Services: standard time display, timer, presence time entry, weekly overview, service entry
Product line
Standard
|Expert
Operating mode
CLOUD ABO
|ON-PREMISES
Modules
Services & CRM
Budget & Phases
Purchases
Resource Planning
Business Intelligence
The services view is shown by default when you open Vertec. Also, if you open a new tab with +, the list of services is shown. So you can return to the current service entry at any time. Note: In versions prior to 6.4.0.19, the folder was called Open services and showed only the open services.
You can find all information about how to enter services in the article Entering services.
There are the following elements:
1. Date bar
2. Weekly / standard time overview
3. Presence time list
4. Timer entry
In the date bar, the date is displayed at the top left. Use the arrow keys < > to jump forward and backward by day.
Use the Calendar button to select a day from the calendar:
You can also type any date directly in the date display:
Press Enter to set this date.
With the Today button, you can comfortably jump back to today.
The Interval button opens a second row so you can set the date interval:
Vertec provides practical support for entering services with the weekly overview table. This can be shown or hidden via System settings Project / Case > Show weekly overview for services entry.
At a glance, you can see the working time, the standard hours and the difference for each day. If there is an absence entry for the specified day, this is shown with an info symbol:
On the right, you see a summary of the previous week. To show the previous week in the overview, click in the Previous week field.
You can also select a single day by clicking on the relevant field in the weekly overview.
If you do not want to show the rows for the standard hours and the difference, you can hide them under System settings Project / Case > Show standard hours overview for services entry. In this case, only the actual working time entered appears in the list:
Vertec also provides a presence time list to further assist you with entering services. You can activate the display of the presence time list in the system settings Show presence time list for services entry .
The Punch in/Punch out button (available from version 6.7.0.10) can optionally be used to enter the From/To fields and is only shown on today’s day. A click on Punch in
enters the current time in the From field.
This switches the button to Punch out
, which enters the current time in the To field. Presence times entered in this way take into account the time definition in the System setting Round minutes to
.
The presence time list enables you to enter several From-To time periods per day, as with a stamp clock. You have the option of entering one text can be entered per period.
The presence time list is shown only when a single day is selected. When you switch to a date range that is more than one day, the presence time list disappears.
The presence time total, the entered services total, and the difference between them are shown in the footer of the presence time list. This practical information makes it easy to check whether you have entered services for the entire presence time.
The value listed in the presence time list sums up all the services entered for that day. If the sum does not match the services in the entry list at the bottom, there are additional services charged on that day, which are not shown here.
Note: Entering presence time has no effect on entered services, it is purely informative. The calculation of overtime in Vertec is not done via this list, but always via the sum of the total services entered.
Charged services remain visible in the list. However, they cannot be changed after charging and the timer symbol disappears. In versions earlier than 6.4.0.19, only open services are visible.
You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+L to navigate back and forth between the presence time list and the services list:
> If the focus is in the presence time, the services list is focused.
> If the focus is in the services list, the presence time is focused.
> If the focus is neither in the services list nor in the presence time, the services list is focused.
The first focusable column of the asterix row is focused in each case.
The timer can be shown or hidden via System settings Project / Case > Show timer for services entry. If this option is activated, and if today’s day is shown in the services list, a timer appears at the beginning of each service row:
Before the timer can be started, you must enter a service in the list. With Ctrl + Spacebar or by clicking on the timer icon, the timer starts at the current service. This service is now the timer service, and the time the timer runs up is assigned to it. If required, you can change the time with the arrow keys:
The timer service appears in the list of services highlighted in green:
Now, you can enter further services or switch to another list in Vertec, however, the timer always remains on the selected timer service.
If you want to change the timer service, for example, because you are working on another project, you just have to select a different service in the list and press the start button of the timer again or Ctrl + Spacebar. The timer then changes to the new timer service. In this way, you can switch between different services in the list.
You can stop the timer by pressing Ctrl + Spacebar or by clicking on the pause symbol.
The effective hours on a service always depend on the minute value set in Vertec System settings Project / Case > Round minutes. In another system setting, Round up the time registered by timer, you can set whether the timer should always round up to the next round minute value.
By default, the timer is configured for rounding up. This means that when the timer is started on a new service, its hours immediately jump to the minute value of the rounding up. This has the nice side effect that a timer recording also becomes valid immediately.
When you exit Vertec, the timer continues. If the timer is still running when you complete the program, a dialog appears asking whether the timer should be stopped or continued. Of course, when you exit Vertec, the timer does not really continue, Vertec simply saves the start time of the timer and updates the timer when you restart the program, but the effect is that the timer continues running in the background. The same behavior also occurs when you change the logged-in user.
If you accidentally leave a timer running overnight, Vertec alerts you at startup and offers to discard the accumulated time.
It is useful to know how the timer works. The internal time resolution of the timer is 1 second. Although the time display only shows hours and minutes, the timer remembers the accumulated time in seconds for each service. Therefore, even if you switch the timer frequently between different services, time is not forgotten. However, the timer only writes the current accumulated time every minute or when you stop or switch to the service. This also means that if you make a manual change to the time of a timer service, it is only shown after one minute.