How+we+deal+with+timesheets+in+CKM

We keep track of our time:
 * Hourly to bill on specific projects (left down to individuals to organise as they like)
 * Weekly to enter our timesheets in OCS (following the OCS system)
 * Monthly to prepare recharges for clients (following the CKM Excel timesheet template)

1 - you record all your time in OCS using the RS06 codes we all have, plus any leave, etc. This should be 100% of your time. If you want to add over-hours under the line, that's for you.

2 - there is no easy provision (yet) for us to recharge time thru OCS

3 - we will continue our monthly xls sheets, for this year at least, to deal with recharges. And that's where the allocation to ADG etc happens.

4 - I am assuming that Nadine will set up a project code for the advocacy event and we would record time to that - in our monthly recharges. [the problem is that for us to each charge our time to the many projects we work for, the project owners have to individually authorize each CKM person to charge time into their OCS projects]. It seems better we aim for 2016 to do that and just record our global time to our global charge codes in OCS = and do the recharges in parallel like now].

(1) On the Timesheets, where do I account for time spent on the Cornell and BMGF advocacy event? I've out this time in Advocacy right now. (2) Where/how on the Timesheet do I note that the 1 hour on Cornell should be on the ADG budget. Do I, as advised in the training, insert that twice, once in Normal Time (CKM Advocacy) and again under No Charge Time (ADG budget)? If I do that, I will be inflating my day's hours. Some differences came up about how we fill in the current CKM timesheets. For example, where should we account for: --- (1) our email time? should lump all of that together and put all of it under the 'No charge time' section? (2) our time spent supporting each other on Yammer? (Muthoni now puts this under RS06K (social engagement tools and support) while I've been putting it under RS06B (CKM leadership, planning, management) (3) What do we include under RS06G (internal communications support)? weekly Friday coffee mornings? Friday comms gatherings? (4) If I spend an hour or more on emails in a particular area, such as arranging media work, should I lump that into email time under "No charge time' or should I account for it under RS06H: 'Media, campaigns and influencing for big events and products'? (5) If I spend an hour working on budgets for media work, do I account for that under RS06B ('CKM leadership, planning, management') or under RS06H ('Media, campaigns and influencing for big events and products)? (6) Where do I account for work on images—Flickr management, Pinterest, etc?
 * Possible conflicts and how to fill time in**:


 * Practical examples**

__SUSAN'S TIMESHEET__ LEADERSHIP. PLANNING, MANAGEMENT (RS06B) > Email (generic) > Yammer and other internal comms > Friday comms gatherings > Training > Mentoring > Finding, enlisting, managing and paying consultants and their work > Branding work > Physical and virtual meetings > Follow up work from meetings > ILRI mandatory trainings > Budgeting > Filling out daily timesheets

ADVOCACY (RS06A) > Develop advocacy strategies > Plan specific advocacy campaigns > Respond to ad hoc opportunities to advance specific campaigns, such as pro-poor approaches to raw milk marketing and consumption in Kenya—with or without news media involvement > Provide content and promote pro-poor livestock development in general through CGIAR, livestock consortia, etc. > Support fund-raising and other donor-targeted work requested by the directorate > Enahnce slide presentations and other materials for high-profile events requested by the directors

CORPORATE NEWS (RS06D) > Blogging & editing (for A&A non-news media materials) > Tweeting of corporate & partners news and messages > Curation of ILRI materials for CGIAR website/social media uptake > Strategic reading of scientific news and papers etc. > Strategic research

MEDIA, CAMPAIGNS, INFLUENCING (RS06H) > On-going media outreach planning > On-going news media editing and writing and message development > News conferences, interviews, field tours > Media roundtables > Blogging strategically on non-ILRI platforms to widen ILRI's influence > Emails & tweets to news media targets > Weekly Taking Stock e-newsletter to widen ILRI's circle of influence > Event exhibits

Jane Poole said it really well earlier today by saying that the OCS time sheets should capture the activities one is doing e.g. blogging, meetings, designing, planning etc. (refer to the RSO6 indicated activities) HOWEVER for recharges, which they call internal trading, this currently can't be captured by the OCS time sheets and we should continue to use the method we are using now.

