Tracking your time and using Tock
Tock is a different tool than TTS-only, HRLinks. Here is a quick comparison:
Tock timesheet | HRLinks timesheet | |
---|---|---|
Level | TTS | GSA |
Cadence | Weekly | Bi-weekly |
Goal | Tracks how time is spent, so we bill partners appropriately | Tracks how much an employee is working, so we track leave appropriately |
Timesheet shows | How time is spent within a given week (billable and nonbillable) | How much time was spent working within a pay period, and what kind of leave was taken (sick, annual, award, admin, etc.) |
Billable expectations
Timecards for the current week should be available no later than Monday at 9AM PST.
TTSC employees are expected to bill a certain amount of hours towards assigned billable projects each week. TTSC does not penalize employees for lower utilization if they haven’t been assigned billable work.
- All TTSC employees are expected to Tock weekly by COB (close of business) each Friday, and submit HRLinks timesheets every two weeks.
- Supervisors are responsible for checking hours logged by their direct reports in Tock, including billable and nonbillable time. They also approve HRLinks timesheets every two weeks.
- AM/EL/EMTs review and approve time billed to engagements on a monthly basis via the engagement Tock report.
Supervisors’ utilization expectations are based on the number of direct reports, detailed in the table below:
Number of direct reports | Utilization % target | Target hours |
---|---|---|
>/=7 | 30% | 10-16 hours |
6 | 40% | 14-18 hours |
5 | 50% | 16-20 hours |
4 | 60% | 18-24 hours |
1-3 | 65% | 20-26 hours |
0 (individual contributors) | 80%+ | 32+ hours |
What is billable? What is not billable? What codes do I use?
Generally:
- Billable time = Work that enables engagement delivery
- Nonbillable time = Indirect work that does not provide direct value to engagement delivery
Billable time
You must bill all time that is a direct cost to a project. This includes:
- Discipline-specific work for a project, i.e. Engineering, Design, Product, or Strategy work
- Project team meetings (stand-ups, grooming, planning, retro, and anything else!)
- 1:1s with project team members
- Client meetings
- Travel to client meetings, as well as time spent arranging travel and getting reimbursement
- Time reading Slack channels about the project
- Time reading emails about a project
- Time thinking/brainstorming about project work, even if not in front of your computer
- Time talking about your project at team meetings, or publicly
- Time writing about your project on the blog
- Time onboarding to a project, which includes reading documentation and learning about the agency
- Time offboarding from a project. This includes postmortems, writing documentation, and organizing your working files so that other people could pick it up later and continue your work
- Business development and IAA work (for continuing projects only)
- Conferences, training and meetings that are in service of project work
- Coordinating staffing for projects with a signed IAA
Sometimes internal TTSC meetings provide direct value to your engagement and can be billed — for example, a discussion with your supervisor about a deliverable, attending a guild session where you learn tips for your current ATO process, or getting feedback in a critique group. Talk to your supervisor if you’re unsure if an activity is billable or not billable.
Billable TTSC Tock codes
We are in the process of consolidating nonbillable codes across TTSC, but for now please continue to use the appropriate codes for your team:
Work type | CoE feds | 18F |
---|---|---|
Work for a partner by folks staffed to the engagement. | Ask EL | Ask AM |
Engagement support or deliverable review. Use this code if you are not staffed to the engagement. | Ask EL | Ask AM |
Fully reimbursable details. If a detail is not fully reimbursable, talk to leadership first. | ? | 1995 |
Helping TTS/GSA. If you are asked to assist with any hiring or support activities outside of 18F/CoE, please talk to your supervisor. They can advise you on the proper code and billability. | Ask supervisor | Ask supervisor |
Nonbillable time
You must not bill for the following activities because these are indirect costs and are not inherently valuable to any one single partner:
- Out of office (Award leave, sick leave, PTO)
- Conferences, trainings and meetings that are not in service of project work
- OLU trainings that are not in service of project work
- Internal organization meetings (Team Coffees, TTS Town Hall)
- Business development for new projects (on non-live projects – developing a continuation of work plan is okay to bill.)
