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Animated: Why Standard Time is Hot in Manufacturing

Guess what’s hot in manufacturing project tracking?

Barcode scanning. (scroll down for the video)

Turns out you can scan a few simple barcodes to track manufacturing time.  Scan your employee badge to let the system know who you are. Scan a task name to let it know which job or product you’re on. A timer records the exact starting time for the work. Scan the word “STOP” and the timer stops.

In those few scans, you have just collected the following information:

  1. How much time each employee takes to do their work
  2. How much time each product takes
  3. The total time for each product or package
  4. Average time for each kind of job

Manufacturing is all about efficiency and cost. A few barcodes may surprise you. You may be spending more time than you thought. Or certain jobs are costing you a lot more than you ever imagined. Or secondary jobs may be crowding out your core competencies. Without the exact time measurements, you may never know.

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Whiteboard: Timesheet Pay Periods

Most project timesheets display just one week of days: M – F plus Sat and Sun. That’s cool, but there’s an option in ST to display a full pay period.

What’s ST? Watch this video and find out.  🙂

Pay periods are usually set up to match payroll.  Let’s say you get paid on the 15th of over month, and then the last day of the month. Those are pay periods. Between those dates, you need to know exactly which days to log hours, and the total hours for the pay period. Fortunately, you can configure your timesheet to do that.

You’ll see every day of the pay period, and be able to scroll through them. Pay period totals show how many hours are scheduled for the date range, and how many have been logged so far. That lets you compare your actual hours with expected hours, since expected hours may change for each pay period.

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Whiteboard: Email Notifications

Oh, I forgot again! Putting your time into a timesheet is a pesky thing but if you want to get a paycheck it has to be done. It’s so nice to have a personal robot to remind you and Standard Time® offers one.

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Quick Questions: Timesheet Management

Question: does your project timesheet allow user entry into the future or into the past?

Actually, the past is kind of a no-brainer. Aren’t all entries for the past? But this question is more applicable to the distant past, like the month before last. Who would ever want to do that?

Sometimes entries into the past are simple mistakes. The user doesn’t realize they entered into last month instead of this month. But sometimes users think they can affect client bills if they go back and “fix up” previous client date ranges. This is rarely the case, because those kinds of entries usually go unnoticed.

Consider either locking previous date ranges, or turning off the ability to enter time into the past or future.

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Animated: Why Project Managers Like Standard Time

Project managers, check out this pretty young chick in the video below!  haha  We’ll use anything to sell software.  🙂

But seriously, there is a lot to like in ST. This is more than just an employee timesheet. Project managers get tools to set up, organize, and manage projects.

Just building a task list and assigning employee is a big deal. How do you know if employees are busy when you’ve assigned them to tasks? Working on other projects… working on other tasks… or for other teams. That’s why there’s a nice resource allocation bar chart. You see at a glance who is over-allocated or under-allocated.

How about predicting project revenue. Got a chart for that?  Yep?  And project triangles, and project analytics.

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Quick Questions: PTO Accrual Policies

HR offices manage PTO and vacation tracking. And that is huge! Think about it… for every employee, there are banks for hours for every kind of time off they can take. Vacation, sick, person, training, bereavement, maternity. Gosh, the list goes on and on.

And for each kind of time off (for each employee) you have to manage the rules that govern the hours they earn, and if those hours are different for year 1 and year 5, and if those hours are reset to zero each year, or if employees can carry over hours into the new year, and if they can overdraft on a certain type of time off. Again… the list of choices goes on and on.

So why not automate it?           (watch the video below to see how)

There are tools that automate the entire PTO vacation tracking thing. You set the policies that govern each kind of time off for each employee. And you set the hours available to each employee for each reason.

Then let the whole thing run by itself. Sweetness and love.  🙂

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Quick Questions: Timesheet on a Tablet

A $200 Walmart tablet is all you need to track projects. This video demonstrates. Just pop off the keyboard and start entering project hours.

scroll down for the video

The video shows both a Windows app and a cloud time tracking app in use. Both look and feel fantastic. Tap and scroll with your finger, and enter time and expenses with a pop-up virtual keyboard.

The most common use for a system like this is freelancers, consultants, field workers, and support techs. But sales and other road warriors can also benefit. Imagine tracking your clients and time on the same tablet. You could record customer visits plus the time you spent with them. Or the time you spend on the road. Or the mileage and vehicles. Or all of the above.

You’ll see a list of all your clients and client-projects. For each project, you can have a complete list of tasks to track time to. Tap a button to start a timer. Tap again to stop. The complete time is recorded in your weekly timesheet. You’ll see daily totals, weekly totals, and a graphical block view of every time entry. Invoice clients and run reports, right on the tablet.

That’s a lot of awesomeness for $200.  🙂

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Animated: Why Consultants use Standard Time

Consultants can use Standard Time® for their business. It is a great tool for client invoicing, task lists, project management, graphical timesheets. Use Android or iOS for the road and many other features. Check it out!

Consulting is a precise business. Customers must be happy, or they won’t come back for more. Rates must be reasonable and appropriate. And projects must be managed so status is always available for customers.

That is why consultants love Standard Time.

It does all these things without complaint.