Impact of Write Downs on Productivity Reports

Writing up or down time in Bill Preparation has no effect on productivity regarding the number of hours worked by a Timekeeper. It does, however, affect realization.  To understand this, it is important to understand how Orion saves Fee transactions.  When you first enter a Fee transaction, (i.e., 2.0 hours for $720.00), Orion saves the value of 2 hours in the Edit Hours and Edit Units fields as well as the Bill Hours and Bill Units fields.  The value of $720 is saved in the Edit Amount and Bill Amount fields.  

When productivity reports are run for the amount of time worked at the original value (billable - not billed), Orion looks at the Edit Hours/Units and Edit Amount fields.  Any changes made to this transaction through Fee Entry will be reflected in both the Edit field and also the Bill field.

When a transaction is written up or written down through Bill Preparation, the Edit fields are not affected at all.  The one exception to this is if a global rate change or a transfer to a different Client-Matter is performed. If, through Bill Preparation, we were to write this transaction down to $360 and tell the system to keep the rate constant, the Fee transaction would appear in Fee Entry and in the actual database with the changes.

Note that the Edit fields did not change, only the Bill fields.  When a Billing Realization Report is run, Orion looks at the difference between the Edit fields and the Bill fields to calculate realization.  Most productivity reports that report hours worked and the value of those hours look at the Edit fields; however, some reports do look at the Bill fields so make sure you understand what you are actually looking at when reviewing the reports.