Time tracking blog

Now you can set your Timesheets to automatically round to the nearest increment of your choice upon clock in and/or clock out. All of it is customizable, so it still leaves you in control. Many of you have requested this feature because it just keeps things simple – the middle name of TSheets so to speak.  Dealing in even numbers is always better than dealing with fractions.

Read more about installing and using this add-on by following this link. Or you can check out the video below.

Our Manual Time Card (aka the Weekly Time Card)  is the tool used by many for manually entering their time.  We’ve made a few enhancements to it recently that you may have already noticed!

For those of you that are impatient and would rather just watch a video, click here.

First of all, what’s in a name?

Apparently a lot!  We found that a lot of new customers were confused when we started talking about the ‘Weekly Time Card’ – they didn’t understand what it was for.  However, as soon as we would refer to it as the ‘Manual Time Card’, it was usually ’nuff said and they got it right away.  So we decided to make it easy – we’ve officially renamed the ‘Weekly Time Card’ to the ‘Manual Time Card’.  You’ll see a new menu entry for the Manual Time Card now.  We’re still leaving the menu entry for the Weekly Time Card there for a little while, to let you get used to the name change, but don’t expect to see it there for more than a few weeks!

Picking a week

Let’s say you want to go a few months back to review the time you put in over the summer months – it used to be that you had to click back one week at a time until you hit the right spot.  Well, no more!  Now you can choose a week via a pop-up calendar instead of having to scan from week to week.  To open the calendar, simply click on the weekly date range at the top of the window.  You’ll see a popup calendar, where you can select any day in the week you’re targeting, and you’ll be taken there instantly.

Notes for a cell

One of the handiest features of the Manual Time Card is the ease with which you can enter notes that get tied to a particular cell’s hours.  This allows you to easily keep track of your daily activities and associate them with which client / project / task you were working on.  However, sometimes it was a little annoying when you went back to look at your notes, because there was no quick way to identify which cells had notes and which did not.  Enter the handy-dandy notes indicator!  This is not a new idea, we borrowed from the popular spreadsheet applications out there to display a triangle in the upper right-hand corner of those cells which contain notes.

Copy Last Week’s Jobs

This was one of our most requested features for the Manual Time Card.  More often than not, users are using the same job codes over and over from week to week.  You may now click on the ‘Copy Last Week’s Jobs’ button in the top left corner to quickly populate your job codes from the previous week to the current week  (I can hear you cheering through the Inter-tubes!).  Let us know what you think!

PTO Bank Totals

Lest I forget, you may also notice the blue colored total next to the ‘Vacation’ job code in the shot above.  If you have PTO Accruals enabled, and the user has the permission to enter PTO time, they’ll be able to see their remaining PTO balance next to the relevant job code.  Pretty cool, eh?

See It In Action

Watch the video below to see the Manual Time Card in action.

If you have any more questions about the Manual Time Card, please see our User Guide Page about it.

These are relatively simple new items, but nonetheless, they are new & we wanted you to know about them!

Timesheet List Updates
When viewing the timesheet list, you can now sort the list in chronological or reverse chronological order by clicking on the “Time In” tab. We’ve also added the ability to sort the timesheet list by Time Out, Total Hours, First Name, Last Name, Job Code, and Location. Just click the approperiate tab and you’re on your way. The user search has been improved too. You can now search employee’s timesheets by either first name, last name or email in addition to user name.

To get this new update, click on “Manage Timesheets”, then click “List View” in the upper left hand corner. If you need to refresh your browser, you’ll see a baby blue notification pop up directing you to do so in order to enable the new feature.

Updated Report
Once again, our customers are helping shape the wow factor & usability of TSheets – keep the requests coming in!
The new PDF reports are easier to read for Internet Explorer users and the job codes are no longer abbreviated, you will now see the full job code name.

New People
It is very exciting to be hiring people when there are local companies shutting their doors and  down sizing all over the place.  Please welcome our newest additions to the team!

Bill Logsdon: Bill is a local boy with general manager experience in the cable TV industry that loves to connect with customers and thrives on creating relationships.  He has an impeccable sales record that led him to one of the top positions in the Northwest.  Bill is a dedicated father of two: Alyvia & Jaksen and loves to shoot hoops when ever the chance arises.

Rick York: Rick is a fresh faced graduate of Northwest Nazarene University with a degree in Business Administration.  His unmistakable swagger with customers makes him likable and successful at solving problems at the same time.  Rick is a sports nut to the core & loves to throw the ball around even in our parking lot on a snowy day.

