Timesheet & Project Management Blog

Quick Questions: Billable and Non-Billable Time

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Category: Blog

Published: Wednesday, 20 January 2016 14:05

Written by Ray White

Mike: Coming up on Standard Time® we’re talking freelancing, we’re talking consulting, we’re talking billable and non-billable time right now. Mike with Standard Time back with Ray White of Scoutwest the developers of Standard Time. Ray, as a freelancer I have billable time, I have non-billable time but I want to log all of that. How do I do that in Standard Time?

Ray: You want to make sure all of your time is collected. Whether your billing that to a client or not; whether it shows up on an invoice. You want to make sure that that time is logged. Let’s look at how to do that. What you’re seeing in the timesheet are time logs, that’s really the place to start. The numbers that you see here represent time logs. If I click on the time log tab you see these represented in a list; it’s a little different than in the timesheet. If you go to the timesheet and click on one of these those are time logs. Go down here and click on notes and detail you will see that each one of these has a billable and a billed check box. If you’re billing time you would check that and that’s going to end up on an invoice when you bill that client. If you don’t bill the time you can just uncheck that and you’ll know where your time is spent.

I’m going to switch over to the project tasks tab, open up one of these. You’ll notice that each one of those has a billable or non-billable check box. You can basically determine for each task whether it’s billable or not. You know that those tasks show up in the timesheet if you want to charge time or log time to a non-billable task you simply put it into that. Or billable task will automatically set that flag that we saw earlier when we went to notes and details. Really that’s all you have to do.

Thanks Ray. We’re asking more of your questions next time on Standard Time. If you have a question that you want to submit and we’ll record a response you can do so by going to the website by clicking on the link at the end of this video. We’ll see you next time with more Standard Time.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-egcPhnzLg

Animated: Why Standard Time is Hot in Manufacturing

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Category: Blog

Published: Tuesday, 19 January 2016 14:55

Written by Ray White

Standard Time is hot in manufacturing. Here’s why:

Manufacturing efficiency is all about time and cost. So we give you the tools to make that happen.

1. Barcode scanning, to learn how long your processes take
2. Project tracking, to learn which jobs, tasks, and products consume the most time
3. Project budgets, to see when you’re about to blow through estimates

Click to try barcode scanning and project management tools in your manufacturing shop.

Get it at stdtime.com

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhbnn3OyVl4

Whiteboard: Timesheet Pay Periods

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Category: Blog

Published: Monday, 18 January 2016 15:32

Written by Ray White

Most people view timesheets by the week. Seven days. Usually Monday through Friday, plus the weekend.

But did you know that the Standard Time® timesheet can show an entire pay period?

Let’s say you have two pay periods per month.  One is from the 1^st of the month through the 15^th, and the other is the 16^th through the end of the month.

Would you like to see all the days in those pay periods, rather than just one week?

Now you can.

Create any pay period date ranges you like, and the timesheet will automatically use them.

Employees can switch between ‘weekly view’ and the full pay period.

They can also submit timesheets for pay periods.

Want to try pay periods in your timesheet?

Download Standard Time now!

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydz28ARarQQ

Whiteboard: Email Notifications

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Category: Blog

Published: Wednesday, 13 January 2016 13:57

Written by Ray White

If you’re like most people, you sometimes forget to track your time. Or forget which jobs you should work on next. Or which tasks are due.

Hey… you’re focused on your job, not project management. But that’s important too.

But what if you had a personal robot to:

• Check your timesheet for errors?
• Or tell you when new tasks are coming up?
• Or tasks are coming due?
• Or tell you when you’ve been assigned to new projects?
• Or remind you of employee status?

That robot would be pretty handy!

In the Standard Time® timesheet, we call that robot: email notifications.

Email notifications watch out for you. They look for things you might forget.

Like a personal assistant would.

Click to try email notifications… in Standard Time.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWqOJLvkHnk

Quick Questions: Timesheet Management

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Category: Blog

Published: Tuesday, 12 January 2016 21:41

Written by Ray White

Mike: Coming up on Standard Time® we are talking timesheet management, employee timesheets and Marty McFly. That’s up next. Mike with Standard Time with Ray White of Scoutwest the developers of Standard Time. Hey Ray! We can log our past time, we can log our present time; can I look into the future and log my future time?

