Jobs: know what each one made

A job is whatever you’d call it out loud: “the Smith job,” “Tuesdays at the Chens’.” Log hours against it, tag what you bought for it, bill it as many times as it needs, and Thalermark tells you what it actually made.

Find Jobs in the account menu.

Start a job

+ New job asks only what you call it, an optional customer, and dates if you want them. That’s it. A job doesn’t need anything else to be useful.

How the job bills

Every job bills by the hour unless you say otherwise. A picker on the job’s page switches it to by the visit, day, night, or job, asked once per job because you usually bill the same way every time. A dog sitter’s job logs visits; an overnight stay logs nights; the plow route logs jobs.

When one line is the exception, the line can switch units on its own: the drop-in visit at a flat rate and the same afternoon by the hour can sit on the same job, and each lands on the invoice in its own unit.

Log the time

On an hourly job, log a date, the hours, an optional rate, and what you did. Leave the rate blank for time you’re not charging; it still counts toward what the job cost you in time.

Three ways to enter the time. Pick one per entry and only that mode’s fields show, so there’s never a question of which number wins:

• Duration: type the hours (“3.25”).
• Start & end: Started and Finished clock times, and Thalermark works out the hours, overnight spans included.
• Stopwatch: hit Start when you begin, Stop when you’re done, and it fills in the time for you to review and log. Only one stopwatch runs at a time, so the same minute never gets billed to two customers, and while it runs, a live “Timer running” note shows the clock and takes you back to it from anywhere on the page.

On a per-visit, per-day, per-night, or per-job job, you log the count instead (defaulted to 1, because tonight’s stay is one night), and that count is what lands on the invoice. Time spent stays as an optional extra field, so a sitter can still learn what a 30-minute visit earns per hour without that number ever reaching the customer.

Tag the costs

Every expense has a “What was this for?” question. Answer it with a job and that receipt counts against the job’s numbers. (Tagging changes nothing about your books or taxes; it’s purely so the job math is honest.)

Bill it

Bill this job starts an invoice with the unbilled work already on it as line items, each in its own unit: hours on an hourly job, visits or nights on the others. A job can carry as many invoices as it needs: a deposit and a final, or one every fortnight. Time logged without a rate is flagged needs a rate before it can be billed.

The verdict

Five tiles across the top of every job:

Ready to bill · Billed · What it cost · Made · Per hour

“Made” is billed minus the costs you tagged; “Per hour” is what the job paid for your logged time. Only you see these, never the customer. When the work’s done, Close job tidies it out of the default list (Thalermark warns you first if money is still waiting to be billed).