Time tracking blog

The old adage “The devil is in the details,” couldn’t be more true when referencing TSheets.  Why is this?  While others use a simple stopwatch approach (keeping track of duration only), TSheets uses a detailed timestamp for all clock-ins/outs and job code switches, something that appears simple on the surface, but that is actually quite complex under the hood.

Why Timestamp?

Aside from making development much more complex (think timezones and daylight savings), timestamps allow TSheets to track not only time, but to log a time line of when events actually transpired.  For instance a typical day may involve working for a total duration of 8 hours, but what events took place during that time?

With TSheets, that may look something like this: Clock-in at 7:59a, switch job code at 10:12a, clock-out at 12:10p, clock-in at 1:30p…. you get the idea.

Why is this Good?

Timestamps create a virtual paper trail of when events took place, allowing for detailed reporting and auditing.

Without timestamps, your recorded time is like a sandwich with no meat.
 

So, I have been told that I am very forward, upfront & sometimes take too much ownership in projects that I dive into.  I think it actually worked out to my benefit this time.

When Matt & I started our “off-Twitter” conversation, our very first phone call we agreed that we would be totally honest with each other…brutally honest that is.  It worked.  Matt saw and understood the vision for a Social Media Sales & Marketing position and I saw the vision of TSheets & where we could take it by engaging in current online conversations.  Beautiful!

Matt is a forward thinking CEO with a background in traditional sales yet sees and completely understands that social media is sales and is part of the overarching marketing and sales goals…it is not just “the girl that blogs & talks online” (old job title I overheard someone give me at the last gig).  He gets “it”.

My first week consisted of:

• Getting my feet wet on how TSheets works as the customer
• Listening to what the customers & potential customers are saying “out there”
• Putting together a PR plan for the release of the TSheets integration with FreshBooks
• Move to new office – (sweet digs by the way!)
• Map out my social media metrics for December (& start planning on how/where to hit those)
• Learn how to get up at 5:30am (and not 7am) in order to make it to an 8:03 daily meeting

My second week is taking care of the tasks that I give myself every day.  I literally have 5-10 pages of notes/to do’s that I need to get done/look up/research/participate in etc.  (Must-get-organized)

I am absolutely thrilled to be here at TSheets.  I can’t wait to make a difference and have a proven social media model that can be repeated every month.

Howdy there partner, and welcome to the newly redesigned TSheets!  If you’re a first time visitor, welcome – if you’re a returning reader, welcome back.  You may have noticed that TSheets has a shiny new coat of paint, and a few extra goodies under the hood as well.  In celebration of our new look, I thought it might be a good time to hit the wayback machine and take a look at where TSheets has been design wise.  All images are taken from the great tool available at archive.org, the waybackmachine.

While the waybackmachine does give some listings for TSheets as early back as 2004, these are not found in the archive, and I can only wonder if the URL was held by a previous owner?  Let’s see if we can get a comment from Brandon or Matt on this one.

Either way, the first archived listing for TSheets.com shows up on June 16th, 2006 with a simple yet effective interface:

Note the savings calculator over on the left side?  Pretty nifty device.

On August 11th, 2006 the TNumber was added to the site providing a toll free number for business owners to get in touch with the TTeam at.

On September 29th, 2006 the monthly pricing box disappears to be replaced by a small text box at the top of the page.  Same overall design is still functioning well, and driving both traffic and customers to the TSheets time tracking system.



2007 was a great year both in product and website development here at TSheets.  On the 5th of January we started adding a news feature down the left column, keeping potential and current customers abreast of what was happening in the now developing TLabs.

February 12th – meh…let’s move that news over to the right side.

March 10th, 2007 – how about a little php, tables, and a nice pleasing blue background?



August 13th, 2007 – wha blamo!  The TSheets as we know and love today begins to take it’s first form.  While the graphics are missing from archive.org, you get the general gist of things here with clear and easy navigation begin to come to the forefront.



Here’s where things start to get a bit fuzzy on archive.org, but the August 13th version of TSheets.com served us well until making the switch to a highly modified Wordpress installation courtesy of Mr. Matt Newbill.



As our user base and media coverage begins/began to grow, CEO Matt Rissell thought it might be a good time to add a new coat of wax to the TMachine and include some new advancements in coding language.

In regard to building a new version of TSheets, our top dog of the code, Matt Newbill says, “Well as you can see the site (and blog) have been entirely rebuilt from the ground up.”

If you’re looking at that super slick rotating image staring you in the face, Newbill adds, “We’re utilizing JQuery to do our sliding effects and also some cool IE 6 transparent PNG trickery via CSS”

Newbill and design team made sure to give a nod to the old school and included a portion of the first TSheets logo.

Director of Marketing AJ Stallones adds, “I think looks sweet and I absolutely love the emotion that it brings to the table.  It’s sexy, slim, easy to use and truly screams the essence of our culture.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  I hope you’ll all join me in a tiny little bit of horn blowing and congratulations to Newbill and team when I say, “Job well done sir! Well done indeed!”