Ray: OK. So Marty McFly, Back to the Future, can you put time into the future?

Is the future here, Ray?

It turns out you can. Out of the box Standard Time will let you put your time into the past, into the present (today) and into the future. Sometimes people go on vacation or something like that and they want it out into the future and put their time in, where they know they’ll be working on a project. But in other circumstances managers sometimes want to shut that off. One circumstance that comes to mind would be DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency); you’re supposed to put your time in today only, not into the paste, not into the future. If you want to shut that off let me show you how to do it.

You would go to the tools menu choose users and organizations, right click on a user and choose user rights. Because the user rights control how you could do that, or in fact other things. You see a right called enter time into past dates, enter time into future dates. You can actually control that right here on user by user basis, some users can some users can’t. If you’re a manager you can bypass those little situations and be able to put time in on behalf of an employee.

Let me show you another way. Go to the tools menu, choose approve time and expenses, I’m going to go down to the lock date range. Completely different way you can pick a date range; start stop click the lock date range you’ll see it at the bottom. And that will control whether people can put time into their past. If you lock out certain dates in the past, which is often done if you’re a consulting agency that would log time to client billing, you would want to lock that out as soon as you bill the client. Or into the future, you can create locks into the future. Couple of different ways, flexibility here, you can do it!

Great Scott! Thanks Ray. We’re answering more of your questions next time on Standard Time. If you have a question you’d like to see us answer submit it at the website and we’d be honored to record that response for you.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gzl0iCuu_o

Animated: Why Project Managers Like Standard Time

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Category: Blog

Published: Monday, 11 January 2016 14:48

Written by Ray White

Hi! I’m a project manager, and I like the Standard Time® Timesheet.

Here’s why:

Number one: I compare actual work with estimates, and make course corrections as needed.

Number two: Project management charts help me see into the future and prepare for bad things that might happen.

And number three: My projects never go over budget. Know why? Because task warnings pop up automatically and prevent task overruns.

I’m a project manager, and I recommend the Standard Time timekeeping app.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsmgJBWWyc

Animated: Why Engineers Don’t Hate Standard Time

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Category: Blog

Published: Friday, 08 January 2016 15:31

Written by Ray White

Hey… look at those engineers…

They hate every stupid app you stick on their computers and phones, including social media and text messaging.

But they don’t hate Standard Time®. Why is that?

Here’s why:

-          This timekeeping app manages projects

-          It reminds you of things you forgot

-          You learn which projects mean the most to you

-          Plus, it has cool graphs you’ve never seen before

Try Standard Time in your engineering shop. We promise your engineers won’t hate it.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT0JrV-P9-0

Quick Questions: PTO Accrual Policies

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Category: Blog

Published: Thursday, 07 January 2016 13:21

Written by Ray White

Mike: Today on Standard Time®; PTO, vacation accruals and you. Up next. Mike with Standard Time back with Ray White of Scoutwest the developers of Standard Time. Ray, my company determines vacation depending on years. How do we do that in Standard Time?

Ray: Ok. People who have been there a long time get more vacation than those who have just joined. Let’s switch over to the time off tab and I’m going to right click and show you how to set up time off policies. So these policies would be for each employee in the company. Pick time off policies and I’m looking at Buzz Aldrin, you can see the different kinds of time off that he can take; these are all set up by you. The first column that you see here would be the hours that are available to Buzz. The number of hours that he earns and when he earns those; whether those are biweekly, weekly, yearly, semimonthly. You get to set up when people earn time, how much they earn. So if they’ve been with the company longer you can give them more time more frequently.

Let’s switch over to another user. You can see the numbers change, these are the number of hours available again for vacation. Each one of these time off reasons has a different number of hours, the bank of hours. So sick, personal, you can go negative on these if you need to. Again you get to set the number of hours that they earn and when they earn it. So that each person has their own profile of policies that you’ve set up. That’s how you do it.

That’s great. So a lot of religious organizations and non-profits, companies that give sabbaticals for leaders who’ve have been there for eons. Can you do that within Standard Time?

You could set up another one of these time off reasons. You can click time off reasons here, create a new one for sabbatical and then you can earn hours toward that. As you’re with the company you can earn hours or you can just grant them a number of hours for that sabbatical.

