Jobs & Task Types

Define and manage the types of work activities your team performs, controlling how time gets categorized and billed.

Overview

Jobs in Hidma represent the specific types of work activities your team performs - they're the building blocks of how you categorize time tracking and control billing. Think of jobs as the answer to "what kind of work were you doing?" - categories like "Client Meetings," "Research and Analysis," "Document Preparation," "Tax Return Preparation," "Financial Statement Audit," or "Administrative Tasks."

Jobs sit at the intersection of time tracking and billing, serving multiple critical functions. When team members log time, they select which job they were performing, providing granular visibility into how effort is distributed. Jobs carry a billable or non-billable flag that determines whether time logged against them can be invoiced to clients. They can have default charge-out rates that override user rates in specific circumstances. And they generate reporting insights showing where your team's time actually goes versus where you think it goes.

What You Can Do

Job Categories

Jobs typically fall into several categories that reflect different types of work:

Client-Facing Work represents billable activities you perform directly for clients - the core work you're paid for. Examples include consulting, advisory services, document preparation, research for client matters, client meetings and calls, review and analysis, technical work, and project management. These jobs are virtually always marked as billable since they directly serve client engagements and should generate revenue.

Administrative and Internal Work covers activities necessary for running your business but not directly billable to clients. Examples include business development and marketing, internal meetings and training, professional development and education, administrative tasks and paperwork, time off and holidays, and general office management. These jobs are typically marked non-billable, though you still want to track time spent on them for capacity planning and utilization analysis.

Project-Specific Jobs sometimes make sense for complex engagements with distinct phases or deliverables. Perhaps an audit engagement has jobs for Planning, Fieldwork, Review, and Report Preparation. A consulting project might have Discovery, Analysis, Recommendations, and Implementation as distinct jobs. This granularity helps you understand time distribution across different phases and can make billing more transparent to clients.

Managing Jobs

Creating New Jobs When you need to track a new type of work activity, create a job to categorize it. Navigate to Jobs (often under Settings or Configuration) and click "New Job" or the + button. Give the job a clear, descriptive name that will make sense to everyone on your team - "Client Meetings" is better than "Meetings," and "Tax Research" is clearer than "Research." Add a description explaining what activities fall under this job type, which helps team members select the right job when logging time.

Set the billable status - is this work that gets invoiced to clients (billable) or internal work (non-billable)? Optionally configure a default charge-out rate for this job type if it differs from standard user rates - perhaps specialized work commands premium pricing. Determine if the job should be available organization-wide or restricted to specific teams or practice areas. Once created, the job immediately appears in job selection menus on timesheets.

Editing and Maintaining Jobs Jobs evolve as your business changes. You might rename jobs for clarity, adjust their descriptions based on team feedback, change billable status when business rules change (perhaps client development becomes billable under certain circumstances), update default rates when pricing changes, or retire jobs that are no longer used. Job editing allows these adjustments while preserving historical time entries - past time logged to a job remains unchanged even when you modify the job definition.

Job Configuration

Billable vs Non-Billable The billable flag on each job is one of the most important settings, directly controlling what can be invoiced. When a job is marked billable, time logged to it appears in the available hours list when creating bills - it's eligible for invoicing and revenue recognition. When a job is non-billable, time tracked to it is excluded from billing calculations, though it still counts toward utilization metrics and capacity planning. This binary flag provides simple, clear control over what generates revenue.

Default Charge-Out Rates Some jobs command different rates than your standard user-based pricing. Perhaps expert witness testimony bills at $500/hour regardless of which partner does it. Maybe after-hours emergency work bills at time-and-a-half. Training delivery to clients bills differently than other consulting. For these scenarios, you can assign a default rate to the job itself. When time is logged to that job, Hidma uses the job's rate instead of the user's standard rate, automatically applying the correct premium or adjusted pricing.

Job Codes Like clients and projects, jobs can have short alphanumeric codes for easy reference. Codes make jobs faster to find in dropdown menus and appear more compact in reports. Some firms use codes like "CM" for Client Meetings, "RES" for Research, "PREP" for Document Preparation. Job codes are optional but helpful for firms with many job types or those who want denser, more scannable reports.