- Hiring activities, including interviews, resume reviews, stand-ups
- Performance reviews
- New hire onboarding
Common nonbillable TTSC Tock codes
We are in the process of consolidating nonbillable codes across TTSC, but for now please continue to use the appropriate codes for your team:
Work type | CoE feds | 18F |
---|---|---|
TTSC change management work | 1947 | 1976 |
Business development | 1434 | 1811 |
Administrative & supervisory | 2080 | 1814 |
TLC Crew | NA | 1813 |
Hiring & onboarding (18F) | NA | 1241 |
Tock maintenance and development | NA | 1109 |
Staffing | NA | 1812 |
Front office (CoE) | 1112 | NA |
GSA-mandated | 1347 | NA |
CAP (Corrective Action Plan) | 1946 | NA |
External outreach and communications | 1437 | NA |
COR duties (nonbillable) | 1874 | NA |
Nonbillable hours | 1145 | NA |
Professional development | ? | NA |
Out of office (under 3 weeks) | ? | 670 |
Extended out of office (more than 3 weeks) | ? | 1810 |
Non-reimbursable details. Talk to leadership before taking non-reimbursable details and for guidance on how to report the time. | Ask leadership | Ask leadership |
Helping TTS/GSA. If you are asked to assist with any hiring or support activities outside of 18F/CoE, please talk to your supervisor. They can advise you on the proper code and billability. | Ask supervisor | Ask supervisor |
Where do I go for guidance on specific Tocking activity?
For billable engagement work
The AM/EL is your first point of contact regarding Tock guidance. If the activity is still in question or is not related to a specific engagement, escalate up to the supervisor, and then your director for further guidance.
If you ARE the AM/EL, go to your Supervisor.
For non-billable Work
Your supervisor is the first point of contact regarding Tock guidance on non-engagement work.
Working more than 40 hours
With an Alternate Work Schedule (AWS)
Tock will limit you to 40 hours per week by default. Please request an alternative work schedule in , external,TTS-only, #tock if you are on an AWS. You do not need to do this if you are on a flexible week schedule.
With a standard working schedule
If you find yourself needing to work more than 40 hours, here are the steps to take before you work any extra hours.
First, ensure you can work the extra hours:
- Talk to your Engagement Lead, Account Manager or Project Lead and supervisor to figure out if and how much over 40 hours you can work.
- The Engagement Lead, Account Manager, or Project Lead should inform leadership that overtime is necessary, so they can provide support and guidance as needed.
- The Engagement Lead, Account Manager, or Project Lead must check and then adjust the engagement’s financial accounting.
- The supervisor must approve the requested hours in TTS-only, HRLinks. Generally, Compensatory Time (comp time) is the option likely to be approved. Overtime is generally not an option as it triggers increased compensation.
- Get your supervisor’s approval in writing. Your Supervisor must justify the comp time upon submission of your timesheet in HRLinks.
Then, make sure to accurately track your overtime hours in Tock and HRLinks:
- Request overtime in , external,TTS-only, #tock. The Tock administrator will adjust the Tock setting to allow for 40+ hours to be recorded.
- Work your week!
- Log total hours in Tock.
- Check that your approved extra hours have been properly accounted for prior to submitting your timesheet in HRLinks. Log total hours in HRLinks. This is where your comp time is recorded and where you’ll use it for future leave. In HRLinks, navigate to Request Absence/OT and make a comp time earned request for the extra hours you worked.
No matter how many hours you work, it is crucial that you accurately report those hours in Tock. Knowing the actual amount of time you work helps us better scope and estimate costs and rates.
Can I ‘save’ billable hours to apply to a subsequent week?
No. Please don’t “save” hours or avoid billing for time you’ve worked in a given week. In addition to hurting our capacity to improve our engagement scoping assumptions, it is illegal not to bill for time spent working for partners.
There are several mechanisms and processes in place to make sure engagements don’t go over budget:
- We build a risk reserve within each engagement to ensure we have extra hours for needs that arise during the engagement.
- Engagement Leads closely monitor engagement burns on a weekly basis and communicate that to TTSC Leadership and Front Office.
In short, we need to know if our scoping is accurate and understand the cadence of work throughout an engagement. We’d rather be over budget and have our teams deliver value than be under budget and hide how many hours it truly takes to deliver on our engagements.
Correcting prior Tock submissions
Submit a Tock change request using , external,TTS-only, the Tock Change Request form. You can also ping the Tock team in the , external,TTS-only, #tock Slack channel. Make sure to inform your AM/EL with any submitted change requests.
Logging time for upcoming leave
If you are going to be out of the office for an extended period of time and that time period is not available to report yet, head to the , external,TTS-only, #tock channel in Slack before you leave and ask that the team submit your Tock hours for you during your out of office period.
Example:
“I will be out of the office from Monday September 16th through Monday September 23rd: could you enter 40 hours for me to #670 for the 16th-20th time period?”
How do supervisors review hours logged in Tock?
Supervisors should regularly review the hours their direct reports are logging.
From the , external,TTS-only, View users tab in Tock, search the list of users lists of users, then click and open the report to review their recent Tocks. Check:
- Overall utilization rate
- Out of office time accounted for (including holidays and any administrative leave granted)
- Correct Tock lines (including details and extended out of office)
- Correct billable expectation
18F supervisors are expected to complete the , external,Weekly Supervisor Data Check.
Technical difficulties? Questions?
- Visit the , external,TTS-only, #tock Slack channel.