Time tracking blog

If you’re a manager and would like to be able to clock employees in and out from your iPhone, then listen up, because this feature is for you.

We now have the ability to clock employees in/out from our iPhone interface via the Who’s Working list.  This is great news for those that manage crews as it makes it simple to clock in/out members of your crew, all from a simple to use interface.

Here’s how it works:

• Visit your TSheets account in your iPhone
• Log in as an admin or a user with permission to manage timesheets
• From the Who’s Working list you’ll be able to “click” (touch actually) users from the list
• Once you’ve selected a user, you’ll be taken to that user’s time card view (you’ll notice a green box at the top stating that you’re currently working as that user).
• Perform the desired function for that user (clock in/out, switch job codes, add notes)
• When complete simply tap the “exit” link next to the user’s name in the green box at the top

We hope this new feature helps save time (and money) for your business.  If you have any comments/suggestions please don’t hesitate to post them below.

One of TSheets partners, Jott.com will no longer offer a free option as of February 2nd.  This will not effect current TSheets customers using Jott, as the integration services are only available to paying Jott.com customers.

The popular voice to text service moved out of Beta (does that make it gamma?) last August, and added a premium account for a low $4/month fee.  According to Jott, about 30 percent of active users have bought in to premium, no ads version of the service.

Jott.com CEO John Pollard confirmed that the free version will be history as of February 2nd, citing that the current global economic downturn, which in turn has lead to horrible conditions for online advertisers, just isn’t footing the bills anymore, and each Jott.com customer will have to pay their own way to use the service.  Pollard also notes that to meet the bottom line, Jott would have to be plastered with advertising, and that it would simply ruin the experience (and for this, I stand and salute you sir!).  This will also apply to Jott iPhone application users.  However, those of you out there using TSheets integrated with your Jott.com account are already on the $3.95/month plan, so there should be no service interruptions.

Although Jott is now asking users to pay up, that doesn’t mean they’re holding back on adding some new features.  Similar to competitors Spinvox, PhoneTag, and GotVoice, Jott will now be offering a voicemail-to-text feature.  This new feature will do just as it says, convert your incoming voicemails to texts that can be sent to you in a matter of minutes.  At the $4/month rate, you won’t get this functionality, but priced at the same amount as Jott’s competitors: $10/month.

Current Jott.com users can upgrade from their free plan before February 2nd, including a tasty 10% discount, by accessing their Jott.com account page, typing in JOTT and their phone number as the promo code for the annual plan, or PRO and their phone number for the annual Pro plan.

It’s no secret – 2008 has not been the highpoint of the American economy.  With record numbers of layoffs and downsizing, chances are that some of you out there might be in need of a job.  After reading a bit more about Jen’s appointment to TSheets via conversations with Matt on and off Twitter, I thought it might be a good time to take the temperature and see just what other web2.0 technologies are out there making the dreaded job search just a bit easier.

While I found a bunch that can help you network and increase your chances of making a connection which eventually leads to a job, outside of grinding through Craigslist, there wasn’t a whole lot o’ tech that actually puts job ads in your hand.  Until I found JobCompass.

JobCompass is a new app for the iPhone that allows for location based job searches and plots them on a map for you based on your location.  JobCompass will then allow you to search by geographic range (5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 mile radius) and specific jobs based on keyword search.  Once you’ve found a position you’re interested in, it’s relatively simple to email yourself with a link to the job ad, or you can open the listing in Safari, and apply for the job directly (warning: Bluetooth keyboard recommended).

Currently, JobCompass utilizes Indeed.com’s API to pull job data, but plans are already in the works to include Monster, HotJobs, Dice and others to create the most extensive mobile job search application available.

Creator Titus Blair explains,

Current website solutions are not ideal since they do not pinpoint your location to provide you with job listings in relation to where you are at the moment. I was also traveling regularly and thought it would be interesting to see what jobs were available in my field in the cities and places I was visiting.

Currently, JobCompass will only list jobs based on your current location.  Great if you have no plans of moving, but if Seattle has been calling your name for ages, JobCompass won’t do you any good unless you’re within 100 miles of the Emerald City.  Fear not though, Blair and company are already working on developing a version that will allow the user to select the area that they’d like to search in.

While JobCompass is probably not going to replace your main resources for the job search, at the nominal iTunes store price of $3.99, it very well might make a great addition to any job seekers arsenal, and an indispensible tool for recruiters.

Attention shoppers – there are only 10 days left until Christmas.  In isle 7, save a bundle on this season’s hottest holiday gift: time.

Say what now?

A show of hands (or comments if you like) – who’s got their holiday shopping done?  I’ve often found that there are two very distinct groups: One that has their holiday shopping done by August (Yes, I’m talking to you mom) and those that wait until just about the last possible moment, and spend Christmas morning getting up just a bit earlier to umm…make the coffee (more along the lines of – oh crap!  Did I forget to wrap Susan’s present)?  I fall into category two.  So this year, I’m trying something a bit different: Using TSheets to optimize my holiday experience.

