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Better Than a Spreadsheet

Are you using a spreadsheet to track time, bill clients or using multiple billing rates? Spreadsheets aren’t cost effective in this case.  Consider using Standard Time® instead.  (scroll down for the video)

Here’s the problem.  If want to track client billable hours in a spreadsheet, you’ll need rows or columns for clients, projects, employees, billing rates for each client, days, and hours.  That’s a busy spreadsheet.  In addition, you’ll need formulas and summations to arrive at client billing amounts.

Somebody has to program all that!

And somebody has to maintain the spreadsheet when new clients, projects, employees, and rates change.  Remembering where everything is can be hard enough.  But what if the person who developed the spreadsheet leaves the company?  Things get pretty hard.

There are other issues using a spreadsheet for time tracking.

Employees can’t sync their time with a smartphone time tracking app like Standard Time.  You can’t really share the spreadsheet on the web without locking it for the current user.  The spreadsheet doesn’t check to see if you entered your time into the correct user or project.  And, you could even enter time into the wrong time slot.

A professional time tracking app fixes all that.  You might find that your ‘free’ timesheet is costing you more that you realized.

Click here to download Standard Time.

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Interview: Project Rollups

Total up actual work hours with project rollups. Each column (duration, actual work, Gantt column, etc) has a total or rollup. You can see the status of your project from those totals.

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Interview: Time Off Accruals

HR managers are waking up happy this morning! Employees can automate their time off requests with Standard Time®. The time off can be for vacation, personal, maternity, family care or annual leave.

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Five Timesheet Features

More than a timesheet! 5 features to make time keeping even easier.  (scroll down for video)

  1. Project task list
  2. Time log list
  3. Expense and mileage tracking
  4. Customizable invoice templates
  5. Request PTO and other time off

Project task list.  This timesheet has a full project hierarchy.  That means you have projects, subprojects, and tasks.  Each task has estimates, actual work, percent complete, and a Gantt bar.

Time log list.  Actually, the time log contains the same information as the timesheet.  It’s just organized differently for ease of use.

Expense and mileage tracking.  You can enter expenses on a one-off basis, plus enter quantities of expenses or miles using a template.

Customizable invoice templates.  Create your own client invoice templates with your own logo and company style.

Request PTO and other time off.  Employees can submit time off requests, plus the system will accrue hours for vacation and other time off

What do you think?  Is that more than a timesheet?  🙂

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Employee Availability

Project managers can know when employees are available for upcoming projects. With the Standard Time® project management app a graph shows when an employee is available to work, is overloaded with work and is scheduled to work.

Scroll down to view the video.

The employee availability graph uses both projects and project tasks to determine when employees are available for work.

The simplest method takes employee assignments from projects and plots them on the graph.  For example: if a person is assigned 25% of their day to a project, you’ll see small bars.  If they are assigned to four such projects, the graph will fill up completely.

A more complex example is assigning project tasks.  All the task assignments are totaled up for each time period and graphed.  You can easily see when a person is overloaded or under-allocated.

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Interview: Time Tracking App

Smartphones have changed the way people can enter their time onto their timesheet. Consultants can  take their phone out into the field and record their time, it then goes into the cloud and is recorded.

Also clients are able to follow the progress done on their projects with Project Bot. They log in with their own ID and follow along. No longer do they have to call the office for the updates!

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Interview: Project Revenue

Look into the crystal ball – you can tell the future revenue with Standard Time®.

Well, sort of…

You can predict future project revenue  (scroll down for the video) with a nice little project sales funnel.  Here’s how it works:

1. You enter the estimated sales revenue for each project
2. You enter the likeliness of winning the project
3. You set the dates you expect to see the revenue
4. Open the Project Revenue chart and see all the projects added together

Projects with a high likeliness of winning influence the chart more than those with low percentages.

Download and give it a try.

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Interview: Timesheet Tasks

The following interview with Ray White of Scoutwest, Inc. will explain who can see your timesheet and also explain favorites. While entering time for a project you don’t have to wade through a long list, just choose your favorites and only see those.

Mr. White also describes who can view your timesheet and who cannot.  Normally, your timesheet is private.  No other employees can see it.  But your boss can.  Executives and project managers may also be able to see your timesheet, depending upon their access rights.