We’re answering more of your questions out of the mad hatter’s hat which that one was. Next time on Standard Time.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Iq3rufnfms

Quick Questions: Project Triangles

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Category: Blog

Published: Wednesday, 06 January 2016 14:25

Written by Ray White

Mike: This time on Standard Time®; project management and project triangles. Mike with Standard Time back with Ray White of Scoutwest the developers of Standard Time. Ray, I have a boss, he wants his project, he wants it now, he wants it at the lowest cost and he wants it layered with gold! Obviously that’s not doable what can I do to show him that it’s not?

Ray: That’s a common demand. You have three competing demands; time, cost and then scope. Which is what you want out of the deliverable. It turns out Standard Time can illustrate this. We’ve got this little thing called project triangles. Let’s take a look at the screen, I’m going to click on the view menu and choose project triangles. When I do first of all you see one project here that illustrates the issue that we’re talking about. We’ve got scope of 25% you see in the tool tip. Our cost is about 33% but look at the time, we’re going to go over budget. If you get 100% of what you want your time is going to be like 400% because you can see the direction this is going right now. It’s a terrible looking triangle, look at the peak way up here, this is going to go way off the chart.

Let’s take a look at another example, same kind of situation the one over on the right hand side. Again we’ve got our time, cost and scope, the three competing demands. In this case we’ve got our scope around 30%, our time is about 13, but look at the cost, we’re way over here at 81%-it’s peeking out its way over. By the time this is project is done it’s going to be way over budget. These triangles you can see are illustrating these three demands that can get out of wack if you don’t watch them.

Switch to another project in this case time and cost kinda looking good but look at the scope we’re only at 20%. When you hit 100% on this both time and cost will be out of control. You’ve got to watch those things. Let’s take a look at the perfect, nirvana project. Down here we have the scope at 90, you’ve got 90% time, 95% cost everything is looking really nice. That’s hard to achieve but still this illustrates the health of your projects, how they can get out of control and things that you want to jump in and take a look at, figure out some resolutions and get your project back on track.

With the popup box I notice that quality was on there.

Oh, good point! You can actually click here and show a fourth demand which is quality. You’ve got time, cost, quality and scope. Quality would be the goodness and how well the product is proceeding. That’s going to change over time but you can look at that demand as well. Usually people are looking at the triangle only but still you have that fourth demand that you can look at.

That’s awesome. So the proof is in the triangle! No more explaining, you just show it and pick which you want.

Project managers can document and point out and illustrate where their projects are going. We’ve got these three demands all in check to make that perfect project for time, cost and scope.

Thanks Ray. We’re answering more of your questions next time on Standard Time so be sure to check back very, very often. We’ll see you soon.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toohN6bxImU

Quick Questions: Timesheet on a Tablet

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Category: Blog

Published: Tuesday, 05 January 2016 14:28

Written by Ray White

Mike: Coming up next on Standard Time® we’re talking freelancing, contractors, the field and tablets. Mike with Standard Time back with Ray White of Scoutwest the developers of Standard Time. Ray, we all know that Standard Time runs on a desktop. What about tablets?

Ray: OK. Let’s take a look and I’ll show you how it works. This little notebook is actually a tablet. You can buy a system like this for $200. I’m going to just pop this screen off so you can see that this is a two-in-one. We’ve got Standard Time running on it right there. And when I turn it over I get a nice portrait view. I’ve got the desktop version of Standard Time running but I’m going to switch over now and look at the web edition. You have the same look there; you’ve got your timesheet, time logs, expenses, back to the windows edition. Yes, perfect little set up for freelancers, consultants out in the field, works great.

Let’s say I’m a Mac guy or an Android phone guy, can we do that?

Yeah, if you don’t want to take your notepad, laptop out into the field you just have your phone, your iPhone, iPad, Android. Yeah let’s take a look here and I can show you what they look like. We’ve seen the tablet here; Standard Time runs nicely on that, Windows and web. If you have your phone out there you’ve got your time and expenses here on your phone. iOS and right there on your iPad. Any one of the systems Standard Time will run great you can take these out in the field do your consulting, client billing, and you’ll have it all right there, time and expenses.

That’s great. All you freelancers out there, all you contractors, you field workers, you have no excuse. You have Standard Time in the field now to take with you. We’re answering more of your questions next time with Standard Time. We’ll see you then.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbVu6HAHHS8