Cost of librarian time spent answering questions
RefTracker can automatically calculate the cost of librarian time spent answering questions. This is set up by the System Administrator by:
- setting up the Billing rate code table to reflect the billing rates for staff in your organisation
- selecting the appropriate billing rate for that staff member in the user signon / My preferences of each staff member. If you do not want the staff member to be able to change this rate, Deny them the “Ability to change billing rate” Function in their signon.
- Setting the Time type code table to either Optional or Mandatory, so that whenever staff work in questions the Time used field will appear for them to enter the amount of time they spent working on a question.
If your organisation wants to know about Librarian time used, setting the Time type code table to Mandatory is preferable as it ensures that the staff member has provided a value for Time used on every appropriate occasion. - Setting the Time type code table values that provide default values that automatically provide a sensible value for time used in scenarios where that makes sense. For example, in the Time type code table, you might set Time used to 0 or 1 for the Change screen as it is usual that only a very small amount of time is used in that screen and filling the Time used field with the default value can save your staff time.
A blank field in this code table means no default value will be inserted (which means that, if the Time type code table is Mandatory, staff will be forced to provide a value in the time used field.
The time type default values defined here are used whether this code table is set to optional or mandatory.
When your system is set up in this way, the librarian time used and its cost (calculated as time used multiplied by billing rate for the staff member who did the work) is entered into the History tab of the Summary screen, each time work is done. The Journals are summarised in the Journal tab of the Summary screen. The Total time used always displays in the Details tab of the Summary screen, as does Total cost incurred (being the calculated cost of time used, plus any specific individually entered costs. The Total time used and Total costs incurred are also included in the record for each question downloaded using the RefTracker Statistics reports screen, and any billing or reporting on the costs of developing responses can be created using this information from the downloaded records.
If the billing information is sensitive information, the journals that display for each user can be controlled. The entire Journal tab of the Summary screen can be removed by Denying that Function in the user’s signon, or there are Functions for each user that can specifically control if they see just their own journals or can see those entered by others.
If time and costs are important to you as the information is used for billing there are parameters (2.24 and 25) that can be used to control when time and cost information can be entered in relation to your month end, and whether they can be entered for closed requests.
There is a “My time recorded summary” that staff can be Granted access to in order to view all the time they have recorded during a period to ensure it is complete. Administrators can use the report at System>Reporting>journal entry reporting to review the Journals reported by all staff.
Should time and/or cost not be of importance to your organisation, the Billing rate code table should be disabled.
if only some time is billed consider entering the costs for that optionally billable time using a Billable time entry in the Cost type cost table and then an entry for each piece of time that needs to be billed using the Record costs screen, rather than by using the billing rate mechanism described above.
Cost centres
If your organisation uses Cost centres, relevant cost centres for a request can be recorded for it and the relevant Cost centre can be selected when entering time and costs using the Record time and Record costs screens.