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Software for Managing Timesheets?
An anonymous reader asks: "I currently work as a help desk supervisor for the IT department of a Top 30 American university. We have around 40 graduate and undergraduate students manning our support areas at different times of the day and night, and a recent augmentation of our budget has us in the position to hire more. We still do our master schedule with a moderately complex Excel file, our time sheets are submitted online using a webpage, and our workers' clock in and out with a separate webpage which gives us reports that we import into yet another spreadsheet. Needless to say, our current, time-consuming method is rather clunky and has us looking at alternatives. What existing systems are out there that might fill our needs? What systems should we avoid?"
If you can afford a commercial solution, TimeClockPlus is excellent.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I'm working for a company in the aerospace industry at the moment, and I was originally hired to create a project management system for them. Eventually, timesheets came up as an issue, and we decided to go our own route. We have about 12,000 employees worldwide, but it's easily broken down into about 100 different cost accounts. Without going into too much detail, what I have created is just a web-based frontend to a database table full of cost account codes, and a few tables storing employee ID and hourly/time information.
We spent an extensive amount of time evaluating the timesheet issue, and we came to the conclusion that licensing timesheet applications from third parties is really a waste of time and money. Remove the Excel sheets from the equation, hire a proficient web developer / DBA for a couple of months if you need to, but build your own system. This way, you can customise it exactly to your requirements, and not have to worry about the often massive costs involved in what is really a very simple (concept wise) application.
If you are determined to go down the third party application path, I would strongly advise you to avoid systems from vendors such as SAP. In my experience, they tend to create a whole bunch of (expensive) problems where there should be none, and you end up paying through the nose only to be left with buggy systems, costly consultant fees, and vendor lock-in.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
What would really be nice is if you could go to the Domain Controller at the end of the week and find out what users were logged in and for how long.
I'm almost sure Windows tracks this. Does SAMBA track it when acting as a DC?
In any event, figure out how that works and just have a script e-mail a report at the end of the week.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
http://www.linfotech.com/ They're about mid-way through the dev of time/project management app. You obviously wouldn't be getting a battle-tested app yet, but they're classy guys and you could probably influence the direction of the project.
Before we switched to a commercial solution (which was a mistake in retrospect), I had implemented an open source / php app I found over on SourceForge -- Employee Scheduler.
It was written for managing student employees in a library -- and its not half bad.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/empscheduler/
I ended up hacking the hell out of it, adding ajax calls so that it was a little more user friendly, and had ended up with a clock in / clock out solution (using student id cards and a card reader). Tried to contact a few folks listed on the site, but it looks like a dead project (and my source is gone...don't ask...wasn't that hard to do though). If there was a community around it, I would have kept using the software and contributed...but there wasn't.
Its good software, but it needs some work. If you are a php coder, you might want to think about trying it out and seeing if you can hack the functionality you need.
Have you looked at TimeTrex Time and Attendance? Its open source, has web based clock in/out as well as several hardware based methods for greater efficiency, handles scheduling, time sheets and even payroll.
We've been using it for a while now and it has been working great, one of my friends who works at a major University uses it as well.
Make sure that the Vacation/Sick Time thing works and can be corrected if there's a problem. At one company I worked out, it was broken. I got sick for a while that my boss forced me to use sick time even though I wanted to use vacation time as I knew I was out of sick time. When they got it working again, I was in the hole for a whole year on sick time. I was repeatedly warned that I could be fired for this situation. My boss wouldn't admit he made a mistake, HR said there wasn't anything to do about and I made vague threats of resolving this in a court of law. When I later quit, I was surprised they didn't charged me for the sick time that I owe them. Go figure.
http://basecamphq.com/
It's a lightweight project management app with ultra-simple time tracking, built-in. I use that to collect timesheet data, and I have a custom app for downloading the data and munging it further. It's VERY simple, which is what I like.
Might not be what you need but for my needs, very nice.
http://www.actitime.com/ may require a bit of hacking as includes billing methods and stuff - but very good for freelancing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tr acking_software
We use a product from http://www.dovico.com/ and it works well but it doesn't do scheduling.
Web apps can do the job well. We use this, run by a group of friendly guys who are quick to answer any queries we had:
http://tiktrac.com/
SourceForge has this project that looks pretty promising. It has several others too, just search for "time and attendance".
It works great for us. We've been using it for 7 years now, with 40-ish users. No problems, it's a great product. Entering time is easy, the reports are powerful, and it can integrate with other software. We integrated it very easily with our in-house account-management system.
If you don't want to run the software yourself, I see they have a hosted offering.
--Tim
When I first saw the title I thought sarcastically "Why don't you take Excel which is an accounting spreadsheet application and wildly contort it to your needs, like everyone else does.
Then I read the rest of the summary and.. well..
Enjoy your migration. I feel your pain. Whoever made that bed should have to lie in it. Ya right.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
You work at a help desk. Since when did slaves track their hours?
Mark "Mr. Ubuntu Linux" Shuttleworth has a team he sponsors building on a project called 'School Tool'. It's a) built in Zope, which is quite possibly the most advanced (if yet compareatively slower) web application server in existance and probably the most sophisticated enviroment for this sort of thing and b) is a project that is in extremly good shape (having failed once when attempted in Java) and lead by people with solid software developement experience and skills. If SchoolTool doesn't solve your multiple-timesheets problems I'd say your outa luck because AFAICT it's the best software for this sort of thing there is.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I am surprised almost no one mentioned free software solutions. We use timesheetphp at work and its pretty good. We naturally had to make a couple modifications but not that much. Check the demo on the web site.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
Fick dich!
