It's About Time

Timeslips and Windows 7 Installation Tip

If you are installing Timeslips on a Windows 7 workstation, make sure you turn off the UAC.  This is a security setting in Windows 7.  If you are not sure how to do this, I suggest you contact your hardware technician for more information.

Remove Credit Balances and Receivables from Timeslips

If you read one of my previous articles, "Clean Up Your Timeslips", you will remember that I cautioned you against making a client Inactive if they had a receivable balance or unapplied balance.  What do you with these clients that have balances?  If they have a credit balance, you can always refund the money.  If they owe you money, you can try to collect it.  Sometimes neither of these options is practical. 

Nevertheless, you always want to have zero balance when you make a client Inactive.  Timeslips provides a couple of options to help you towards this goal.  If a client has a credit balance, you can select the Invoice option in Accounts Receivable entry screen. Enter the amount of the credit balance under "Fees".  When you click on the Save icon, the message will appear that will ask you if you want to apply the "suspense" balance to this invoice.  Click on Yes.  The client balance will now be zero.  This is similar to creating a bill for a client, except you are not entering any slips or actually generating a bill.  It is a "write up".

If the client owes money that you can't collect, use the Write Off option in the Accounts Receivable entry screen.  Enter the same amount as the balance that is owed and then apply to each of the open invoices that are shown.  Once you save this, the client will have a zero balance.

You are now ready to make these clients Inactive

Clean Up your Timeslips

If you have been adding new clients to your Timeslips since the beginning of time, you probably have an extremely long client list.  Once you analyze your client list, you will probably realize that only a portion of the clients and matters on the list are actually active clients.  You can easily change the status of a client to Inactive.  Paring down your client list will significantly improve the performance of your billing and reporting.  If you want to know exactly how many clients you have on the list, see the previous blog post:  "How Many Do you Have?"

If you are not sure how to change the client status, click on the link below to download instructions.

Download change_client_classification.pdf

When you change the client from open to inactive, it does not remove that client and it's associated slips.  They are simply hidden.  If you want to run reports that will include inactive clients, make sure you select the slip classification:  Inactive as shown below

 

Some things that are important to remember:

1. Do Not change the status on any client that has unapplied Funds or Accounts Receivables.  This can cause damage to your data files.

2.  Do not change the client status to Closed unless you intend to purge the client and all associated slips. 

Timeslips: A/R Data Corruption

Have you ever had a client with an incorrect balance in the Timeslips Accounts Receivable?  How does this happen?  Download the attached document to learn about the common causes for inaccurate Accounts Receivable balances and how to correct the problem. 

Download ar_balance_problems.pdf

Timeslips Start Dates and End Dates

One of the things that I just learned while trouble-shooting a reporting problem:  Do not disable the Start Date or End Date slip entry features.

In a previous article, I mentioned how you could disable program features that you no longer use.  If you insist on disabling one of the date fields, choose the Start Date, not the End Date.  One of the problems occurs when people set up their Preferences to Copy Dates.  If you disable one of the date fields, it does not remove it from the program.  It still contains data, you just can't see it.  Therein lies the problem.  Just by disabling the Start or End date does not prevent different dates in each of the fields.  If you have a reporting problem, you can't check the Start and End dates of slips in question, simply because one or the other is not visible. 

Short Cut
Users may not like the tedium of entering dates in both fields, however, here is a short cut:  Enter the slip date in the Start Date field, press tab and type S in the End Date field. Your Start Date will be copied to the End Date field with a simple keystroke. 

Hide the Timeslips Features You Never Use

As we all know, Timeslips is a very feature-rich program, which is great.  However, some of these features are not used by the majority of Timeslips user.  Perfect examples are the "Start Date" and "End Date" as well as the "Time Estimated" fields found on the slip entry screen.  If you need the information in these fields, then by all means leave it alone. 

But, if you are like most users, these fields just slow down the data entry process, at best.  At it's worst, different dates in the Start Date and End Date fields can cause unusual results on slip reports that involve date range criteria and leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what went wrong.  If you want to disable the Start Date or End Date, we recommend, disabling the Start Date, since the End Date is used in some reports.  Never disable the End Date.

It's a fairly simple process to disable these features, which will remove them from the slip entry screen.  Later on, if you decide that you want them back, just follow the same process to enable the feature and bring it back.  If you would like to try it, just download the document with the link shown below.

Download features_enable_disable.pdf

Timeslips Corrupt Preference Files

Many Timeslips problems are corrected rather easily by deleting the Preference File.  We have never had any issues with this procedure, however, there is an undocumented problem that can occur if you accidentally double-click on the file.  Here is what it looks like in your Timeslip program folder, using  the "Tiles" view: 

Notice the icon is the same one used to identify Outlook files.  The reason is the ".PRF" extension is also used by Outlook configuration files.  If you accidentally double-click on this file name, there is a danger of DELETING YOUR OUTLOOK FILES. 

Fortunately, I have never seen this, however several other Timeslips Certified Consultants have reported this problem.

If someone in tech support suggests that you delete the PREFS.PRF file, make sure that you DO NOT DOUBLE-CLICK. 

Getting Everyone out of Timeslips

There are some functions such as running Data Verification that require you to get everyone out of Timeslips.  We recommend that you rename your DATA01 (or whatever you call your data folder).  If you cannot rename, it means that there is something accessing your Timeslips.  It could be the Timer program running in the background.  It will show up as a little red clock in the system tray.  Many case management style programs also access Timeslips (Amicus, Time Matters, etc.).  These programs must also be closed.  If you  cannot find the culprit, I suggest that the workstations be shut down completely, at least until the "renaming" process is completed. 

Some clients have reported using the Station Administrator to "Clear" or "Clear All" when they see workstations still logged into Timeslips.  This is NOT recommended.  If you look at Station Administrator, you will want to see a blank screen with no log ins before beginning your procedure.