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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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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.

 

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Consulting Software

If you’re a freelancer or consultant, you’re in the right place. The video below is for you. It demo’s some great software for time tracking and project management that we all use in the consulting biz.

Scroll down to view it.

Consulting can be a fun business, especially if you’re solving difficult problems and producing something of lasting value. Consulting is good honest work, and you should be proud to one.

But what software are you using? Because that can change the whole universe for you.

Consulting requires software the following disciplines. So, what are you using? Is it working?

      1. Time tracking
      2. PTO tracking
      3. Client invoicing
      4. Project management
      5. Client management
      6. Relationship management
      7. Employee management

See how the software below can do those things for you, and make consulting fun again. 🙂

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Quick Question: Customize Employee Rights

Did you know you can customize what employees can see and do in their timesheet?

Scroll down and watch the video…

You don’t have to let employees see all the time and expenses for other employees, and all the projects, and all the clients in your system. Instead, you can customize what they see and do. By default, all non-admins cannot see other employee hours. But you can cut that view down even further. You can assign projects and clients, so they see only the relevant ones. You can remove some of the other default views in the program, like Time Off, Project Tasks, and Billing. You can prevent certain project billing fields from being edited.

Those are the things you can do with user rights.

Choose Tools, Users and Organization. Right-click on a user and choose User Rights…