Around the 20th of November I logged into my TSheets account and started making job codes of people that I had to buy gifts for.  In my case, this amounted to around 15 people.  I then set up a bunch of job codes: Shopping with three subcodes: specialty item shopping, online shopping, and brick and mortar shopping.  Next, onto travel time and finishing up with wrapping time.

The rest is self-explanatory.  I’ve been using the TSheets iPhone mobile time tracking app to track the times that I spend walking to, waiting for, riding, and walking to the shops I need to go (note to self: a mall would help simplify this process).  Then with a simple flip of the job codes, I’ve been tracking the actual time spent looking through the stores to find that perfect cashmere for her, and that book I told him about months ago.  Likewise, back at casa del Dan, I’ve been using the TSheets desktop widget to track time that I’m spending on amazon.com to find, compare, and order various gifts for aforementioned 15 folks.  And now for the real challenge: wrapping.  When it comes to packaging gifts into a nice to look at format held together with scotch tape, I seem to have been born with three thumbs.  As of today, I’ve only wrapped seven out of the thirty or so gifts that I’ve either already got in the house, or on their way (thanks UPS!).

The Breakdown:

While I’m not yet completely done, thus far I’ve managed to rack up:

• Travel – 4 hours 58 minutes
• Shopping – 17 hours 18 minutes
• Wrapping – 1 hour 18 minutes

17 Hours shopping?  Yes, I know…I’m surprised too.  Either I need to seriously rethink my gift selection and purchasing process or hire a personal shopper.  The travel doesn’t really shock me, as noted, I did not go to a ‘get it all under one roof’ shopping complex, but have traveled to a number of individual stores.  Wrapping?  Well, no shock there to be honest.

What does it all mean?

To be honest, this is the first year/holiday season that I’ve experimented with time tracking in relation to personal shopping, and the results have been truly eye opening.  As noted above, 17.2 hours of shopping is really ridiculous.  Next year I’ll be rethinking the process and perhaps spend either a bit more time thinking gifts out before I even head out the door, or spending a lot more time with amazon.

Think you’re a Holiday Power Shopper?  Prove it.  TSheets time tracker is not just for business, but personal productivity.  Holiday shopping is something that we all do, whether we want to or not, so why not make it as efficient and productive as possible?

Related articles

• Online shopping boom expected next week
• ‘Mega Monday’ set to the busiest Christmas online shopping day

While sitting on my local equivalent to the LIRR the other day, I took a look at the amazing device in my hands and what I was doing with it.  My new shiny iPhone (or any current generation smartphone for that matter) allows me to read, create, and send/receive email, write documents and/or notes to myself, view and create spreadsheets, presentations, stay in touch with both family, friends, and clients, and administer my blogs and websites, all in the palm of my hand at 65 mph.

With the wide variety of applications now available for smartphones, there’s something for every type of user out there, and this really got me to thinking about mobile productivity.  Obviously at TSheets, we’re a bit biased on the ‘time is money’ and ‘being more productive’ opinion, but with costs of said phones falling everyday, isn’t it about time YOU started thinking about a mobile strategy for your business?

What does this all mean for you and your business?  How do you go about it?  Which plans?  Which phones?  How do I deploy all of this seemingly complex gadgetry?

Well, hold the phone partner (yes, pun intended).  Here’s a list of things to think about before you take your growing enterprise mobile.

1. Are your communications mobile friendly? While time might be money in the TWorld, size is often money in the mobile world.  Are you using a logo in your email footer?  This extra bit of transfer can add up to quite a bit of extra, unneeded cost at the end of the month.  Think about slimming everything down.
2. Are you working with the best Technology? While Palm and Apple (and quite possibly the T-Mobile/Google Android phone soon enough) have been making great headway into the mobile enterprise market, there’s a common misconception that Blackberry is the way to go.  Perhaps the pricing structure might work best for you, but don’t be too quick to rule other smartphones out simply because they’re not carrying the crackberry logo.
3. Are you in sync? If you’re using Microsoft Exchange, chances are you’re already covered, but a good thing to think about is ‘Is everyone on the same page?’  Can all mobile users synchronize email, contact lists, calendars, etc. to ensure that everyone is, literally, on the same page?  Would this help grease the productivity wheels within your team?
4. Do you have a mobile plan? If you’re already issuing company phones, check with your wireless carrier if they offer enterprise smartphone packages, what features they offer, and what the price difference would be.  It’s entirely possible that some of the features designated for smartphones are already covered in your package.  Try getting a test phone or two that you and another trusted member of the team can use for a month or so.  Keep track of the usage: emails, calendars, meeting planning times, how often you use it to increase productivity on the LIRR for example.
5. Is your website mobile compatible? Here’s one that often goes unsaid, but is your main website already mobile compatible?  Do you offer a .mobi version of the site, or perhaps a text only based version.  Again, these things might not seem like a big deal now, but once smartphone mobile deployment is issued, with your entire staff accessing the site on a regular basis, it IS something you’re going to have to think about.
6. What’s your 20? This may be your most important consideration when deciding on a mobile strategy for your business: Security.  Do you have a backup plan if/when a smartphone goes missing?  Not just the actual hardware, but the potential loss of data and thieves access to sensitive company data.

