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Software for Managing Timesheets? 45

Posted by Cliff from the clock-in-and-clock-out dept.
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?"
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Software for Managing Timesheets? More

Software for Managing Timesheets?

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  • TimeClockPlus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peacefinder ( 469349 ) <alan.dewitt@gmAA ... inus threevowels> on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:00PM (#18466603) Journal
    If you can afford a commercial solution, TimeClockPlus [timeclockplus.com] is excellent.

  • Timesheets (Score:5, Informative)

    by colonslashslash ( 762464 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:10PM (#18466667) Homepage
    I'm working for a company in the aerospace industry at the moment, and I was originally hired to create a project management system for them. Eventually, timesheets came up as an issue, and we decided to go our own route. We have about 12,000 employees worldwide, but it's easily broken down into about 100 different cost accounts. Without going into too much detail, what I have created is just a web-based frontend to a database table full of cost account codes, and a few tables storing employee ID and hourly/time information.

    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.
    • When I started at my current employer, we had a mainframe-based thing that listed out the tasks. You arrowed to next to the tasks you worked on and typed in your hours. It was written in-house years ago, by (among other people) the guy who was our Senior Director when I started. Everyone had a terminal emulator on their PC, just to get to this application.

      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)

    by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 ) <xptical@gmEEEail.com minus threevowels> on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:14PM (#18466705)
    What would really be nice is if you could go to the Domain Controller at the end of the week and find out what users were logged in and for how long.

    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)

      by LordEd ( 840443 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:51PM (#18466931)
      Time logged in does not necessary equal time worked. People have meetings, reboot computers, work on paper, etc. What happens if somebody forgets to log off?
      • I work in a shared office environment, so I'm a bit biased to that setup.

        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.
        • 'require' is always a tricky thing in most cases, occasionally you will forget or will 'just nip to the printer', and get buttonholed by a colleague or the boss and end up spending ages away from the PC.

          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)

    by Jeff Molby ( 906283 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:33PM (#18466829)
    http://www.linfotech.com/ [linfotech.com] They're about mid-way through the dev of time/project management app. You obviously wouldn't be getting a battle-tested app yet, but they're classy guys and you could probably influence the direction of the project.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:33PM (#18466837)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by hacker ( 14635 )

      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.

    • Nice to see someone recommending OSS. We have timecontrol at work (non free) and it's poo, activeX, windows only and poo. I hve a Windows box on my machine purely for doing timesheets now (well and for Outlook, but exchange has a web interface that works in FF on Linux).

      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)

    by passion4 ( 1069666 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @08:54PM (#18466953)
    Have you looked at TimeTrex Time and Attendance [timetrex.com]? Its open source, has web based clock in/out as well as several hardware based methods for greater efficiency, handles scheduling, time sheets and even payroll.

    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.
  • Make sure that the Vacation/Sick Time thing works and can be corrected if there's a problem. At one company I worked out, it was broken. I got sick for a while that my boss forced me to use sick time even though I wanted to use vacation time as I knew I was out of sick time. When they got it working again, I was in the hole for a whole year on sick time. I was repeatedly warned that I could be fired for this situation. My boss wouldn't admit he made a mistake, HR said there wasn't anything to do about

  • Another List of Time Tracking Software (Score:5, Informative)

    by pci ( 13339 ) <[vince.power] [at] [gmail.com]> on Friday March 23, 2007 @09:09PM (#18467041) Homepage
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tr acking_software [wikipedia.org]

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SourceForge has this project [sf.net] that looks pretty promising. It has several others too, just search for "time and attendance".

  • Replicon Web Timesheet (Score:2, Informative)

    by diegoq ( 149586 )
    We use Replicon Web Timesheet [replicon.com]. It's a web-based solution, the website is usable by Firefox, IE, and Opera. The server runs on the Windows platorm, and uses a Microsoft or Oracle database. Of course, if you're not a Windows shop, this probably isn't the answer for you.

    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)

      by mabinogi ( 74033 )
      We've used Replicon for a few years now. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not really the best either.
      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.
      • Hi,

        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.

  • When I first saw the title I thought sarcastically "Why don't you take Excel which is an accounting spreadsheet application and wildly contort it to your needs, like everyone else does.

    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 "Mr. Ubuntu Linux" Shuttleworth has a team he sponsors building on a project called 'School Tool' [schooltool.org]. It's a) built in Zope, which is quite possibly the most advanced (if yet compareatively slower) web application server in existance and probably the most sophisticated enviroment for this sort of thing and b) is a project that is in extremly good shape (having failed once when attempted in Java) and lead by people with solid software developement experience and skills. If SchoolTool doesn't solve your multiple-timesheets problems I'd say your outa luck because AFAICT it's the best software for this sort of thing there is.

  • timesheetphp (Score:3, Informative)

    by tonigonenstein ( 912347 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @11:36PM (#18467769)
    I am surprised almost no one mentioned free software solutions. We use timesheetphp [timesheetphp.com] at work and its pretty good. We naturally had to make a couple modifications but not that much. Check the demo on the web site.
  • I am putting together a time tracking system that is free for basic use and comes with a one month trial for the group use features. It's available here:

    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
  • You work for a top 30 Uni that doesn't have an ERP system? I suppose I'm not too suprised at that, but that's really the best solution since if done properly it will tie everything together, not just time entry and tracking.
  • Well first we don't need all this stuff to make you feel super important. About the Top 30 American University. Top 30 or Bottom 10 University, Company, Government Agency, Non-Profit organization.... All can have completely sucky IT Infrastructure. So you are not impressing us. But timesheet are always a problem. I would avoid any 3rd party canned software package Open Source or Not. They are more problem then what they are worth. The Cheap ones normally don't have features that you need. The ones t

  • WorkBrain on Vista would most likely be as fun as having a DOJ and IRS audit at the same time
  • Has anyone else heard of or tried Kronos http://www.kronos.com/ [kronos.com] ?? Holiday Retirement Corporation uses it for its entire work force. I only use it at a facility level. We have Human Resources and and IT department who handles it on the technical end. From the level I am allowed to use it it handles with punch cards in/out times. It allowes multi-user log ins to manually add in split shifts, sick hours, and vacation time. I have heard a future version handles scheduleing and incorporates it into the time car

  • . . . don't build it on Oracle Forms.

    Just trust me - don't do it.

  • 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.

  • We use Microsoft CRM with some modifications. You track cases / tasks / projects / etc and resolve with time. If you don't truly need clock-in / clock-out time, it should work great. And with the reports it generates you should be able to track total time - if it doesn't match your set hours, then your employees may be uhm reading slashdot or something :-D

    Disclaimer: I am generally a Linux proponent, but Microsoft CRM truly is a good product.

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