Category: Uncategorized

Remember the “good-old-days?” Tech start-ups are not what they used to be.

This project manager went to the doctor for his annual checkup and nearly lost his spine!

Beware, Project Managers!

This can happen to you.  Go to the doctor with a headache from your over-budget project, and lose your spine.  Hope you enjoy the lighter side of project management.  🙂

What happens when your project is over budget by 12X?  You go to the doctor with a splitting headache.  Or what happens when all the employees are camping out on the easy tasks and ditching the crap?  Schedule your appointment.  The doctor will see you now!

Project managers need to see this!

Barcode scanning can be used for assembly and manufacturing shops using Standard Time. You put a bar code your work orders and track them with Standard Time. How easy is that!

Imagine knowing how long it takes to assemble a product.  Sure, you have a good guess.  But you might be shocked to know the actual time.  Or the variances.  What’s the longest it takes?  Or the shortest?  What factors contribute to long assembly times?  Or the shortest?

Knowing these things can change your business.

How barcode scanning in Standard Time works

First you scan an employee name.  That tells the system who is doing the work.  Then you scan a project task name.  The timer in ST immediately starts.  Scan the employee name with the word STOP and the timer stops.  Now you know how long this employee worked on that assembly.  The software totals up all the employee time for each assembly.  Now you have the raw materials for your stats.

You can use Standard Time to link with QuickBooks for invoicing your time and expenses. Track time in Standard Time, and then send it to QuickBooks.  You can invoice clients, pay employees, and run reports.

QuickBooks is a great accounting package.  But it’s not much of a project tracker and timesheet.  You don’t get any real project management; there is no resource allocation, employee availability charts, or project revenue sales funnels.  That’s only natural.  QB does what it does.  And it does it well.

That’s why you need a product like Standard Time.  You get all the project management you need there, and you can simply send employee time and expenses over to QB.  Simple!

 

Stopping the employee camp-out syndrome. This video show you how! This is an important way Standard Time can keep you on budget and your project on task.

Here’s the issue: sometimes employees camp out on tasks they feel comfortable with.  They may be scared of upcoming tasks they don’t know the details of.  Or they may not know how to perform those upcoming tasks.  They may not know that your project must move forward to make a profit.  After all, few employees truly understand profit and loss.  So stay where it’s comfortable — right there on the comfy tasks.

This Standard Time feature give you a way to move employees through project tasks quickly.  How?  Employees get a popup when their task is nearly complete.  They get an error when it’s fully complete.  Little messages like this are usually enough to ensure that tasks are completed quickly, and employees move onto new tasks right away.

Want something else just as cool?  There are project task rollups in Standard Time.  That means you can see at-a-glance how many hours have been charged to each task.  And those values roll up to the project level, so you see that too.  Getting project status is easy.

 

The Quick Task Window makes keeping track of your time easy! All you have to do is click to start a task, and then click to stop.  This starts and stops the timer. The time between clicks is automatically put into the timesheet. This is then sent to your manager automatically. This keeps your projects on task and keeps you on budget!

Any time you can collect employee hours close to the actual job, you will be ahead.  The closer the better.  That eliminates human error and gives you exact times.  Of course, this feature is optional.  You’ll have to decide if using the timer fits your corporate culture.  In other words, will it spark an uprising?  Will employees hate it?  Sure, that can happen.  But a timesheet timer is sometimes a welcomed convenience.  Give it a try and see how it works for you!

 

 

You’re going to like Timesheet Favorites! You can select your favorite projects, or just the ones you are working on now.  Only those will show up in the timesheet. If your company has 499 projects, you don’t have to see all those in your Timesheet.  That’s a lot to scroll through.  Just pick your favorites from the Favorites Menu and you’re good to go!

Project rollups in Standard Time are a welcomed feature for project managers. The Duration and Actual values show at the project level, just like MS Project. When time is added to the timesheet, values roll up and managers can see employee hours at a glance!

 

Standard Time will track PTO and other time off accruals.  E.g. vacation, sick, personal, etc. An employee can request hours that have been accrued in Standard Time. Email notifications are sent to managers and an email comes back when approval occurs. Its that easy!