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Time Sheet Utilization Fields Not Updating

Generietta Cami
Tera Contributor

Friday - last edited Friday

Time Sheet Utilization fields (Maintenance, Strategic, Billable) intermittently remain 0 although Time Cards contain valid Billing Types

 

Hi everyone,

I'm currently investigating an intermittent issue in our custom ServiceNow utilization solution and would appreciate any guidance from anyone who has encountered something similar.


Custom Utilization application
Time Sheet (time_sheet)
Time Card (time_card)
Custom Script Include: utilizationUtils
Custom Business Rule: Calculate Utilization


The Business Rule executes the following:

 

(function executeRule(current, previous) {

var util = new x_xxx_utilizatio.utilizationUtils(current);
util.updateUtilization();

})(current, previous);


The Script Include loops through all Time Cards belonging to the Time Sheet and calculates:

 

Billable
Maintenance
Strategic
Upgrade
Presales
Travel
Total Utilized
Utilization Rate


using the Task's u_billing_type.

Example:

else if ((category == 'project_work') || (category == 'task_work')) {
var billType = grCard.task.u_billing_type.toString();
timeSpent = this._setTimeSpent(timeSpent, billType, grCard.total);
}


Issue

The issue is intermittent.

Some Time Sheets calculate correctly, while others remain at 0 even though the associated Time Cards contain valid Billing Types.

 

Example
Working Week
Week Starts: 2026-07-05

Time Cards

Task Work → Maintenance
Task Work → Strategic
Engagement Scrum → Billable
Time Sheet

Maintenance = 21.55

Strategic = 12.92

Billable = 5.53

Everything is calculated correctly.

 

Failing Week
Week Starts: 2026-07-19

The Time Cards contain:

- Maintenance
- Strategic
- Billable


The Story records also have the correct u_billing_type.

However, the Time Sheet shows:

Maintenance = 0

Strategic = 0

Billable = 0

Total Utilized is also incorrect.

Only the Total Hours field is updated.

I also compared the Time Sheet history.

 

Working week
The audit history shows changes to:

- Maintenance
- Strategic
- Billable
- Total Utilized
- Utilization Rate

 

Failing week
The audit history only shows updates to:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday

Total Hours
There are no history entries showing Maintenance, Strategic, Billable, or Total Utilized being updated.

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KPNow
Kilo Guru

Friday

Hi @Generietta Cami :

This intermittent behavior could be pointed directly to a race condition scenario when accessing grCard.task.u_billing_type.toString(). When a Time Card is processed, ServiceNow doesn't automatically force a synchronous database join for referenced fields on the task table if the underlying glide record hasn't fully hydrated that relationship especially if cards are created or updated via automated background engines, API calls, or concurrent state changes during time sheet submission. When grCard.task.u_billing_type evaluates as null or undefined in memory, your _setTimeSpent method silently misses all condition matches, defaulting those bucket totals to 0 while still allowing the core grCard.totalaggregate calculation to pass through to Total Hours.

To fix this reliably, refactor your script include to explicitly instantiate or query the target task table (such as task or specific child tables) using grCard.getValue('task') rather than relying on dot-walking through grCard.task. Alternatively, add a fallback check to verify whether grCard.task.getRefRecord().isValidRecord()exists before parsing u_billing_type. Ensuring that the business rule triggering updateUtilization() runs with a proper order preference (e.g., set to run after or with a higher order value to guarantee all child task and time card transactions have fully committed to the database) will prevent the script from evaluating stale or partially committed reference pointers.
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