500 Clams. Smackers. Bones. Loot. Booty. Mullah. However you want to call it, Matt Rissell and Co. over at TSheets are men of their word, and I’ve got the cold hard cash in my pretty little hands.

While I’ve already mentally spent that reward, I think the MORE rewarding point of the entire ‘are you a rock star copywriter’ contest is the opportunity to work with a great group of folks, working on a great product. We had a conference call the other day via everyone’s favorite VoiP medium, Skype. Not only is Matt Rissell running a heckuva good show over in Boise, but I honestly believe him to be a general all round good guy that has a great product and clearly knows how to position it in the market.

Now having the inside scoop, all I can say is ‘Watch This Space!’. Matt informed me of a few juicy new goodies that the time scientists are brewing up in the TLabs, and all I can say is, whoa Nelly! Hang on to your hat, ‘cause things are about to get real interesting, REAL fast. Ok fair enough….let me throw you a bone. Let’s just say that the dev team has been having a blast with certain mobile devices that play music, make calls, and come from Cupertino….stay tuned!

In addition to the regular articles from the TSheets team, it looks like yours truly will be herding all the cows back home in what I like to call Uncle DT’s weekly roundup at the ‘Save Yourself a Whole Lotta Time and Money Corral’. In other words, if you happened to miss some key points from any other article during that week, no sweat, I’ve got you covered.

Finally, I’d just like to take this space to thank Matt, Brandon, and AJ for giving this slightly offbeat writer the opportunity to not only join the team, but to interact with all of you, and hopefully present what at some times can seem only like technical jargon in good ol’ fashion down-home terms.

And finally, the winner of $500 and the opportunity to join the TSheets team! We’ve really enjoyed reviewing all of the entries that came in. The following entry stood out because it quickly engaged us, provided a laugh, and drove home the point of TSheets – to simplify the time tracking process for anyone and everyone.

Be sure to watch our blog for upcoming posts from Dan. Here’s his first (and winning) post – enjoy!

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“TSheets takes the Tough out of Timesheets” by Dan Taylor (click here to view Dan’s blog)

3000 BC: Fred Flintstone ends day by listening for high pitched squawking bird. Quarry Foreman spends hours pouring over timestones at the end of the week.

1634: Bells signal farmers to and fro the fields. Hungover bell maid causes hours of lost wages as farmers stand poised at edge of fields.

1868: Steam whistles pierce the industrial landscape. Drought results in days of lost productivity.

1913: IBM introduces the first ‘Punch Clock’. Band Aids become standard working apparel.

2008: TSheets simplifies your life and brings employee time tracking to a new millennium.

How many times has the wife/husband/significant other heard, “Babe…I’m so right there with you….just as soon as I get these time sheets calculated.”? How many times have you missed the game because, let’s be honest, assembling timesheets for payroll, while important, is as about as exciting as watching the grass grow?

TSheets was born from the best stuff on earth: necessity. Whether you’re tracking 5 employees or 5000, TSheets is a simple to use, LAMP based app that can keep track of all your employees.

Running a single office? Keep track of all your core employees, consultants, developers, freelancers, etc. all in one location. You can even monitor real time. Running multiple locations across the city, state, country, world? Man, you should own stock in Excedrin, as that has nightmare written all over it. Fear not young captain of industry… TSheets can take the tough sheet out of your time sheet.

Employees forget to clock in/clock out (when…when dear lord will they learn)? No problem, anyone you grant admin rights to can clock an employee in/out at any time. What about the subcontractors I’ve got running the electrical today? Bossman got a blackberry (and you KNOW he does) or other web-enabled device? No problem, give him the URL, and he can clock in/out from anywhere in the world. Better yet, your code ninjas strutting around with their new iPhone? TSheets has developed the TGadget that not only works as a Google widget, but functions flawlessly with an iPhone. What about that hacker we just hired to test our security features, I just have a feeling he’s going to change the clock time on his home machine, and cheat me outta 20 hours of ‘work’ while he’s off fragging somewhere. Consider that hacker PWND, ‘cause all times are stored in centrally in UTC time.

Whether you’re running a tiny (read self employed) business, or charting your way to the stars (read the guy in the armani), if you’re dealing with ye old adage, ‘time is money’, TSheets is a product you can’t afford to be without.

For more on TSheets, their products and services, check ‘em out at TSheets.com

*** Let us know what you think of our winner’s post by commenting below or email Matt Rissell – matt@tsheets.com ***

Coming in 2nd Place in our hunt for the best Copy Writer:

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“Empowering Employees with TSheets” by Mike Flacy

We love to elaborate about the money saving features of TSheets, but there is a human element that often gets overlooked. Transitioning to TSheets offers your employees a level of empowerment that a regular time clock cannot.

TSheets entrusts employees with a higher level of personal responsibility. In a company still using a time clock, a manager may not hear about an employee’s lack of attendance until a report is given to him / her on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. In some cases, a habitually late employee can go without reprimand for weeks! Welcome to job indifference.

With the immediate link TSheets creates between the worker and their employer, timely employees are instantly awarded with a sense of accomplishment. More importantly, untimely employees will find immediate attention to their attendance to be refreshingly respectful of their importance to the company.

