Whiteboard: Declutter Your Timesheet With Favorites

Sometimes timesheets can get cluttered. There are too many projects. Some don’t even apply to you. Some have similar names, but still don’t apply to you. What if you entered hours into one of those similarly named projects by mistake.  It happens.

Show Only the Projects You’re Working on Now

Try Timesheet Favorites.

Pick only the projects you’re working on now. Your timesheet becomes 1,000% shorter. You aren’t confused or misdirected to projects you’re not working on.  You’re in and out in no time.

This article Whiteboard: Declutter Your Timesheet With Favorites was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Interview: Project Rollups

The Project Tasks view shows projects on wide rows with bold text.  Under those projects are subprojects and tasks.  The values in those tasks are rolled up to the sub-project and project rows as totals.  The term “rollup” is just another way of saying totals.

Project Task Dashboard

Here are some task fields that are totaled up at the subproject and project levels:

1. Duration, Actual work, Remaining work
2. Start date, due date, and finish date
3. Client and salary costs
4. Quoted costs
5. Material costs

This article (copy heading put here) was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Short intro: Dan’s Day

Here’s a snapshot of Dan the consultant’s day.  Checking employee progress. Checking project status, and tasks. Clients, customers, and vendors. And logging his own time on projects he’s managing and working on. As consultants, that’s what we do.

Consultants use Standard Time® Everyday

But Dan has a secret weapon: ST. It does a lot of the things we all used to do manually.  Consider these possibilities for your own consultancy.

1. Checking timesheets and sending email notifications
2. Checking for upcoming or overdue tasks
3. Watching for too many hours on critical tasks
4. Accruing PTO and comp time
5. Sending email notifications when projects are approaching the end
6. Looking into the future for project revenue predictions
7. Project management charts, like triangles and analytics
8. Syncing with Android and iOS devices
9. These are just some of the things ST does automatically. They are things we used to do manually. But now there’s time for more important things.

Dan’s happy. And the client is happy.

This article Short intro: Dan’s Day was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Short intro: Employee Availability Graph

Choose View, Project Resource Allocation to see an employee availability graph.

Get the Right Employee for Your Project

Actually, the availability graph is just the inverse of the allocation graph. In other words, when an employee is dedicated to certain projects and tasks, they are not available. So it’s the opposite.

How do you get the graph to work? Just assign users to projects and/or tasks. That’s it. The graph automatically works.  It either takes a percentage of a person’s daily schedule for a project, or it takes the duration of the tasks their assigned to.  Either one. But that’s all you have to do to make it work.

This article Short intro: Employee Availability Graph was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Barcoding Time and Materials for Manufacturing

If you’re barcoding both time and materials for manufacturing, take a look at this video.

Automate the Shop Floor

You’re going to see how you can track both time and expenses with a barcode scanner. First you’ll scan the project and task to start the timer. Next, you can scan expense templates that represent the materials or supplies being consumed on the job.

Expense templates are used to represent all the fields you want per-populated in each expense record. They have a name you can scan. That names shows up in the timesheet, with the quantities next to it. Just scan once for each item being consumed. The quantity will update each time. Then look in the Expenses tab to see all the records you are accumulating.

Scroll down for the video.

Now that you have both time and expenses for the manufacturing process, you know exactly:

1. How much time you’re spending for each employee
2. How much time goes into each product
3. Where that time breaks down into tasks
4. How much each project costs
5. How much of that project is time
6. How much of that project is materials

This article Barcoding Time and Materials for Manufacturing was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Short intro: Android and iOS Timekeeping Apps

Here’s a quick overview of the timekeeping apps for smartphones.

Road Warriors! Track Time on the Road

Mike goes through each of the buttons on the main page. Both iOS and Android apps have the same time tracking functionality. You can start a timer, or just enter complete time log records. Expenses, mileage, and vehicles can also be tracked.

Search for “Scoutwest” on the app stores to find them.  Or use these links:

iOS:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/standard-time/id818412788

Android:
http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scoutwest.standardtime

This article Short intro: Android and iOS Timekeeping Apps was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Whiteboard: Time Off Accruals

HR managers will like this. ST automatically computes PTO and other time off hours.  It’s a vacation tracker.  Plus more.

Everyone Loves a Vacation

You just set the number of hours to earn, and the earn period.  Choices are weekly, monthly semi-monthly, or yearly. That’s it.  Nothing else to do.  Just sit back and watch new PTO hours accrue as the weeks go on.

Employees will submit time off requests for vacation, sick, personal or other reasons.  HR approves. Hours are subtracted.  And new ones are added in the coming weeks.  It’s all automatic.  Give it a try.

This article Whiteboard: Time Off Accruals was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Looking for a way to print barcode labels for a project and the tasks under it? This is the video you need.