>> Indeed. The timesheets are really no help to those of us who need to recharge so I have my team maintaining their recharge time separately – eventually as Muthoni says it will be an online system where projects / people ask for a certain activity, provide a charge code and we provide the service (hmm… - internal trading). I wouldn’t recommend inflating time by adding under No Charge Time as it still won’t really help you. As an example – I currently work on the ACGG project designing the baseline so I put all the time under RS03E – Research Design (only if I’m over 8 hrs do I note the ACGG time down in No Charge Time) then in my lovely excel file I note down the time and budget code for recharging at the end of the month

>> This is helpful advice, Jane. So you would NOT recommend our logging time spent on a non-core project TWICE, once in the Normal Time section (8 official hours) and again under No Time Charge section??? (muthoni thought she herd that advice in the training session.) But let's take a typical case for us. Let's say I work 10 hours on Monday, and 2 of those hours are for a budget code that I have no access to under Normal Time (say it's editing work for the CKM Publishing and Curation group). Because I have no access in Normal Time to any budget code other than my own 4 CKM Awareness and Advocacy budget codes, I cannot account for this editing work there under Publishing and Curation. But I can account for it under the No Charge Time section, where I am free to insert the Publishing and Curation budget code and any other budget code. So in this case, I would leave out these two hours of work in Normal Time and account for these 2 hours only under No Charge Time??? But what do I do if I ONLY work 8 hours on Monday and 2 of those hours are for Publishing and Curation? Do I arbitrarily (creatively) choose one of my 4 Awareness and Advocacy budget codes and just slot the editing work in there?

nice to see that time registration is such a lively topic on yammer :)
 * Response from Misja to Susan's questions**

Some comments on the things i read in the string above:


 * 1) Susan: you would **never REPEAT time for an activity on both normal and no charge**. you write what you really did. the only case when you might want to inflate the total hours, is when you do not reach 40 hours with regular activities. In that case you will have to round up all till 40 and then register the non-regular activity under no charge (since you technically cannot chose it at normal
 * 2) Remember: **all time registred under normal, will result in costs getting booked to that activity**. that why it is restricted to only those activities that budget holders gave permission for. So your request to add a few more activities to your normal time dropdown list can only be honored if the budget holder of that activity gives his approval.
 * 3) It depends a little what department you are, but contrary to what Jane says, i DO think that **the current time sheets are perfect for cost allocation of the communications department**, since you allocate based on time spend on certain communication tasks as agreed with budget holder. So if a project asks you to make a product, you agree on more pr less how many hours, you let the budget holder approve the adding to the drop down list and you register all time spend on it. the bill will automatically end up at the project. For Departments that do not charge on worked hours, but more on lump sum amounts or tariffs for a project, this will NOT work, there indeed all the time will have to be booked to a (support) activity linked to the department itself and then manual invoices send.
 * 4) Since this is all new to us, and we first have to get complete and correct data, **we decided to NOT YET start with the automatic cost allocations**. So for the next few weeks/months we will still continue with the manual cost allocation that everyone is used to. off course you can use the information in the time system as basis for those calculations. We will switch to automatic allocation only when we are all happy with the completeness and correctness of the time data, this must however be latest January 2016.
 * 5) True that for now you can only register only to activities, which are in some cases quite simple and not very elaborate. For research this is up to the project managers, however **for your own department, you can have activities as you wish**. SO if communication wants to manage and monitor the time and cost separated by different products: Publications, websites, videos for example: this is possible, Watch out however for 2 reasons: 1) it means you will have to budget accordingly as well and 2) don't forget that soon we will start using the "time category" function as well; this is meant to spread and specify time over: labwork, fieldwork, reporting, administration, publications, workshops, or whatever category IMC decides would be interesting. We might put in there some comm related categories as well.
 * 6) For some more information, **read the FAQ in the back of the manual** or ask Kevin via Email. Yammer might not be the ideal medium.