I've installed Journyx (http://www.journyx.com/) at the last two places I've worked. It doesn't do scheduling, but punch in/punch out as well as more free-flowing time entry, plus expenses and milage. Free for up to 10 users, after that you pay, but the (few) times I've had to call them for tech support they've been great. And it runs on Linux. I was all over that. (That was a big thing for me 7 years ago, the first time I installed it.)
WebGUI (www.webgui.org) has time tracking and project management features built in, and it's open source.
I am putting together a time tracking system that is free for basic use and comes with a one month trial for the group use features. It's available here:
http://stufftodo.dedasys.com/
It's very simple and straightforward - what it has going for it is that all you have to do is tell it what you're working on via drag and drop, and it keeps track of how long you've been active on the project. Of course, this makes it most suitable for people who are at their computers most of the day, but I guess you can't be everything to everyone.
It is still beta-ish, so pricing is open to negotiation and feature requests are welcome.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
You work for a top 30 Uni that doesn't have an ERP system? I suppose I'm not too suprised at that, but that's really the best solution since if done properly it will tie everything together, not just time entry and tracking.
Well first we don't need all this stuff to make you feel super important. About the Top 30 American University. Top 30 or Bottom 10 University, Company, Government Agency, Non-Profit organization.... All can have completely sucky IT Infrastructure. So you are not impressing us. But timesheet are always a problem. I would avoid any 3rd party canned software package Open Source or Not. They are more problem then what they are worth. The Cheap ones normally don't have features that you need. The ones that do have features on what you need are so big and hard to use that it is not worth it, over a large period. So just spend the money and get one custom written to your specs. If you don't have one consultants can help write the specs (which will cost more money). But being that you are at a Top 30 University I would expect that you would have a teams of Slave labor err... Um... Bright Eyes, Eager, and talented students. Who is willing to do the bulk of the coding for meager spending money Err... Um... Tuition Reimbursement and experience. Coming up with good specs for the product is actually a lot harder then getting good programmers to make it. You will need to discuss with the people are are entering in time, see what they like and what they don't like and as well the people who are doing something with the time, what they like and don't like. Then you will need someone to take all the considerations and balance all the requests and come up with something that is better then what it was before. But remember not all requests should be put into the program, only ones that really important or makes the process much easier. If you go down the lines of making everyone 100% happy you will create a product that sucks and noone likes.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Where I work, which is a relatively small company, we've been using actiTIME for the past few months.
I find it very easy to use, certainly moreso than our previous custom Excel jobby.But yeah, it's quite AJAXy and pretty smart overall. The reporting functionality is very good and it's free (as in beer, only)!
WorkBrain on Vista would most likely be as fun as having a DOJ and IRS audit at the same time
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Has anyone else heard of or tried Kronos http://www.kronos.com/ ?? Holiday Retirement Corporation uses it for its entire work force. I only use it at a facility level. We have Human Resources and and IT department who handles it on the technical end. From the level I am allowed to use it it handles with punch cards in/out times. It allowes multi-user log ins to manually add in split shifts, sick hours, and vacation time. I have heard a future version handles scheduleing and incorporates it into the time cards to automatically adjust for minimum 2hr rules. Sorry I don't know the technical details or cost.
I was personally involved with a 3 month evaluation process for an IT department of 200 programmers and we evaluated a bunch of different timesheet software applications (narrowed it down to ten, then finally choose one). We found the timesheet software by dovico (www.dovico.com) to be the easiest to setup (we imported a crap load of data initially) and no additional modules had to be bought (they include expenses and links to Microsoft project server. We don't use it QuickBooks, but they also have a QuickBooks link as well) all at only 86.25 US / Employee (one time fee). We could not even attempt to build the application for that!
They seem to stand behind there product as we have found no bugs yet, but have had some questions and the company always responds quickly and really seems to stand behind their product. One of our staff submitted a suggestion on the software (through the software itself) and received a phone call back asking them for more details and discussing how it could be improved. He was impressed. Now that's what I call, listening to the customer!
Anyway, we found it to be the easiest with little setup, installation, and deployment time. So this is what we went with.
SAASman1
I did a quick search and found this web site that did a comparison of a bunch of leading Timesheet and Time Tracking Applications.
o ptenreviews.com/
http://time-tracking-management-software-review.t
. . . don't build it on Oracle Forms.
Just trust me - don't do it.
What?
For the last ten years, I've been developing Taskjitsu, an open source professional services automation system that tracks time sheets and tasks. It is freely available, GPL-licensed, and commercially supported by PKR Internet.
Taskjitsu is at its core a Java web application, layered on top of Tomcat and PostgreSQL. It runs on Windows, Linux, and any other system that can run Java 1.4. We have RPMs available that work with Red Hat Application Server 1.0 and other JPackage 1.6-derived systems.
We use Microsoft CRM with some modifications. You track cases / tasks / projects / etc and resolve with time. If you don't truly need clock-in / clock-out time, it should work great. And with the reports it generates you should be able to track total time - if it doesn't match your set hours, then your employees may be uhm reading slashdot or something :-D
Disclaimer: I am generally a Linux proponent, but Microsoft CRM truly is a good product.
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. -Ralph Waldo Emerson