A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Standard Time, the best timesheet on the planet and QuickBooks, the best accounts receivable app can now be joined!
You can send your time and expenses directly to QuickBooks with a special link. Or, you can still export to IIF files that can be imported to QB.
The time you send to QB will be placed into the employee timesheet, where it can be used for payrol or client billing.
Project tasks, graphical timesheet, track expenses, client invoicing and time off accruals. Five favorite features available in Standard Time®.
Scroll down for the video.
This product is more than a timesheet. It is more than a project management app. In fact, there is enough here to run a good portion of your business. That is, if your business is engineering, manufacturing, or consulting.
Start by jumping into project tasks. Build projects that represent your client jobs. The tasks will show up in employee timesheet. Track hours to them with the graphical timesheet, or spreadsheet-style interface. Track expenses to those same projects. Add your mileage and vehicles. When you’re done, invoice your clients, all within the same software.
Did I forget project proposals? Or project revenue estimates? Or resource allocation? Yep, sure did… but that’s for another day. 🙂
Actually, it doesn’t end there. Employees can enter time off and PTO requests. When their vacation or personal or sick time is approved, those hours are subtracted from their bank. But… wait a few weeks, and those hours are automatically replenished by the time off accural mechanism. Now you’re ready for some more time off!
Take a look here.
Here’s a project management tip to help keep projects on schedule and on budget. (scroll down to watch the video)
It’s called ‘Tasks Warnings’ and it works like this….
When employees near the end of certain tasks, a message appears telling them to finish up. If they continue until the task is over-complete, another message will appear, and they will no longer be able to add time to the task.
This strategy nudges employees to completion, and prevents huge overruns of time and money.
Employees are encouraged (by the software) to finish early, move on to the next task, and keep the project going.
Watch the video and let us know what you think!
Quick Tasks are great way to collect ‘Actual Work’ hours from employees. Users simply click a checkbox to start a timer, and click again to stop. Hours between those two clicks are automatically entered into the timesheet. (scroll down for video)
No manual time entry is required. Just click… click… click throughout the day. All task hours are collected up in the timesheet.
Every time log created by this process has the following fields available for reporting.
As you can see, you are collecting a lot of information for each click. There is enough information to invoice clients, pay employees, expense or capitalize projects, or just see where your employee time is being spent. All that is collected with two lowly clicks. 🙂
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.
Choose to only see the projects you’re working on from your corporate list of projects. Only seeing your projects makes your job a lot easier and faster.
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.
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.
More than a timesheet! 5 features to make time keeping even easier. (scroll down for video)
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? 🙂
Short term or long term Standard Time® can handle all billing rates easily. Whether you’re an engineer, developer, road warrior or a project manager you can get the correct billing rate.