KB: Logging sub-contractors' work
Problem Description
Working with subcontractors in RangerMSP is best achieved by defining subcontractors as restricted employees and letting them access via RangerMSP Web Interface. In some cases users may consider working with subcontractors by letting them access the system as customers via the Customers Web portal. This alternative is limited and requires more manual management on your side; however, you may find it useful for your needs. Click to read more about managing subcontractors.
When working with subcontractors as customer users, subcontractors enter their work History Notes in RangerMSP. You can then convert the History Notes into Charges. Since these Charges are actually entered using your own user, you may need a way to identify charge to know to which subcontractor it belongs.
If you need to be able to find out how much time was spent by each subcontractor, you need to keep this information in the Charge or Tickets so you can easily find it later on.
This article discusses how to mark Charges or Tickets entered by subcontractors when working with subcontractors as customer Web Users.
Resolution
Option 1 - Referencing on the Ticket level:
You can keep the information about the subcontractor's work in the Ticket. This way you can easily track Tickets worked on by a specific subcontractor, and keep for each Ticket details about the work, such as how much time was spent, and whether you already paid the subcontractor for this job.
To keep this information, you should add or rename some fields in the Ticket, to reference these details.
In the example below, three fields (Field 1 – Field 3) are being renamed to reflect the information you need to keep per Ticket. To rename the fields: right-click the field label > Field Settings. See screenshot for example.
Once these fields have been renamed, you can use them when filtering Ticket lists and report.
Note that if you want to actually keep the time spent as a numeric field, so you can sub it up in reports, you may consider adding a new tab to the Ticket (e.g. subcontractor-work), and in this tab add a new numeric-field. [[Field_Customization|Click to read more about adding new tabs and fields].
Option 2 – Referencing on the Charge level:
You can keep the information about the subcontractor's work using Charges. This way you can easily track Charges which were performed by a specific subcontractor.
To keep this information, you should rename a field in the Charge, to reflect this information.
In the example below, the Charge's Field 1 is renamed to reflect the subcontractor information you need to keep per Ticket. To rename the field: right-click the field label > Field Settings. See screenshot for example.
Once the field has been renamed, you can use it when filtering Charge lists and report.
