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This product is shareware, US$25.
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SHAREWARE NOTICE
This product is NOT free. If you continue to use it, you are obligated to pay for it.
TimeTracker is distributed fully functional and the only shareware reminder is the one dialog when the app is first launched. Unlike some other programs, there is no time-limit. So if you never register, you can keep using it forever without fear that it will suddenly stop working right when you need it. We assume that people are basically honest, and that the length of the shareware evaluation period should be up to the individual. Registering entitles you to unlimited upgrades; all future versions will recognize and accept your registration code.
NEW IN VERSION 1.5
The Export to Memo feature allows you to optionally specify a range of dates to be exported. It also allows you to optionally include the totals in the exported data.
The Summary screen includes a project-by-project summary.
You can edit and/or delete the project names as used in the popup menu on the New Project and Summary screens.
On the main display, if you enter a lowercase letter, the display will scroll to the first project (or client when in list-by-client view) that starts with that letter (uppercase or lowercase). Entering a period (i.e. tap-tap) will cause the display to scroll to the project being timed.
Bugs fixed:
After using the Purge command to delete all dates marked as billed, the project totals displayed on the main screen were not being updated. This has been fixed.
The occasional problem where the main list would "jump" back when scrolling has been fixed. Unfortunately, this required getting rid of the live scrolling feature.
NEW IN VERSION 1.4
The Export to Memo function will automatically create multiple memos if the data exceeds the maximum memo size of 4000 characters.
The Export to Memo function will automatically convert any newline in a note to a space. This will prevent the columns from being messed up when the data is imported on the desktop.
You can tap on the "today" column to start and stop the timer.
The Summary screen can display the summary for a specified client or a specified project.
The New Project dialog includes a popup that allows you to easily set the name to that of an exsiting project.
NEW IN VERSION 1.3
A Summary screen that can display the total times across all projects between any two dates.
You can add a note to the current date of a project (even if it's the project being timed) directly from the main screen.
On the Project Details screen, you can sort the date list either ascending or descending.
The Purge command includes an option to purge all billed dates.
The Export to Memo command includes an option to automatically mark all exported dates as billed.
TimeTracker databases are fully backed up during a HotSync.
The Delete Project function has been moved from a button to a menu item.
NEW IN VERSION 1.2
An option to have the main list sorted by client name (with the client names displayed).
The ability to add a date in the past to a project.
The "wandering timer" bug is fixed.
NEW IN VERSION 1.1
The ability to export your data to a memo in the MemoPad (see below for details).
Total times are now being rounded (to the nearest minute or nearest tenth of an hour, depending on the preference setting) rather than truncated.
A new option to display total times rounded to the nearest quarter hour.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO THOSE UPGRADING FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS:
Do NOT delete your current version of the application! If you do, you will lose all your data. Just install the new version; the installer will automatically replace the old version and leave your data untouched.
INTRODUCTION
TimeTracker is a time-keeping tool for contract workers, lawyers, or anyone else who works on multiple projects on an hourly basis. You enter the project names and optionally assign each to a client. Select a project and tap a button to start a timer for that project. Tap again to stop the timer. You can start and stop projects as often as needed throughout the day and the times are accumulated. A detail view shows the daily totals for each project, and you can check off days as they are billed. Times can be displayed as either hours and minutes, or as hours and tenths of an hour. TimeTracker has been tested on a Palm Pro, Palm III, Palm V, Palm IIIc, and Visor.
QUICK START
The main display consists of four columns: A checkbox used to indicate that a project has been completed; the project name; today's daily time (or the date on which a project was completed); and the overall total time for the project. This list is sorted alphabetically by project name.
Tap the "New" button (or select "New Project" from the Options menu) and enter the name of a project. The popup menu below the field contains a list of all unique project names entered so far. Selecting a name from this list will automatically enter it in the Project name field; this is a convenience if you have multiple projects of the same name. If desired, use the "Client" popup to select the client that the project belongs to (the popup also leads to a dialog for entering client names).
The list of project names displayed on the popup can be edited via the "Edit Project Names" menu item. Note that this affects only the displayed list; adding a project name here does not add a new project to the main display.
When you want to start timing your work, select a project name and tap the "Start" button. The timer will start for that project and the running daily time will be underlined. When you stop working on that project, tap the "Stop" button to stop the timer. If you are switching to a different project, select it and tap the "Start" button to start the timer for that project. If you go back to timing the first project, the timer will pick up from where it left off (currently there is not an automatic way to keep track of individual work "segments" in a day but you can manually itemize your time using the note feature on the Details View or by setting up your projects as daily tasks).
