your personal messaging channels such as your personal email.
• Reading or viewing anything not work related.
• Formal professional development tuition or fees, requested by you, will (upon approval) be paid by the company, but not for your time.