There are at least three ways to print bar-code labels for time tracking. This method asks for a project to print. Choose a project and you will get the barcode labels for that project and the tasks under it.

Simple ways to Print Labels

You will also get a label to stop the timer, and another to clear the display so other users can approach the computer.

  Click for all the ways to print bar-code labels

There are at least 3 ways to print barcode labels for Standard Time®, to track time. As you know you can use Standard Time to start and stop a timer with bar-code labels. Usually for employee jobs, shop floor, assembly, manufacturing, those sorts of things.

You scan a label to start, you scan another label to stop. You’re going to have to print those labels out. There are three ways to do that, like I said.

The topic of this video is a report that comes in Standard Time that will print those labels. You can also use Microsoft Word or there is a little app called Barcode Builder that prints on sticky labels-that come out on Avery labels.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at this report that you can run in Standard Time. When you run this report you’re going to choose a project. It will print out the project and the label and then all of the tasks underneath that. You see the tasks listed here, you see the duration of those tasks and then you get the labels.

Operators can scan the project name, the task name, they will also have to scan their employee name.

We’ve got the stop label at the bottom that will allow them to stop the timer. And then we’ve got a clear label that would clear the display so that other operators could go in and start scanning. You will have to install a certain font for this report to work. You can get the download link from our website. But that’s the font you’ll use.

Let’s go ahead and switch over to the screen and take a look at how we can generate these labels. I’ve switched over to Standard Time to show you how that report got generated. I’m going to go ahead and click on the project tasks tab-you’ll see 6 tabs along the top. Click on the project tasks tab shows you a list of all of your projects and tasks.

You can see the one selected here is the project that came out on that report. You can then see the two tasks that came out. This is actually a subproject which is not printed and you also see the duration’s for those tasks.

Before getting into the report you might consider going over to the file menu and choosing project wizard. You can then go through this wizard to create a new project and some tasks that you’ll be able to print out. When you do you’ll be able to go to the tools menu and choose projects.

This is the actual project here, and see a list of all of your projects that are in the system. The project task tab shows the actual tasks.

The report I was showing is hidden away; I put it into the management section of the reports. This is a downloaded report, not a stock report, you’ll have to go to the Standard Time support people to get that. Click on that and click the projects tab and choose the actual project that you’re going to print.

In this case it’s the H1904 project and then go ahead and click OK. When you do this report will come up; it looks very much like what you saw on the paper.

You see the project that I’ve selected, the label for that, again you’ll have to install the special font for barcode labels. See the actual tasks listed here, the duration and then their labels. Scroll down you see the stop label and then the clear. You can go to the file menu choose print or there is a little button you can click on the tool bar and that will print it out. Essentially all you have to do.

These won’t print on sticky labels, these simply print on white paper. They are not like the barcode builder app that prints on the Avery labels in sequential order. This simply prints them right out on a normal sheet of paper that you can laminate, hand out to the operators and they can then begin scanning.

They’ll have to scan their user name, scan the project, then the task and then the timer will start. You can, if you want to get a little adventurous, go into the design view. You see two tabs along the top. The design view allows you to go in and take a look at the actual fields that are in this report. You might consider saving a copy before you do that.

You can see that these are texts and they simply use a special font. You can see the font here that we showed earlier that you would download to print this report. Go back to the preview and this is what the report will look like.

You can ask for this report. It’s free with Standard Time; the support people will have to give this to you. That’s how that report is generated; very simple just click, click, click and out it comes.

Also see: Barcode Time Tracking Part 1, Video: Barcode Scanner Part 2, Barcode Part 3, Barcode Builder Video, How to print bar-code labels with MS Word, Manufacturing Timesheet, Create project tasks from barcode labels

The BIG Bar-coding Page

This article Looking for a way to print barcode labels for a project and the tasks under it? This is the video you need was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Quick Questions: How To Use Expense Templates

Put Expense Items in your Timesheet

Questions:

1. Do you track expenses for your business?
2. Are your expenses often the same?
3. Do you track mileage for tax purposes?
4. Do you drive to same client office time after time?
5. Do consultants in your office travel?

If you answered yes to any of these, watch the video below and download the app.

If you answered no to all, click this link for other ideas.  See ya!

This article Quick Questions: How To Use Expense Templates was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com

Short intro: Timesheets Tasks

Every employee timesheet is potentially different. Different projects; different tasks.

Break Your Project Down

Assign tasks to users, and only they will see them in their timesheets. You can also assign tasks to work groups, and everybody in the group will see them. That makes timesheet more relevant to each user. There are fewer mistakes because people won’t accidentally log time to tasks they’re not working on.

This article Short intro: Timesheets Tasks was first seen on http://www.stdtime.com