Email by Susan MacMillan (22 September) For example, Burness is billing us for the following AUGUST expenses.

Have these been charged already to the appropriate budget holders? Or do I now include these on your August Time Sheet? (1) Opinion article (Devex) and blogs (CCAFS and ILRI News) about Thornton Nature perspective article=$3,662.50 (2) News release about Jianlin sheep genetic study results= $455. In addition, Burness is charging us $1,457.50 for strategic advice and normal media work in the month of August.

What budget do I charge this to? This is getting extremely complicated for me to handle. 1 Burness sends monthly invoices.

2 Abeba asks for my approvals of all Burness invoices—and which budgets to charge.

3 DGs office asks for prior approvals of all estimates to be charge to his budget.

4 Different budget holders send me information about their budgets

5 Then there is the ILRI Time Registration page. ..

6 And then there is my Trello page for keeping hourly / daily track of time spent on what We either need a different system or I need to get a PMO type staff member to handle all this and to keep track.

Or I need to know that the time sheets I send to you are the final ones, not to be modified.

I can understand why you want to modify them, but it makes havoc of budgeting from this end! Please advise,

Response from Peter Ballantyne on Susan's questions (22 September)

For the timesheet system – you need to record all your time to ‘CKM’ cost centres. As best you can. This has nothing to do with our recharges (unless maybe this changes next year).

For recharging, this year anyway, you should continue to use the xls sheets as we have done all this year. I always check these as this is the basis for our internal income/recharges. These are ONLY used for time. They have no other purpose.

Invoices etc are charged/recharged directly to projects /cost centres by Abeba. Where they are charged to a non-CKM cost centre, we don’t see them.

I have not seen what OCS does with budgets and reports etc but I assume we can set it up so you can see what costs have been charged to any CKM budget lines – these are mostly anyway just our time. I don’t have any such reports at the present time (I assume still coming).

You need to talk with Abeba about any burness invoices. These are nothing to do with our timesheets (xls or online).

As I said before, the monthly charge from Burness for ‘advice’ should be as limited as possible as this is for our budget and goes to RS06H/SERVIC/RS06/NONF

For me, it is not so complicated: 1 – all invoices go to Abeba – you need to tell here which costs are for which cost centre and she handles that. 2 – if burness are providing services to a project through us, we need the formal approval of the cost centre manager that they will pay for it (before burness spends a single minute) 3 – you must record time on the ilri timesheets system, assigning it to one of ‘our’ cost centres. This serves little purpose for us at this moment but is maybe important for ilri generally. 4 – you must record time on ‘our’ ckm excel sheet which we use for recharging and is VERY important and should never be changed afterwards. 5 – we can try and get access from finance to financial reports (of what has been charged – it does not show commitments). 6 – I don’t recommend managing any other systems or complications. This is helpful advice, Jane. So you would NOT recommend our logging time spent on a non-core project TWICE, once in the Normal Time section (8 official hours) and again under No Time Charge section??? (muthoni thought she herd that advice in the training session.)

But let's take a typical case for us. Let's say I work 10 hours on Monday, and 2 of those hours are for a budget code that I have no access to under Normal Time (say it's editing work for the CKM Publishing and Curation group). Because I have no access in Normal Time to any budget code other than my own 4 CKM Awareness and Advocacy budget codes, I cannot account for this editing work there under Publishing and Curation. But I can account for it under the No Charge Time section, where I am free to insert the Publishing and Curation budget code and any other budget code. So in this case, I would leave out these two hours of work in Normal Time and account for these 2 hours only under No Charge Time???

But what do I do if I ONLY work 8 hours on Monday and 2 of those hours are for Publishing and Curation? Do I arbitrarily (creatively) choose one of my 4 Awareness and Advocacy budget codes and just slot the editing work in there?