Connect the Standard Time timesheet to SQL Server.
These links may also help:
Project Portfolio Management
Watch this video below for tips on managing portfolios of projects. A project portfolio contains one or more projects with similar characteristics. For instance, you might put all your consulting projects into one portfolio. Or, you might put marketing or sales together. Or, there may be completely different lines along which your projects naturally fall. Those belong in portfolios.
Once you have placed projects into a portfolio, you can do special things with them. Try running reports for all projects in a portfolio, or comparing one portfolio against another. You can see project revenue for a single selected portfolio. Or you could filter the resource allocation chart for a selected portfolio.
Consider how you might group your projects for effective portfolio reporting.
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®.
- User rates
- Category rates
- Project rates
- Role rates
- 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.
Memorize Time and Expense Reports
Memorizing reports make is simpler to run the same report again and again.
Have you ever run the same report over and over, and have to remember what choices you made each time? Consider “memorizing” the report.
Memorizing is just saving the choices you made when running a report. Those choices define the projects, clients, date ranges, and employees that we selected when the report was first run. If you memorize the report, you won’t have to make those choices again. You just click once on the memorized report, and it will open.
Windows and Web Time Tracking Apps
Have you ever seen a time tracking app that runs on both Windows and Web? Here’s one.
In other words, there are two platforms that let you access your timesheet and projects. One platform is the familiar Windows client. It’s a native Windows app that runs on Windows 10.
The other is a Web-based time tracking app that runs in a browser. Got Chrome? Or Microsoft Edge? This time tracking app can be accessed with either one. Or one of the many other browsers, like Safari, Firefox, or Opera.
Need to manage projects? Tasks? Subprojects and portfolios? This one does it. Admittedly, most of those project management features are in the Windows Edition only. But you’ll still see project hierarchies and portfolios in the Web app. The combination of both Windows and Web make this a compelling time tracking and project management offering.
Check it out here: www.stdtime.com
Timesheet Email Notifications
Learn how to set up employee email notifications for your timesheet. Need to know when project tasks are coming up? This will tell you.
Standard Time® Apps
Are you using a project tracking app? Or just winging it? Why not try Standard Time®?
There is an android or iOS timekeeping app. They both sync with the cloud or desktop. They both let you track time, expenses, mileage, and vehicles. Scroll down below the video to install the smartphone apps.
A single road warrior, saving the universe?
Hey, that’s cool. Use the Android or iOS app while working at client offices. All your records can be sync’d with the cloud or the desktop. When you return to the office, bill clients for your time and expenses. Easy!
Part of a project team, but escaped the cube?
If you’re working with a project team, you’ll see only your projects and project tasks on your smartphone. Track your hours and sync. All the hours from team members are added together and are instantly available for project managers to review. PM’s can compare estimates with actuals collected in the field. They can schedule new tasks that will find their way to your smartphone on the next automatic sync.
Scroll down below the video to install the smartphone apps.
Install the Android timekeeping app:
http://www.stdtime.com/android.htm
Install the iOS app:
http://www.stdtime.com/iphone.htm
Employee Skill Availability
Ever wonder if an employee is scheduled for tasks next month? Or next week?
How would you know? Ask them?
There’s another way. Schedule some tasks, assign employees, and then open this resource availability window. You’ll see a graph of all the hours an employee has available to them. If there are gaps, schedule more tasks. Maybe you should ask them first, but then do it, and you’ll have some nice documentation that shows who is scheduled and who is not.
And, there’s a flip-side to this.
Resource allocation is the flip-side to employee availability. In other words, an employee is available when they are not allocated to tasks.
You might have a need to find resources by their skillsets. Looking for an ‘Engineer 1’ or ‘Engineer 2’ qualification? Use this tool to find them. You can then assign them to your project… after asking them first. (People aren’t machines. And you probably shouldn’t call them ‘resources’ either. They are human beings and like to be consulted before blindly signed up for anything.)
Watch the video to see if this might be useful to you and your project.
Future Project Billing Rates
With Standard Time® an administrator can predict how much a project will cost. The dates for the project are sometimes far enough into the future that you must set future rates. You can create date ranges that contain future billing rates.
For example, suppose you needed to predict project costs into 2017 and 2018. (still future at the time of the article)
The salary and billing rates are likely different for those future years. You may not know exactly what they will be, but you have an idea. The software lets you enter your predictions, and uses them for tasks that are scheduled to begin then.
So, back to our 2017 and 2018 example… your future rates will be used for tasks that are scheduled on those future dates. Each task has a starting date. Each task is assigned to users. So, the user rates for those dates are incorporated into the cost of each task.
A task in 2018 may cost more than a task in 2017. The software knows this.
Watch the video for details.
Expense Timesheet Template
Create expense templates to automate entering new expenses and mileage. After creating the template, users will see the new item in their timesheets. They will simply enter a quantity for each one they spent money on.
One example of an expense template might be for travel you do repeatedly. Let’s say you drive to a nearby city several times per month. Each time you drive, the mileage is the same. It’s all deductible, so you could create an expense template that represents that dive. After creating the template, you could simply enter the number ‘1’ into the timesheet next to that line item. the ‘1’ represents driving once. Enter ‘2’ for two trips. New expense records are created for each value you enter into the timesheet.