Optionally, if the "Tap in 'today' col controls timer" preference is turned on, you can start the timer for a project by simply tapping on that project's "today" column. Tap again to stop the timer. If one project is being timed and you tap on the "today" column of another project, the first project's timer is automatically stopped and the second project's timer is started. This allows you to quickly switch from one project to another with a single tap.
If you have a lot of projects, you can enter a "." character (tap-tap) on the main display to automatically scroll to the project being timed.
Note that the running time is not added to the total column until you stop the timer.
Use the "Edit Client List" menu item to add, delete, or edit client names.
The "note" button (it has a note icon on it) allows you to add or edit a note for today's date for the selected project. This will work even if the selected project is the project being timed. It's important to remember that this does not add an overall note for the project, it's just a shortcut for adding a note to today's date.
THE DETAILS VIEW
Select a project and tap the "Details" button. At the top of the Details View are the project name and client. You can change and/or edit those from here.
The list in the middle of the screen shows every date on which any time was accumulated for the project, and the time for that date. The small button on the left with an arrow on it toggles the order of the list between ascending and descending.
The checkboxes to the left of each date can be used to check off dates as they are billed.
Above the list is the total time for the project (the sum of all the times in the list), and the total unbilled time (the sum of just the unchecked dates).
You can add a note to a date by selecting the date and then tapping the Note button (on the far right, with the note icon). An icon will appear on the right of any date that has an attached note.
You can delete a date by selecting it and tapping the "Delete" button.
You can manually change the time on an existing date. This might be needed if you stop working on a project but forget to stop the timer, or if you forget to start the timer when you start working. To change the time, select the date and tap the "Edit" button. In the small window, select one of the digits and use the arrow buttons to change it appropriately.
You can add a new date to the project by tapping the "New" button. This will bring up the standard Palm date selector. Tap the desired date and it will be added chronologically to the list of dates. You can then use the "Edit" button to enter the desired time for that date. You are not allowed to add a date in the future; doing so would be difficult for the software to deal with, and it doesn't really make any sense.
If you manually edit today's time and increase it, and then start the timer for that project, it's possible that the timer will reach 24 hours. Since it's not possible to have more than 24 hours in a day, if this happens the timer will automatically stop and a warning will appear.
The "Cancel" button will undo all changes made to the Details View, with two exceptions: Changes made to an existing note will remain, and notes that were deleted will not come back.
The hard scroll buttons can be used to cycle through the projects without the need to go back and forth to the main view. Any changes made are automatically saved when you use the scroll buttons.
COMPLETING PROJECTS
When you complete a project, check it off using the checkbox at the left of the main display. The middle column will now show the date that it was completed (the date on which you checked the checkbox).
PREFERENCES
You can choose to have the main list sorted alphabetically by project name, or by client name. In the latter view, each client name is listed, followed by the projects belonging to that client. Tapping on a client name brings up the "New Project" window with that client selected.
You can choose to have completed projects sorted to the end of the main display, useful to get them out of the way of projects you're still working on. If the "Sort list by Clients" option is selected, completed projects will be sorted to the end of their respective Client section.
You can choose to have total times displayed in any of five different formats: hours and minutes ("14:30"), hours and sixths of an hour ("14.3"), hours and tenths of an hour ("14.5"), hours and quarters of an hour in decimal format ("14.50"), or hours and quarters of an hour in fractional format ("14 1/2"). This option affects only the "total" column of the main display, and the two total times on the Details display; daily times are always displayed as hours and minutes (hours, minutes and seconds on the main display). Also, if the fractional option is selected, the Export function (described below) will output totals using decimal format since PC programs would not understand the Palm's font.
SUMMARY
This screen allows you to see the total times (billed, unbilled, and overall total) between two specified dates. There are popup menus for specifying a client and/or a project.
The table on the right displays the totals for individual projects for the specified period. The popup at the bottom right allows you to see either the overall total, just the billed total, or just the unbilled total.
To get a summary across all projects, set the Client and Project popups to "All".
To get a summary of all projects for a particular client, select that client name and set the Project popup to "All".
If all of your project names are unique, regardless of client, then to get a summary of a particular project, all you need do is select it from the Project popup and leave the Client popup set to "All".
