Introduction

The purpose of this article is to answer common questions about Costs & Metrics reports in XTM Cloud and to help resolve issues you might experience with them.

Before reading the article below, make sure you have a good understanding of the principles on which Costs & Metrics reports are based. See Costs & Metrics reports.

Before reading the article below, make sure you have a good understanding of the principles on which Costs & Metrics reports are based. See Costs & Metrics reports.

Questions and answers

How can I adjust the VAT rate?

VAT rates are hard-coded according to the country you have stated in the billing address. VAT rates are stored in the global settings for your XTM Cloud instance, on your system back-end. You can change the VAT rate that is applied by changing the actual country name:

Select Configuration → My account → Billing details → Address (administrative privileges are required!).
In the Country field, change the actual country name. The VAT rate for the country you select is applied.
Then, you can recalculate and export an estimation with the VAT rate for the country you have chosen.

Can I export customer rates, update them, and import them back again?

It is currently not possible to do this in XTM Cloud.

Is it possible to generate a report that contains the WWC, workflow step due date and assignment for each workflow step?

Currently, XTM Cloud does not have any type of report that would contain all this data in one document.

Is there a way to generate a report containing all the comments entered by Linguists in XTM Workbench?

There are two places where you can retrieve this data:

An Preview Extended report (table). To access it, select Project Editor → Files → Preview. In this table, you can include the details shown in the screenshot below. As you can see, they include Comments. For more details about Preview Extended tables, see the dedicated article, Preview Extended table – description.

You can also download a “Comments report” from the Workflow tab. To do so, select Project editor → Workflow → (open file context menu) → Reports → Download all comments.

What is the impact of importing new rate cards?

Importing new rate cards will not affect costs that have already been generated in active projects in XTM Cloud. If you generate new costs in projects after importing rate cards, these costs will naturally be based on the new rate cards. So what matters is when you generate costs in your projects.

We recommend that you deactivate existing rate cards before import. The rate card import tool will not work if you try to import rate cards that have duplicate settings (the same language, subject matter, and workflow step).

Is there any way that a Linguist can export a report that lists the time they have manually logged in previous projects?

Currently, it is not possible for users to obtain this data, but in future (in XTM Cloud v.13.6) , we plan to add an option to obtain it via the REST API method.

Why are we seeing To be done word count numbers that are two times higher than they should be?

It is possible that some ICE and Leveraged matches have been returned and not set to “Done” because the Use not approved memory setting has been enabled (Project Editor → General info → General info). This might possibly have increased the To be done segments count.

First of all, the increased To be done word count all depends on whether or not you allow “not approved” TM matches to be set as “Done” automatically, in the global settings of your XTM Cloud instance (Configuration → Settings → Translation → TM → ICE matches/Leveraged matches). If the said option/options is/are enabled, what you can further do is to verify if the project (or project template) was created with the settings that allow for “not approved” TM matches to be set as “Done” automatically, for a particular TM match type.

On the other hand, the increased To be done word count may mean that you are not using “not approved” translation memory at all and the TM matches you were expecting have not been approved.

Are the statistics in the user’s Statistics tab a Target word count or a Source word count? [Users → User list → (select a user) → Edit user → Tasks → Statistics]?

The user’s statistics are target statistics and it is currently impossible to switch to source statistics.

The “task” here refers to a workflow step, so when a user finishes a step, a record containing statistics information is created in the database and displayed in the Statistics tabs.

IMPORTANT!

The “task” might also be displayed when the whole project is finished, rather than a single workflow step. This depends on what the administrator selects in the global settings of your XTM Cloud instance (Configuration → Settings → Projects → Statistics processing).

Can XTM Cloud round down or up after the decimal point for the Japanese yen currency, in PO costs?

The yen currency uses whole numbers and cannot have decimals. However, in XTM Cloud it is currently not possible to round them up and display them as whole numbers, so the costs in that particular currency will always have decimals.

Sub-unit of the Japanese yen is sen. However, sen is not commonly used in everyday transactions, and prices are typically rounded to the nearest yen. In practical terms, the smallest denomination you will commonly encounter in circulation is the 1 yen coin.

Is there a way to download the Metrics for multiple projects at once, as a flat XLSX file?

XTM Cloud currently does not have this function. However, you can use the metrics-related reports available in the Actions menu. Select Projects → Project list → Actions → Reports to download multiple reports with metrics. However, this only works for XLSX files, not flat XLSX files, and only for projects that have not been archived.

Alternatively, you could also use the API to download multiple metrics.

Is it possible to select multiple system billing currencies?

It is currently not possible to do this in XTM Cloud. You just reselect the system billing currency whenever a PO is generated. XTM Cloud does save different rate cards for different currencies but you need to switch between them in the user’s settings, manually (Edit user → Rate cards → User billing currency).

If you would like to implement two system billing currencies nonetheless, there is a workaround that involves creating two separate LSPs, one with currency A and one with currency B. In this way it is easier to automate this process than manually switch between the currencies in a single LSP.

