A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Do you travel for your job? Consultant? Service Tech? Road Warrior? Standard Time® allows you to keep track of your expenses and mileage.
Mileage records are just expenses that contain a destination, odometer readings, distance, and other optional fields like your vehicle name. You can enter them into an Android or iOS app, which will sync with the cloud or desktop.
Take a look at the video below.
Without ‘Actual work’ from a timesheet, MS Project is just a dead schedule. And the bigger the schedule, the worse the problem is. Here’s why:
Huge project schedules look great the day you create them. Every is as accurate as you can make it. Dates, durations, resource assignments, milestones, deliveries… they’re all exactly where you hope they will be. But all you’re doing is looking into the future with your best guess.
Problem is, by tomorrow, a portion of that future has passed.
Resources have started on their tasks. They’ve reported back to you. Some tasks are wrong. Some will take more time. Others, less time. And the bulk of them carry a large degree of uncertainty.
Only when you get some actual hours on those tasks do you really know how accurate they are, and how they affect the schedule.
That’s why timesheet hours are important.
Import your actual work from your timesheet to your schedule, and everything changes.
Those are questions a timesheet can answer for you.
It is a collection of projects with some common element you care about. For instance, you might have a collection of consulting projects. Or a collection of in-house jobs. Those collections are portfolios.
Look down for a video
Think of the portfolio as a packing crate. Inside the crate are many projects. But you can’t see them. They are packed tightly inside. All you can see is the crate… the portfolio. So you manage the crate, not the contents.
Project portfolio management is handling entire collections of projects for the purposes of proper execution and education.
You are managing the whole collection, not just individual projects. Your reporting, your graphing, your searches, and even setting status is done on the entire collection. The portfolio is a ‘black box’. You don’t look inside at the individual projects. You don’t manage individuals, you manage the entire portfolio as if it were a packing crate.
Clients want project status — all the time! they want to know who is working on it… what is being done… how much it is costing them… and when it will be done. Drilling into that, clients want to know the status of every task, which ones are finished or near completion, and which ones are upcoming.
That is the purpose of the ‘client login’ feature in your timesheet. Clients have a special login they can use to check progress without bugging you. They will see every project you’re doing for them, and all the hours logged. They can also see expenses. This becomes their own little project portal.
Download the ProjectBot app from the Google Play Store to do the same thing.
ProjectBot runs on Android. It’s the same thing as the client project portal mentioned above, but runs on smartphones. Just another convenience for checking project status.
If you’re a government contractor, don’t worry about Defense Contract Audit Agency compliance. Standard Time® has you covered. ST follows all the rules of DCAA. With just a few clicks your timesheet can be set up to become DCAA compliant.
Scroll down for a video
Here are just some things you should consider:
Here are some additional links that may help:
http://www.stdtime.com/dcaa.htm
Make your life easier with MS Project. Integrate with Standard Time® to follow your projects.
Make invoices your own with Standard Time®. Put your company logo, company style in every invoice sent out to clients.
Scroll down to watch the video
Invoice templates in ST at simple RTF documents. That means you can edit them any way you like. Open them in your favorite word processor and go to work! Add your logo, motto, corporate colors and style. Add anything you like. When you’re done, save it in the Invoices\Templates folder. Now you use it in ST.
Place these tags in your document to serve as placeholders for data.
| [INV_NUM] | Invoice number |
| [INV_SUBTOTAL] | Total, before taxes |
| [INV_TOTAL] | Total, after taxes |
| [INV_TAX_RATE] | Percentage of tax on goods and services |
| [INV_TAX] | Total taxes |
| [INV_DATE] | Date the invoice was produced |
| [INV_PO] | Purchase order number |
| [INV_TERMS] | NET30, or other payment terms |
| [INV_DUE] | Due date |
| [INV_REP] | Representative |
| [INV_PROJECT] | The project this invoice was billed against |
| [INV_SUBSYSTEM] | The subsystem this invoice was billed against |
| [INV_USER] | The user the time and expenses belonged to |
| [INV_NOTE] | Note to display on the invoice |
| [INV_STARTDATE] | Starting date range for time and expenses |
| [INV_ENDDATE] | Ending date for time and expense records |
| [INV_TASK_DETAIL] | A pre-built block that describes all the time logs |
| [INV_EXPENSE_DETAIL] | Pre-built block of expense records |
| [INV_TAXID] | Federal tax id of the consulting firm |
| [INV_ADDRESS] | Address of consulting firm |
| [INV_CLIENT] | Client name and address, displayed anywhere you like |
| [INV_TASK_TOTAL_ACTUAL] | Total hours for all time logs |
| [INV_TASK_TOTAL_CLIENT] | Calculated time log cost to client |
| [INV_TASK_TOTAL_SALARY] | Calculated cost to consulting firm |
| [INV_EXP_TOTAL_AMOUNT] | Total expenses |
| [INV_EXP_TOTAL_DISTANCE] | Total distance for all mileage records |
| [INV_TASK_] | Prefix for any time log field |
| [INV_EXP_] | Prefix for any expense field |
| [INV_EMBED_RTF:] | Prefix for embedding a report into the invoice |
Clients can buy blocks of support time from their vendors. Project tasks can be set up in Standard Time® to follow the time used in support. When the time runs out a new contract is then negotiated.
Standard Time® integrates with Intuit QuickBooks. That means, your employee timesheets can be sent to QB for payroll or client billing.
Here’s the scenario:
Click there to try ST: http://www.stdtime.com/download.htm