Obviously, there’s a lot of factors to consider in whether or not you should or even need to deploy a smartphone solution for your business.  I personally know some managers and execs that couldn’t live without their mobile devices, while others that I’ve spoken to enjoy simply leaving the phone at the office.  Interesting to note, these people often also have a corporate smartphone tucked in a briefcase or bag nearby.

Having access on the go certainly leads to increased productivity, as there’s never a moment lost.  This mobile productivity can even lead to increased creativity, as a changing landscape often leads to changing thoughts, ideas, and ways to tackle a project.

Welcome back to the TBlog folks!  Before I even get started talking about the title here, I have a disclaimer to make: I bought my first iPhone last week.  I’ve been going a bit loco in the apps store and found quite a few useful tools to boost productivity, but more on that in a ‘coming soon’ kinda way.

Naturally with any new toy, I’ve now got to figure out the best way to use it, which in turn of course leads to hours upon hours of internet research, accompanied by a whole smattering of news taboot.  So when the, what I would consider less than ceremonial announcement of Google’s Android phone came out last week, I was a bit puzzled.  Even more so, when the news came through that T-Mobile had stopped taking orders, the red flags really went up.  Let me back up a bit here – to be technically correct the phone is named the G1 and is produced by HTC.  It’s slated to go on sale on October 22nd and is priced at $179.99 for those that sign the 2 year contract dotted line with T-Mobile.  Ok, nothing special here; touchscreen phones have been around for quite a while, but what DOES make this phone special is it’s operating system: Android.  Android is a software platform and OS for mobile phones that’s based on Linux and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.  To put that in human speak: Android is an operating system for your phone that allows programmers to work with Google developed Java libraries (but conversely will not work with programs developed in native code).  Ok maybe that wasn’t human enough – but hopefully you get the point.  It’s Googles entry in the mobile business.  Wouldn’t that be enough to write home about?

You might think that Mountain View would be throwing one of their famous shindigs and taking this new toy to Cupertino singing iPhone killer all the way.  Now, I read a lot of tech blogs, and while the G1 phone did show up, it wasn’t exactly the fanfare you’d expect.  Earlier this week, T-Mobile announced that it had stopped taking orders on this what very well may give Apple a run for their money phone.

Sorry! Due to the overwhelming popularity of the new T-Mobile G1, upgrades are temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

My first reaction was, what the heck is going on?  While the iPhone has reigned supreme in the mobile world for quite a while now, it seems like T-Mobile didn’t exactly count on the massive number of folks interested in the G1.  While they’re keeping a tight lid on exact numbers, estimates place the figures in the 25,000 to 60,000 in week 1 range.

And now for something completely different rather coincidental.

In a remarkable coincidence, news also surfaced over the weekend that Apple has decided to free to shackles of a locked iPhone – provided you want to buy it from the Hong Kong website.  Call me a bit of a cynic, but remarkable timing here, eh?  And this just after I purchased my ‘locked’ version.  Sure, there are ways to unlock the phone, but it’s still new to me, and I’m not going to toying with any warranty voiding processes,  but it’s nice to now have the option.  Why is this particularly noteworthy?  The Hong Kong policy is a start contrast to the official Apple policy worldwide.  Sure, you can get an unlocked iPhone directly from ebay if you so choose, but that doesn’t mean that papa Jobs is happy about it.  Perhaps he has a soft spot for the Chinese market?  I doubt it.  Personally, I’m looking at the Hong Kong iPhone as a testing ground.  Let’s see how many people will fork over the $695 ($HK 5400) for the 8gb version and $798 ($HK 6200) for the 16gb version and take it from there.  With all the flurry over previous iPhone updates ‘bricking’ unlocked phones, I don’t see why this approach hasn’t been released previously.

From the Hong Kong Apple store:

iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation.

If Google and T-Mobile can come up short on the supply vs. demand rule while taking pre-orders, clearly there is a significant interest in the product.  Is it enough of an interest to swing on the fence, would be iPhone purchasers?  It very well may be, but if the Hong Kong iPhone 3G is any indication, Apple isn’t going to wait around and find out.  Let’s keep our eyes peeled here and see how this whole scenario shakes out.  Add the extra sales push of the upcoming holiday season, and we could be in for an all out war of the smartphones in 2009.

Matt Rissell joins Twitter, Ebay, Typepad, MLB, Trism, Modality and Enigma and Cro-Mag Rally to show off their cool new apps and talk about the release of the new Apple App store.

We’re proud to announce our brand new, iPhone optimized web app,  TSheets Touch.

TSheets Touch presents a new, graphical way of looking at and interacting with traditional time tracking methods.  

Starting, stopping and switching tasks is literally a touch (or click) away, saving time and making time tracking a little less arduous.

Read more about TSheets Touch at TechCrunch or at our TSheets Touch feature page.

Getting Started with TSheets Touch

Current TSheets users can visit their TSheets URL using their iPhone to use TSheets Touch.  

New users can visit http://app.tsheets.com/ip, where they can create an account and start tracking their time in minutes.

For mobile users without an iPhone, we’ve got you covered too with our mobile web app and Jott integration.