How to Calculate Your Total Pay, Fill Out the Time Sheet and File for a Leave

If you will recall, the introduction mentioned that Remote Staff’s technology also protects subcontractors by keeping track of their billable hours. In this sub-module, you will see exactly how.

Calculating Your Total Pay

By now, you will have settled on an hourly rate with your client. Your total pay can then be computed like so:

Your hourly rate * number of hours worked (this can include your hours worked overtime, so long as you get your client’s approval for them) + applicable commissions + applicable reimbursements = total pay

The number of hours in this equation is based on the reports generated by the RSSC tracker, which you can check on your timesheet.

Viewing Your Invoice

To view your invoice for each pay run, click on “Invoicing” on the left toolbar. The button will then expand, and you can then click on the “Invoice” button.

A new tab will open, showing your invoices so far. To see the breakdown of each one (i.e., the number of total hours for each period), simply click on the corresponding invoice ID in the leftmost column. Hit “Close” once you are done viewing that invoice.

You can also download a copy of each invoice for your records. Just click on the “Download” button on the rightmost column.

Utilizing Your Timesheet

The RSSC tracker feeds directly into your timesheet, which you can access by clicking on the Productivity Reports tab/dropdown menu on the Subcontractors Home page and then clicking on the “Timesheet Report” button.

The timesheet has a dozen columns in total, but let us focus on the most important ones:

• Day – This pertains to the day of the week. Most clients won’t require you to work on weekends, so you might not have any entries on Saturdays and Sundays unless you’re doing pre-approved offset work.
• Date – This pertains to the calendar date corresponding to the day and allows you to check how many hours you’ve been putting in before each pay run.
• Time In – Once you hit “Start Work” on your RSSC tracker, the time on your computer is registered here. Ideally, you should be able to log in on time each day as your client will be able to see this. It’s worth noting that no one can edit this part of the timesheet.
• Time Out – Conversely, this part of the time sheet records the time on your computer once you hit the “Finish Work” button on your RSSC tracker. It’s best that you don’t log out until after you’ve finished your shift and accomplished the day’s tasks, of course. As with the time in column, no can edit this part of the timesheet.
• Total Hrs – This is the total of hours rendered from the time you started work until the time you finished work. Furthermore, the resulting figure includes any minutes or hours spent working overtime.
• Adj. Hrs – In contrast, these hours are usually restricted to the total hours agreed upon by you and your client for each day. So, if you work full-time, this will reflect 8 hours for a full shift or more. Part-timers, will of course, find the exact number of hours agreed upon daily noted here.
• Lunch Hours – Full-time contractors are instructed to hit the “Lunch Break” button before and after they take their lunch. While an hour is allotted for each lunch break, you can opt to go back to work before the hour is up, if you like. As was mentioned earlier, your lunch hour is not counted as part of your hours, so the time indicated here is deducted from your total hours for the day.

Notes

Now, what if you had some excess minutes or hours rendered for your client? This, of course, is defined as overtime work. In order for account managers to include this in your compensation calculation, you need to get approval from your client first. You can do that by asking for their permission on Skype or email, and then taking a screenshot of their approval.

Once you have that, hit the pencil icon (“Add Notes”), select the “overtime” category, add your comment (e.g., “Did overtime to finish client’s special task,” etc.), input your total work hours (see the entry in the fifth column), and attach the screenshot of your client’s approval. Hit “Save” once.

To check if your note was saved, click on the eye button (“View Notes”) beside the pencil button. This will open a small window allowing you to view the notes for that date.

You may also note other things in this section of your timesheet, specifically offset or offline work and even RSSC or Internet issues that may have resulted in your working hours not being counted. Simply click on the “category” dropdown menu on the “Adding Total Login Hours and Notes” window, and select the right category.

Applying for Leaves

Once you manage to keep working for a client for a certain period of time, usually a year, they may grant you a number of paid leave credits, which you can avail of whenever necessary. Otherwise, you can still take unpaid leaves, though most clients would prefer that you file them beforehand whenever possible.

The leave management page is a summary of all leave requests lodged by all subcontractors on the portal. To access it, hit the “leave request” button on the left menu bar.

To file a leave request, click on the “add leave request” button on the top right hand corner. Click on the dropdown menu for the available leave types and select the appropriate one, be it a vacation leave, personal leave, sick leave, or their paid counterparts. (Just make sure you’ve got enough paid leave credits in the latter’s case.) Indicate the dates for your proposed leave and select the correct duration on the following dropdown menu (i.e., whole day or half day). Lastly, write down the reason for your leave on the said dates, whether it is for a doctor’s appointment, for attending a family function, and so on.

Once you are done, hit “submit.” The leave request will automatically end up under the pending list on the left hand side until your account manager or client approves or denies it. After that, the leave request will be listed under the appropriate list on the left hand side.

Ideally, you should file a leave request at least 48 hours before the actual date to give your client time to approve the request.