OT: Time-Logging Software

Every lawyer I've known used Timeslips, but it seems to be out-dated now.

I do my time logs straight into the invoice--it leads to a level of detail intermediate between a normal time log (which keeps track of start and end times) and the usual invoice format (just X hours total). I've been doing it that way for years, and customers seem to really like it.

I use gnucash, which is free and which I like quite well.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

That is my normal mode of operation since ... forever.

Can't vouch for it because I never used it myself but seems practical for a multi-client situation:

Personally I use a real stop watch and MS-Works. It almost doesn't work any other way because us "real" hardware guys spend time in the shop or outdoors (sometimes way outdoors) during EMC measurements where there can't be computers.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Nice. But does this have a start and stop button to use during a project? Where you can clock out for lunch or for an unrelated phone call and then clock back in?

This is something where I never understood why Windows (or MS-Works) does not have that time clock feature.

I use MS-Works and the entry form has a field where I enter the actual work performed during a particular time. But I found that clients did not really want to have that level of detail so I only copy the parts with materials and travel expenses into my invoices. The hours get divvied up by project where there's usually more than one per client. A summary of all project activities goes underneath but not with individual hours on each.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Nope. I generally work on only one or at most two projects in a day. If I have a call or something, I just open gnucash and scribble it right in.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I just use a spread sheet in LibreOffice Calc. I have to type in the tasks, dates, & times manually, and then group them manually at the end of every month -- but I don't have to mess with setting up every conceivable task that I might do in some ERP system.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

I keep a time log in each project folder. For customers that have time management stuff, I throw everything in there at the end of the day/week.

Protip: in Notepad, F5 enters the current date and time.

Tim

-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website:

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I once worked for a company that decided to have every engineer fill out a time sheet so they could charge our time against jobs. It had to work out to exactly 40 hours or something. I'd just got a DEC timesharing system, so I wrote a BASIC+ program to fake the time sheets and have all the math come out right.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

They want us to keep accurate hours, too, except that we can go over

40 hours (but not under). I just make it up at the end of the week and it always comes out to 40 hours. I don't bother guessing anything less than 2 hours. It's nuts to track hours of salaried employees.

Lawyers/solicitors seem to do it with a granularity of 6 minutes. Presumably a typical phone call takes 7 minutes to handle, and they round up.

Yes, but they are billing individual customers (and lawyers are a special case, AIUI). I only have one customer, though may work on several projects. There is no legal reason for most salaried employees to record time. In theory, they're going to pay me for 40 hours no matter how many I work.

you need a project manager program that starts your tools from it with the filenames attached to the start up etc..

Time clock runs for loaded time, measures actual keyboard time and mouse activity within that program.

The idle, keyboard and mouse activity is graphed for time actually spent.

I did such a program for a friend of mine running a small business and he needed to track the actual time at the computer his workers were putting in. They had to run the programs they needed from this TOOL to get any credit of work. reports were sent over to another server.

Basically for you, I know that you run Spice apps, it would be a project tree pointing to projects that has the app to RUN with the cammand line parameters giving the work files of that Project for that tool, on it.

Project managers come small to large and they normally cost money but, I don't think many of them can actually record the TOOLS activity usage per project!

Jamie