Why are there discrepancies in the PO and costs that the Linguist sees?

What you are probably comparing are the Current Metrics with the Initial Metrics on the PO for the Linguist. (For more details about types of Metrics in XTM Cloud, see About Metrics).

This stems from the cost type of the cost used in a project. Therefore, what your Project Manager should do in the first place is to check which cost type was used for most recently generated cost, in Project editor → Estimates → Costs.

If you use the Metrics cost type while generating costs, that is where these values come from. To select the Metrics cost type, select Project Editor → Estimates → Costs.

If the values are twice as high as they should be, the Linguist is most likely assigned to two chargeable steps so the metrics are counted twice. If required, you can include a single workflow step in the PO. To do so:

Select Configuration → Data → Estimates → Cost Settings.
Select the Show Chargeable checkbox in Workflow Editor option.
In the Workflow editor for a particular project, you can choose which step should be chargeable (the Chargeable option below):

Why is the cost for some match type “0”?

The current settings can affect the PO report. This is because subtraction was used when generating the PO so the calculation is performed differently than for addition. For example, the rate for Machine translation is 100%, so nothing is subtracted from the total amount, so the value 0 is shown in the PO. To change the setting to addition, select Configuration → Data → Estimates → PO settings (administrative privileges required!).

Alternatively, you can generate a custom PO once the costs have been generated for a particular project. To do so, select Project Editor → Estimates → Costs.

There, if required, you can change the settings to include rates or change a calculation method for that particular PO.

Why are there no Metrics per file but only general Metrics?

The number of files can affect the Metrics display. If there are more than 100 files in the project, you will only see the Metrics for all files. If you want to view the Current Metrics when this happens, you can download them in a report. To do so, use the dropdown menu (Project Editor → Metrics → Save all as:). This report will contain the Metrics per file.

How can I extract a report that only contains the comments added during a particular workflow step?

It is currently not possible to do this in XTM Cloud. You can only download all comments made over the course of the entire project’s workflow. To do so, select Project Editor → Workflow → (open context menu) → Reports → Download all comments.

How can I change the default currency?

You can change the default currency used in a proposal.

To view a proposal, select Project Editor → Estimates → Proposal.
To change the default currency, select Configuration → Data → Estimates → Proposal factors → Basics → Currency (administrative privileges required!).

This will set a different default currency for new XTM Cloud customers. For all existing customers, you will need to change the currency in the settings for each individual customer. To do so, select Customers → Customer list → (select a customer) → Estimate factors → Basics → Currency.

IMPORTANT!

Remember that this change applies only to the Proposal module. It does not affect the Costs module at all, so you do not have to worry that your linguists' rate cards will be affected, etc.

Why is a generated Words, time per Linguist, language, and tasks report empty?

To ensure that statistics processing is enabled, select Configuration → Settings → Projects → Statistics processing (administrative privileges required!). Then select the relevant options there (shown below).
If statistics processing is not enabled, projects that are finished will not be included in the report. Also note that enabling statistics processing is not retroactive.

Furthermore, if you are trying to generate a report for projects created before XTM Cloud v.13.0, ensure that you are using statistics based on “Target”. Before this version, XTM Cloud did not store source statistics for this report.

I would like to generate a report to get the Metrics that a user has processed in XTM projects. I used one of the reports from the “Cost and Metrics” section, but the report itself is empty. Why is that?

If the “Cost and Metrics” reports that contain this data do not generate correctly or are inaccurate, this is usually due to incorrectly generated costs, which need to be present. To obtain detailed information about the error, take one of the projects that was supposed to appear in the report. In it, select Project Editor → Estimates → Costs, and hover over the icon on the right-hand side of a particular entry. To learn more about troubleshooting costs-related issues, see Costs generation – most common issues & troubleshooting.

Reports that do not require correctly generated costs:

Metrics, custom fields included → This report should contain all the information you need, providing that you need only metrics, not costs.
Assignment and words → This report does not include metrics.
Words, time per Linguist, language, and task → This report is mainly for statistics. It also require statistics processing to be enabled.

I would like to generate a costs report for our client as the LSP. How can I do that? Our client already confirmed that they have uploaded our rates in XTM Cloud, but I am not able to see them.

On your side, the users assigned to the projects do not have any rates. If you want a costs report generated for your entire account, the contractor will have to do this and send it to you, as you can only generate reports for LSPs and users working under you.

The rates provided by the client will be only used on their XTM Cloud instance. To generate a report, the client can follow these steps:

Select Costs and metrics → Costs and metrics per Linguist.
Choose the dates you need.
In the Linguist field, enter the name of your company.

As a result, the client should be able to generate a report that only contains the relevant information about you.

In the case of the Metrics, custom fields included report, the LSP can generate this report on their own – without asking the contractor for help.

Can I generate Costs and Metrics reports for projects whose source language unit is a character?

You can download a Combined metrics report which will group together all the Metrics from the projects you have selected for that report. However, there is currently no report that would show you the character count for specific projects.

XTM Knowledge Base

Costs & Metrics reports: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)