Common Job Structures

Service-Based Jobs

Professional services firms often organize jobs around the types of services they deliver. An accounting firm might have jobs like:

• Tax Return Preparation
• Financial Statement Preparation
• Bookkeeping and Data Entry
• Advisory and Consulting
• Audit and Review
• Client Meetings
• Administrative

A law firm might structure jobs like:

• Legal Research
• Document Drafting
• Client Consultation
• Court Appearances
• Deposition Preparation
• Case Analysis
• Administrative

A consulting firm might use:

• Client Meetings and Workshops
• Research and Analysis
• Strategy Development
• Implementation Support
• Project Management
• Report Writing
• Business Development

Phase-Based Jobs

For engagements with distinct phases, jobs can mirror the project lifecycle:

• Discovery and Requirements
• Planning
• Analysis
• Development/Execution
• Testing and QA
• Review
• Client Presentation
• Implementation
• Project Management

Activity-Based Jobs

Some firms prefer jobs that describe activities rather than deliverables:

• Meetings (Client)
• Meetings (Internal)
• Email and Communication
• Research
• Analysis
• Writing and Documentation
• Review
• Travel
• Administrative

Best Practices

Job Management Tips

Keep the List Manageable Too many jobs creates decision paralysis - team members waste time deciding which of fifteen similar jobs applies to their work. Too few jobs provides insufficient granularity for understanding work distribution. Most firms find 10-20 active jobs provides the right balance: enough granularity for meaningful insights without overwhelming choice. Periodically review your job list and consider consolidating rarely-used jobs into broader categories.

Clear, Consistent Naming Job names should be immediately clear to anyone on your team, including new hires who don't yet know your internal jargon. "Client Meetings" is universally understood; "CM-EXT" requires training. Use consistent grammatical structure across job names - all nouns ("Research," "Analysis") or all gerunds ("Researching," "Analyzing"), not a mix. Consistent naming makes the list more scannable and reduces cognitive load when selecting jobs.

Document Job Definitions For any job where the boundary might be unclear, add description text explaining what activities belong to that job versus related jobs. Does "Research" include background reading, or is that "Professional Development"? Does "Project Management" cover status meetings, or are those "Client Meetings"? Clear definitions reduce variability in how different team members categorize the same work, improving data consistency.

Review Non-Billable Classifications The billable/non-billable flag should reflect your actual billing practices, not aspirational ones. If you consistently don't bill certain job types even though they're marked billable, either change your billing behavior or mark the job non-billable to match reality. Mismatches between job status and actual billing behavior corrupt your capacity and utilization metrics.

Use Jobs for Profitability Analysis Jobs aren't just administrative categorization - they're strategic data for understanding your business. Analyze which jobs consume the most time. Compare estimated hours by job type against actuals to improve future estimates. Identify jobs where actual time significantly exceeds what you bill (suggesting efficiency issues or scope creep). Track trends over time to see if certain activities are growing or shrinking as a proportion of total work. This job-level analysis reveals insights that pure project or client analysis might miss.

Retire Rather Than Delete When a job type is no longer needed - perhaps a service offering you've discontinued or a categorization scheme you're replacing - retire or deactivate it rather than deleting it. Deleting jobs can break historical reporting and orphan past time entries. Retirement keeps the job in the system for historical data integrity while removing it from active selection lists. Most firms maintain a retired jobs category that's hidden from day-to-day use but preserved for reporting continuity.

Related Topics

Time Tracking

• Creating Time Entries - Log time to jobs
• Non-Billable Hours - Internal time tracking
• Timesheet Best Practices - Accurate categorization

Billing

• Creating Bills - How jobs affect billing
• Charge-Out Rates - Job rate configuration

Reporting

• Utilization Reports - Job time analysis
• Profitability Analysis - Job-level margins

What's Next?

Ready to configure your job structure?

For new users:

1. Review the default jobs that come with Hidma
2. Add any additional job types specific to your practice
3. Ensure billable status matches your billing practices

For experienced users:

1. Analyze job usage to identify unused jobs for retirement
2. Review job definitions and add descriptions where needed
3. Configure job-specific charge-out rates for premium work

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Need Help?

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