Software for Managing Timesheets? 45
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?"
TimeClockPlus (Score:4, Interesting)
Timesheets (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Then they replaced it with some version of an Oracle time-keeping product. Web based, and almost unusable. You had to know projects and tasks, but you cou
Domain Logon (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Domain Logon (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We require people to lock their workstations if they get up. If they are gone for more than 5 minutes, we require them to logoff.
And you are right about the time. If I come in and spend 20 minutes talking to my boss before I sit down, I wouldn't get paid for that time under my system.
Re: (Score:2)
Better to automate it! If you cannot put a password-lock screensaver on by default, then get smartcards for the staff that must be present in a reader/usb port for the PC to unlock (which they do automatically). We looked into these for security reasons for a customer, and some are rubbish - they lock thescr
Lucid Information Technologies (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Where are your patches to the mainline source tree? Did you contribute all of your "hacks" or fixes back upstream?
"If you pour water in the harbor, all boats rise at once"
I'm sure many dozens of people could benefit from your changes. They might even re-energize the project.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I just find the interface to TC to be slow, clunky and not worth using. The old system ran nicely using Java in any browser. It was still poo, but bearable if you only ever booked to one or 2 projects. It's hard to find projects/codes t
Have you tried this open source solution? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Vacation/Sick Time Thingie... (Score:2, Insightful)
Another List of Time Tracking Software (Score:5, Informative)
We use a product from http://www.dovico.com/ [dovico.com] and it works well but it doesn't do scheduling.
Have you tried SourceForge? (Score:1, Informative)
Replicon Web Timesheet (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:1)
The biggest problem I have with it is the requirement to add the tasks your working on to the sheet before you can put time against them. The interface for doing that is too slow and annoying.
Re: (Score:1)
Your suggestion has been entered in our product backlog. In the future, you may enter suggestions at: http://www.replicon.com/supportservices/suggestion s.asp [replicon.com]
Every suggestion is logged and reviewed by the Product Management team at Replicon. We appreciate your feedback. Your comments and suggestions help us provide products and services that serve you best.
Thanks,
Jessica Lee
Product Manager
Replicon Inc.
Excel lent (Score:2)
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.
Mark Shuttleworth has a project for this problem (Score:4, Informative)
timesheetphp (Score:3, Informative)
"Stuff To Do" (Score:2)
http://stufftodo.dedasys.com/ [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
ERP (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Timesheets always the problem (Score:1, Redundant)
WorkBrain Not good Danger do not use (Score:1)
WorkBrain on Vista would most likely be as fun as having a DOJ and IRS audit at the same time
Try Kronos (Score:1)
Whatever You Do (Score:1)
. . . don't build it on Oracle Forms.
Just trust me - don't do it.
Re: (Score:1)
You might try Taskjitsu (Score:1)
For the last ten years, I've been developing Taskjitsu [taskjitsu.com], 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 [pkrinternet.com].
Taskjitsu is at its core a Java web application, layered on top of Tomcat [apache.org] and PostgreSQL [postgresql.org]. It runs on Windows, Linux, and any other system that can run Java 1.4. We have RPMs available [pkrinternet.com] that work with Red Hat Application Server 1.0 [redhat.com] and other JPackage 1.6 [jpackage.org]-derived systems.
For our company needs... (Score:1)
Disclaimer: I am generally a Linux proponent, but Microsoft CRM truly is a good product.