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Quick Questions: Submitting Timesheets

If you’re in a consulting firm, you know that billable hours are your livelihood. Losing hours is not an option. Lose too many, and you’ll be consulting somewhere else. Every consultant must be utilized to the max, and every hour must be accounted for.

Time is money.                                                     scroll down for a video…

In that light, the management overhead of submitting and approving timesheets is a small price to pay for accurate billing. Think of it as another set of eyes on your most valuable asset — consultants, and their billable hours.

Managers can view a list of employees who have submitted their timesheets. Emails go out to those who have forgotten. Another email goes to managers, and lists employees who forgot. Now managers can check each timesheet and approve it.

What are they looking for? Correct time under clients, projects, tasks, and time periods.

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Quick Questions: Creating Project Tasks

Follow these simple steps to create a project task that is displayed in the timesheet.  Scroll down for a video.

Why track time with project tasks?  Because you will be tracking much more information that just a project. It takes the same amount of time to enter hours for a task as it does a project.  But a project task contains other information that you can use to better understand the execution of your project.

For instance, project tasks are associated with categories.  Each category describes the type of work you performed.  You can run reports or comparisons on categories.

Project tasks also contain other fields that differ from task to task.  So choosing the appropriate task means you are also choosing those other data point.  Again, use them in reports to learn more about where your time is spent.

Other useful association may exist, such as payroll information, estimates verses actuals, and link dependencies based on task completion, and warnings when tasks are nearly finished.

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Barcode Scanning for Manufacturing

During the manufacturing process you are able to keep track of the time spent on each product, follow your employees time and you’ll know how much time was spent on each task.

Just add a barcode label to your work orders or products.  Scan them during the manufacturing process.  And you’ll know how much time you spent per piece, per project, and per employee.  Use those numbers to reduce manufacturing time and increase efficiency.

Look for a free barcode font named IDAutomationHC39M_FREE.otf.  Install this and use MS Word to create barcodes.  Simply type *MyProject* into Word, and then change the font.  You’ll see a barcode label where your text was.

You’ll need to scan the employee name, a category, and the project.  This is enough information to start the timer in Standard Time®.  Then can the word “STOP” (without the quotations).  The timer will stop and you’ll have some new information you can begin to use to improve your business.

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Project Costing and Billing Rates

Unique costs and billing rates can be set for every project.  Even if you have 500 different projects each can have a different rate.

There are actually five different project costing models in Standard Time®.

  1. User rates
  2. Category rates
  3. Project rates
  4. Role rates
  5. Option Year rates

You can choose any of those these for a given project.  That means each project task and each time log associated with a project can potentially compute client and salary rates differently.  Usually, the same choices are made for all projects, and just the user rates are changed for each one.  But, you could change the model for each project.

 

 

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Graphical Timesheet

Did you know there is a graphical timesheet in Standard Time®?  There is!  (In the Windows Edition, that is.)  Just click the little gray icon at the top of the timesheet and choose ‘Daily Hours’.  This mode displays time graphically on a daily schedule.  Watch the video below to learn more.

The graphical mode lets you see each time entry as a colored block on the screen.  You can easily spot overlapping time entries and correct them.

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Happy Timesheet – Standard Time®

Can a timesheet make you happy?  Maybe… if it truly makes your life easier… sure!  This video will show you the many things available in the Standard Time® timesheet.

This timesheet has a lot to make you happy.  That’s why it’s called the ‘Happy Timesheet’.  🙂

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DCAA Timesheet Compliance

There is a timesheet specially made for the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). It’s Standard Time®; it has everything you need for your project.

And just to go above an beyond… this timesheet has support for Option Year contracts and contract MOD’s.  What are they?  Well… if you don’t know, then you probably don’t need them!  Option Year contacts are a government thing.  Each year you get a new contract that specifies the scope of the projects.  It lists the manpower and rates the government will accept.  You assign actual employees and countersign the contract.  Then you own it.  ST supports that whole process.  But still… if you don’t use OY contacts, then it’s more than you need.

So maybe you just need a simple timesheet that is DCAA compliant.

ST has that too.

DCAA compliance is not hard.  There are some simple rules you must follow.  Do that, and you’re find.  The link below shows how ST complies with DCAA regulations.

http://www.stdtime.com/dcaa.htm

Want more information.  Try this DCAA compliance video.

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8 Dirty Secrets of Project Tracking

The video below may be useful for some.  Ray White of the Standard Time® Timesheet team outlines eight dirty secrets of project tracking.  These make a lot of sense.  Take a look!

 

What did you think?  Project tracking is a slippery game.  You’ve literally got thousands of enemies and obstacles that will bring your project down.  It takes a watchful individual to make sure those things don’t happen.  And a project manager who can do that is worth their money.

I was once on a project where the manager made us all sign a paper that said we’d finish the project by a certain date.  It was a big event where the paper was passed around for all to sign.  Honestly, most just laughed, signed, and mocked him later.  Here’s why: he never followed up with any real management.  He committed virtually every sin in this video.

Even though we signed the paper, he had no real end-game plan.  We just all worked on stuff we thought was cool.  The project blew through the ship date and died an ugly death from suffocation.  He didn’t track our hours.  He let the cool kids camp out on tasks they liked, which left the rotten tasks unfinished.

I never really know when the product would ship because it was always a moving target.  And like I said, the project died of suffocation months later.  Hummph.

Hey, I found the video transcription on this page.  Hope it helps!http://www.stdtime.com/videos/dirtysecretsofprojecttracking.htm

–newshirt

 

 

 

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Taking Baby Steps

I ran across a nice video of how to take baby steps to implementing time tracking within your organization.  It’s worth watching.  Follow the link below for the video.

The theory is that you can get immediate value from a time tracking product like Standard Time® with minimal input.  And then after implementing the product, you can take several baby steps to gaining incremental value.  It’s up to you when you reach the point of diminishing returns (when more employee participation yields less value).  But this program has enough upward latitude to allow you to explore the upper limits of your company’s needs.

Follow the steps and see what you think!

Baby Steps For Time Tracking