If you have more than one project of the same name but with different clients, then to get a summary of one specific project you will need to select both the project name and the desired client name. Setting the Client popup to "All" will give a summary of all projects with the specified name regardless of client (which might also be a useful summary in some cases).
The summary information is automatically recalculated when either of the date selectors or either of the popups is changed.
EXPORT TO MEMO
This allows you to create a memo in the MemoPad containing your TimeTracker data. When you next HotSync, the memo will be available from the Palm Desktop. You can save it to a file, or just copy and paste it into a spreadsheet, etc.
If you select "All", the exported data will include all dates (subject to the options explained below). If you select "Date Range", two date selector boxes will appear. You can then select a starting and ending date. Only project dates between those (inclusive) will be exported.
In the "Export" dialog, you have two layout options, "Spreadsheet" or "Linear".
Select "Spreadsheet" layout if you will be importing the data into a spreadsheet program. The output will be in a column-oriented format (each date on a separate line such that all clients, projects, dates, times, etc. are in the same columns), and will include a header line identifying the columns. For example:
Client Project Date Hours Billed? Notes
client1 project1 1/1/99 2:10 yes
client1 project1 1/2/99 3:30 no
client1 project1 1/3/99 3:00 no
client1 project1 Total: 8:40
client1 project1 Billed: 2:10
client1 project1 Unbilled: 6:30
client2 project2 1/1/99 1:20 no
client2 project2 1/2/99 2:50 no
client2 project2 Total: 4:10
client2 project2 Billed: 0:00
client2 project2 Unbilled: 4:10
If you do not have the "Include billed dates" option selected, the "Billed?" column will not be included, nor will the "Billed:" and "Unbilled:" rows.
Select "Linear" layout if you will be importing the data into a program that expects a more compact format. The output will have each project on a single line, and will not include a header line. For example:
The "Separator" option allows you to select what character is used between data fields, either a comma or a tab. If you are not sure which to use, try making two memos the first time, one with commas and one with tabs, and then see which is accepted by the program you are importing into.
You also have the option to put quotes (") around each data field or not. Most programs that can import data are smart enough to understand quoted fields, and it is recommended that you use quotes if you will be including your daily notes (without quotes, any comma, tab, or newline that appears in a note will be interpreted by the importing program as a field separator).
The "Mark all exported dates billed" option will automatically check the "billed" checkbox for all dates that are exported. This can be useful if the way you use the export feature is to bill all of the projects and dates that are exported; this option saves you from having to manually go through and check all the "billed" checkboxes. Since currently your only choice is to export all the data, this means that if you turn on this option, all dates on all projects will be marked as billed.
The other options allow you to select whether to include projects that are marked completed, dates that are marked as billed, and/or the daily notes.
A NOTE ABOUT MEMO SIZE
The PalmOS limits a single memo to 4,000 characters. When the exported data exceeds that size, TimeTracker automatically creates a second memo (and a third, fourth, etc. if necessary). The new memos have the same title as the first plus sequential numbering. Thus, if you use the default title of "TimeTracker Data", the first memo will have that title, the second memo will have the title "TimeTracker Data1", the third memo will be "TimeTracker Data2", etc.
After you HotSync, you will need to either manually combine the multiple memos into one text file, or do multiple copy-paste operations, to get the data into your spreadsheet application (or whatever application you desire). The data is always split between memos at a line boundary to make this task easier.
PURGE
This command has two options; you can use either one or both at once.
1) You can choose to delete all dates that are marked as "billed". The "billed" checkbox is on the left of each date in the Details view.
2) You can delete all completed projects that are older than a specified time. Only completed projects are candidates for being deleted; all projects with an unchecked checkbox are unaffected. You can choose a time of now, one month, three months, six months, or nine months. All projects whose completed dates are older than the selected time will be deleted. The "Now" time will delete all completed projects.
Please be certain that you have billed for, or at least recorded the times for, all completed projects that might be deleted, and/or all billed dates. This command cannot be undone!
CROSSING MIDNIGHT
If you work late into the night and have a timer running over midnight, TimeTracker will automatically change to the next day and continue the timer.
If you accidentally leave a timer running and don't return to TimeTracker for several days (you forget to turn the timer off on Friday and leave it running over the weekend, for example), all intervening days will have accumulated 24 hours of time. You can use the Details View to delete those dates.
