Beyond Service Time Tracking
Service Time Tracking, Right in Business Central
Between the hour a technician worked and the service line in Business Central that the customer pays for, service time tracking often still means a paper slip, a spreadsheet and a phone call at month end. Beyond Service Time Tracking closes that gap. The technician signs in at the terminal – scan a badge or tap a name – picks the work order and starts the clock; the terminal shows what is still running, and the previous job stops when the next one begins. Every stamp then appears in the time list with its start, end, duration, technician and document, and it can be corrected, split, or moved to a different work order. From the work schedule the app derives the work-time factors – evening from six, the night, Saturday, Sunday – and subtracts the recorded break. One click on Transfer Time turns all of it into service lines carrying quantity, break quantity and factor. Those fields survive posting: they are still there on the service shipment line and on the posted invoice line, and every recorded time knows which document invoiced it.
How service time tracking works in Business Central
Technicians never touch Business Central
The terminal is one page with four steps: sign in, pick the job, start, stop. Signing in means scanning a badge or tapping a name, plus a PIN. Nobody standing in a yard needs training for that.
The setup calculates the surcharges
Evening, night, Saturday, Sunday: you define time windows with a factor, and the app splits every stamp accordingly and reports the parts separately. Anything outside a window runs at factor one – nobody has to work it out.
The time stays with the document
Transferred time becomes a service line carrying the PDA flag, work type, quantity, break quantity and work-time factor. After posting, the same fields are on the shipment and on the invoice.
What changes between technician and invoice
Six things that run differently once it is in place.
Month end stops being a paper hunt
What was clocked is on the order. Whether a job took four hours or six is answered by the time list rather than by memory.
Travel time costs what travel time costs
Work type mapping puts travel on its own resource at its own rate – same technician, same stamp, a different line on the invoice.
Breaks show up before an audit finds them
A break has to fall inside the recorded time, and past a time you choose a work order cannot be closed without one.
Nothing goes out twice
Every recorded time carries the document that invoiced it, and anything non-invoiceable is marked as such instead of quietly going missing.
Dispatchers can see the week
The time overview puts attendance against working time per technician by day, week or month – with a utilisation threshold you set yourself.
Corrections need no reposting
Start and end time, quantity, line number and work order can all be changed, and a time can be split as long as it has not been transferred.
Set up technician time tracking in Business Central
Eight areas, each configurable on its own.
A terminal for the technician
Sign in by badge scan or from the user list, with a PIN. Then: work orders in progress, start a job, finish a job, and optionally the day's total right after signing in.
Recorded times
Every stamp with start, end, total duration, hours, quantity, technician, document and status. Edit, split, or move it to another work order or line.
Work schedule and surcharges
Time windows per weekday, each with a factor. The test pane shows how a real recorded time breaks down into factors and break before anything is posted.
Break times
Recorded per technician and day, with a time from which they are checked, and an individual break rule per login for anyone who works differently.
Work type mapping
Map working time and travel time onto a resource, resource group, item, item group or G/L account – with its own unit price, and differently per customer and per origin where that is what the contract says.
Rounding and invoicing
Separate units of measure for hours and for invoicing, each with its own rounding precision. Invoice the tracked time, or the tracked time together with its factors.
Transfer into the document
Transfer Time on the service order, the service quote and the work order. The service item line then carries tracked hours and tracked quantity of its own.
Reporting you can extend
The time overview calculates by day, week or month. Presence, work and drill-down are interfaces: if you have to calculate differently, you replace the implementation instead of working around the app.
Beyond Service Time Tracking pricing
Getting Service Time Tracking running
From the first clock-in to the service line: setup, terminal and invoicing.
Is there a service time tracking app for Business Central?
Yes: Beyond Service Time Tracking is a Business Central extension that needs no other apps. Technicians clock on to the work order at a terminal, and the time becomes a service line on the service order, surcharges included.
How do technicians clock in to a work order in Business Central?
They sign in at the terminal, tap Select Order and pick the service item line they are working on; Start and End record the time, and they confirm the total at the end. If a time is left running, a job queue entry ends all open times at the hour you set.
What has to be set up before the first technician can clock on?
The PDA setup: units of measure for hours and invoicing with their rounding, whether breaks are recorded, and how invoicing works. Then the work schedule, if there are to be surcharges. The documentation walks through it field by field.
How does a technician get access to the terminal?
Through a PDA user account: e-mail, resource and password. That is what they sign in with – scanned or selected – and every time they record hangs on their resource.
How does technician time get into the service order in Business Central?
With Transfer Time on the service order. The app creates service lines carrying quantity, break quantity and work-time factor; posting is then entirely ordinary, and the fields stay on the shipment and the invoice.
Let's talk about your technicians' hours
We run Service Time Tracking ourselves as a service provider and keep developing it. Tell us how your team clocks and invoices, and we will share what has worked for us.
Start the conversation
Compatible with
Related apps for Business Central
Business Central service management: copy service orders with one click, document issues in free-text fields and manage service items with images.
The dispatch board for Business Central: drag service orders onto your technicians – using the resources, service items and orders you already work with.
The field service app for Business Central: capture times, materials, photos and signatures on the service order – on Android and iOS, with no middleware.
Marketplace
Try Beyond Service Time Tracking yourself
Install Service Time Tracking from Microsoft Marketplace in your sandbox, create a PDA login and clock the first time onto a work order.