There’s also an element of privacy that employees will appreciate as time clocks are typically located in high traffic areas of the office. A late employee has no choice but to clock their card in public view of other workers. This can lead to personal embarrassment or detrimental office gossip. By removing the time clock and transitioning to TSheets, records become private between employee and boss. An employee can login from their authorized workstation and keep his / her arrival time out of the minds of curious co-workers.

Employee empowerment may be an ancillary aspect of the TSheets experience, but using TSheets to establish a closer personal relationship with employees will definitely lead to a more productive workplace.

***Let us know what you think of our second choice by commenting below or emailing Matt Rissell at matt@tsheets.com***

Starting out the count down to #1, below is the entry that took 3rd place!

Voice your opinion by posting a comment or emailing the CEO, Matt Rissell <matt@tsheets.com>.

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“Control Your Labor Costs by using Online Timesheets” by Zac Bentz.

The freedom of running a business can be one of the most satisfying and rewarding ways to live your professional life, oftentimes offering personal and financial profits that far exceed working for others. Yet, with these rewards come the obligatory headaches that are inherent to operating any business—such as human resource management, billing issues, and sales stagnation to name a few. Getting caught up in these problems can drastically affect organizational efficiency that in turn cuts deeply into profitability.

However, nothing cuts into profitability more than the cost of labor—it is the greatest expense of every business, and the effective management of this resource can dramatically improve profit margins. It is with this all-too-common headache in mind that the Tsheets program was developed, for there clearly had to be a better way to control labor costs that didn’t require a great deal of expense and energy in and of itself.

Tsheets is an extremely cost-effective system that allows managers and business owners to control labor costs in a wide variety of ways. Whether you are trying to get a “big-picture” snapshot, keep tabs on a particular employee, or detect seasonal patterns, Tsheets offers you a simple and easy way to get a much tighter grip on your biggest expense.

In addition, Tsheets also offers the ability to greatly reduce payroll expense—automatically tracking, tabulating, and reporting individual hours worked to take most of the headaches out of processing your monthly payroll. Many of our customers have found that our product is more than worth the expense just for the benefit of this feature alone.

Finally, perhaps the greatest thing about Tsheets is that it can be accessed via computer or cell phone through any Internet connection, allowing mobile business owners the ability to track their operations from just about anywhere. This can prove to be an invaluable tool, for many of our customers find themselves getting real worth out of being able to study their labor costs and patterns at anytime as the navigate the hectic world of business.

So, whether you are running a small little shop or a multi-million dollar international corporation, Tsheets prides itself on offering customized solutions to your particular set of labor cost problems. Please take advantage of our free 30-day trial now and see what we can do for you.

In April, TSheets realized it’s need for a copywriter… As most businesses do, we posted the job opportunity and got a stack of resumes. However, that hiring process is daunting and usually isn’t very effective. Then, we got the brilliant idea – Let’s have a contest! Thus, we created the Rock Star Copywriter Contest and presented it to the world, which gave candidates the opportunity to show us their best “stuff”. They had to write a blog post about timesheets or TSheets and the winner gets $500, plus an opportunity to join the TSheets team!

Now – The time has come to unveil the results! Over the next 3 days, we will be releasing the winners starting with 3rd Place counting down to # 1.

Thank you to all for sending in your submissions… Choosing the winners was by no means an easy task. The TSheets team cast their votes and the deliberation went on for several days. However, we believe that the selected pieces best capture the essence of TSheets and we are pleased to announce the winners!

Without further ado let’s get to the results…

Matt Rissell

P.S. Feel free to post your thoughts on the contestants’ posts either through the comment box or by email to matt@tsheets.com.

Most spiders don’t hunt.  They hang out where the flies are and build a web.

When it comes to marketing a web-based business application like TSheets, this means several thing:

• You have to invest in search engine marketing (i.e. Google AdWords) and search engine optimization.
• You have to understand where your audience gets their information.  In our case, where do they go to learn about time clocks or time keeping?
• You have to be subtle and patient.
• It helps to get there first … and if you don’t get there first, build the best web.  Thus our investment in things like the “Time Slider” tool for editing time sheets.

The bottom line:  it is easier to join an existing conversation than to start a new one.  More on this later …

A Blogger’s version of American Idol ~

TSheets is looking for a “Rock Star” Copywriter – instead of reading a ridiculous number of resumes, I’d prefer to give you the chance to show your stuff!  Simply write a blog post about TSheets and the best written post will receive $500 and an opportunity to be a copywriter on the TSheets team!

Skill-set required:

• Solid perspective on Web 2.0 Technology
• Excellent English writing skills
• Marketing edge or flair to your writing

Here’s how to apply:

• Review our website and blog to learn about our product/services
• Submit your entry to me via email, matt@tsheets.com, or include a link to your post in the comments below.
• Rules:
  • Less than 500 words
  • Deadline is May 1, 2008
  • Judged solely at the TSheets review committee’s discretion

The best written posts will be featured on our blog and the writers will have the opportunity for an interview.

Good Luck!

Matt Rissell, CEO