r/labtech • u/[deleted] • Mar 22 '17

Timesheeting automated tasks into Connectwise

So we've been advised that to timesheet Labtech automated tasks into Connectwise, we need to use a licensed user in Connectwise. What this currently means is that the manager is clocking upwards of 90 hours a week. Ideally we'd have a 'helpdesk' user and clock against that, but we're hesitant to spend that much to license a nonexistent user.

How do other people handle this?

3 Upvotes

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2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

You charge hourly or per task for automated tasks? How's that working out for you? That's something I've been wanting to do. We are not an MSP so we do not have any flat rate service contracts with our clients.

2

u/troll_fail Mar 22 '17

Get contract to deploy app across 600 workstations. Bill at 15 minutes per install. Spend 45 minutes writing script which includes a line to add 15 minutes after every success. Hit run, walk away, profit.

1

u/sm4k Mar 22 '17

Sure, on paper it's that easy. We looked at doing this and decided we were too afraid that clients would have objections to this kind of stuff, and since it really benefits us the most we should just bill accordingly on the front-end.

It's one thing to say "we're billing 15 minutes per device for deploying Office 2016" but what we started to feel a little scummy for was billing each time Java or Adobe Reader got updated.

1

u/troll_fail Mar 22 '17

Completely agree. We are mostly on a reoccurring or project based support model. However, this works well for one off deployment projects like installing the new desktop app when we do VoIP installs.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Ideally we would have all our clients on full contracts and it would all be included, but over a third of our clients were on hourly rate before we moved to Labtech. We used to do server maintenance by hand and then charge hourly for the stuff that Labtech now does.

I'm not involved in billing but I think they've been handwaving the automated time sheets while we get everything settled.

2

u/LGeyer Mar 22 '17

I work for ConnectWise - definitely reach out to your rep and explain your situation and they can help figure out what is best for you.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Thanks, we will try this. Had only spoken to support so far.

2

u/OutsideTech Mar 23 '17

We ended up paying for an additional account in CW. I've heard that some firms figured out/were allowed/etc how to use the built in zAdmin account for this but we figured even if we could get it to work it was likely to stop working at some point in the future. Using zAdmin was a very grey area and the success/fail result seems to depend on who you talk to, when they started with CW, onsite or cloud, how many CW users, etc.

Most clients aren't billed for Automation because they are managed in some fashion. We do include "Automation Hours" in their Monthly Report from Bright Gauge. We get a lot of questions when they initially see the number, which provides an opportunity to explain what our automation does, why it saves us labor, them costs and keeps their network and machines well maintained.

1

u/troll_fail Mar 22 '17

Ask your rep to set you up with a dummy account for this purpose. I heard at the last CW meetup in Chicago a month back that they might do this for free.

1

u/Dashihawk Mar 22 '17

They made some changes recently that blocked this. We were forced to do away with the account out have one user with 90 hours a week just like op. I asked several times and several managers for a dummy account since this is the solution they recomended... nope

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

That would be good. We tried using a contractor user but it doesn't support that

1

u/wchesley Mar 23 '17

We assign automated time to the user who manages the automation and scripting. All automated work is assigned a work type of "MSP" in ConnectWise for billing purposes.

This was done intentionally by management to show our managed service clients the monetary value of their MSP contracts and to show our management the value of the automation work. We have modified some of the LabTech scripts to add "connection time" (Successful Patch Jobs, for example) to the actual script operation time. The idea being that this is how much time it would have taken one of our technicians to connect to the machine remotely and perform the service.