Jen Harris: Jen landed at TSheets in November of 2008, geared up to make a difference in a company with a social media plan.  With three years of educating, training & doing social media for local SMB’s, Jen understands the power of the internet when combined with evangelical customers and a great product.  Jen has three kids: Five year old Ella & two year old twins Henry & Clara.

Whether you are a Coal Miner in Pennsylvania, a freelance blogger, or a CEO of a Time Tracking Software company, chances are ‘You’ve got your mind on your money, and your money on your mind’, both personally and professionally.

From the time that I was 7 years old, I have always been a saver. I remember having $75 in my wallet at the age of 7! That was big money. When I turned 21, I began tracking my net worth on a homemade spreadsheet that I have since updated twice per year… It’s been amazing to watch the growth.  Granted, I still have a bit of trouble trying to get my windows 98 document to open, but you get my point.

In addition to tracking my net worth, I have always been passionate about building budgets and forecasting revenues and expenses, a CFO-like role for my personal finances. Then the last business I built had a very complex financial model with about 100+ line items on the Income Statement. After about 6 months of studying my own financials and with assistance from CFO’s of large corporations, I became an expert on financial engineering. Even to the point of doing several consulting projects for businesses of which my hourly bill rate was $925/hour to build their financial pro forma to get both a clear picture of the past and build a road map for the future.

Someday on my own personal blog, I will go further in details on how to do financial engineering; however, for now I’d like to share with you the absolute best Personal Financial Management tool that I have found on the market. It’s incredible and it’s free! In full disclosure, I get absolutely no kick-backs or benefits for me writing about this software, it’s just simply the single best tool that I have found for you to manage your personal finances.

The tool is called Yodlee.com. If you have a budget or are considering building a budget and don’t want the arduous process every month of having to update it, Yodlee.com will completely automate your budgeting process. You can customize each expense item from different stores and each revenue item to automatically go into your desired expense category. For those of you who are in the 60% of American’s who struggle with debt category, you can even set up your own “get out of debt” plan!

After building four different companies and having a fairly complicated personal income statement and balance sheet, this tool has taken my arduous personal monthly budget process that on average took 5 hours and turned it into a 30 minute cake walk!

Needless to say, the financial tool Yodlee.com has the endorsement of Matt Rissell . . . and his accountant!

Is this the only time both employee honesty and timesheet will be used in the same sentence? Articles everyday will tell you about employees who falsify their timesheets by lying about hours worked, where they worked, who they worked for, what they worked on and worse. So why do businesses try to hold their employees to a standard of honesty and then force them to use a tool like a timesheet that encourages dishonesty?

Timesheet Truths

1. Timesheets are a necessary evil. For a business to be profitable and have any clue about where their resources are being spent, they must be able to track their employees’ time.
2. Timesheets are not being used just for payroll. Timesheets are used for project management, job costing, invoicing and employee management.
3. Timesheets account for one of the largest expenses. Labor is one of the greatest investments/expenses that a company pays out.
4. Timesheets are easily fudged. Allowing employees to enter in their own start and end times based on the “honor system” leaves a door wide open for employees to guesstimate their timesheet entries. This usually equals about $100 per month per employee (even the honest ones do this).
5. Timesheets consume bookkeepers’ time. As bookkeepers try to do a good job collecting, translating, composing and calculating timesheets they spend hours of time that is valuable and could be used on other projects.
6. Timesheets are tied directly to profits. All of this put together says that time is being spent on managing timesheets and fudging timesheets and then of course there is the purpose of the timesheet and this is to track labor (a variable expense).

Ultimately what this means is that time tracking is definitely needed, however, it’s costing a lot companies a lot of money to do this ineffectively.

Timesheet Truth Seerum

What a company needs is a way to track an employee’s time with pin point accuracy. They need something that can’t be cheated on or fudged. They need something that bookkeepers don’t have to waste time on. A company needs a way to track an employee’s time that will bring efficiency, productivity and honesty to their business. They need increased profitablity!

Enter Time Clock 2.0, the timesheet truth seerum businesses have longed for. A way to track employees’ time accurately and honestly. A way for bookkeepers and managers to view and run reports in minutes rather than hours. A way for business owners to save the $500 per month they were spending on their timesheets for costs as low as $9.95 a month. The new world timesheet that is saving companies all over the globe from a death by a thousand paper cuts. Finally, employee honesty is encouraged by a timesheet.