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Chris_Morey
11-13-2012, 10:56 PM
Hey guys, we are a very small publishing company. Most of our employees work virtually, but we have a couple here at the central office. We're needing a way to keep track of employees' hours easily and preferably digitally. Here's what we need:

Essentially something as simple as the employee sits at his/her desk, clicks "START" and the program runs as a stopwatch. Once the employee is done for the day they click "STOP" and then the total time they spent working is automatically logged and stored in a database that keeps track exactly of the amount of time they worked, on what dates, maybe allows notes etc...

Anyone know of a piece of software that does something like this? Thank you to anyone for any help!

billbenson
11-13-2012, 11:22 PM
I'm self employed now, but I was a field salesman working out of my house for a couple different companies for 22 years.

What are these employees doing that you need to micromanage them at this level? If they are doing clerical work, you can pretty easily tell if they are working or not by their work output. The same is true for a software developer or a salesman.

I've had employers try to micromanage me by ridiculous activity reports. I've had good managers who wanted updates on important accounts.

What are these employees doing that you need them to punch in a digital time clock?

ArcSine
11-14-2012, 07:57 AM
On the high end of the sophistication / cost scale you have out-of-the-box solutions such as from ADP (http://www.adp.com/ADP_Solutions/time-and-attendance.aspx?Keyword=Timeclock&Keyword_Match_Type=e-Search&Ad_Content_ID=11931294264&Landing_Page_ID=TLM&Referring_Source=Google&cid=ip_TLM_Google_NB) or from these guys (http://resourcr.com/landingpage2?utm_expid=42652405-1&gclid=CMnsif65zrMCFQ-f4Aod92MAbA&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Faclk%3F sa%3Dl%26ai%3DCIq5Kn4yjUKaqKqfO6QGkjIHADY-6658Ez4f6rmzI3vAEEAUgtlQoCFCNg5-G_P____8BYMn2toqkpJgQoAGZktviA8gBAakCqnOik_Q3Mz6qB CdP0LKLc8U32O_n9WWxpxX_jI8hl8-ieiGSfAXeR4VOxvVaq1-IlNKABZBO%26num%3D8%26sig%3DAOD64_1WZwt_YTbd5Q4Io7 8op0IEtdLz1Q%26ved%3D0CPsBENEM%26adurl%3Dhttp%3A%2 F%2Fwww.resourcr.com%2Flandingpage1%26rct%3Dj%26q% 3Dtimeclock). (Not in any way a pro or con opinion on my part with respect to these products; simply a couple of Google hits I landed on right away, that I put up here as examples. You could find plenty more.)

Down on the simplest ("roll-your-own with stuff already lying around the house") end of the spectrum there is Excel (or any comparable spreadsheet such as Calc). Pressing Ctrl plus the colon / semicolon key enters the current date into a cell. Pressing Ctrl, Shift, and the colon / semicolon key together enters the immediate timestamp into a cell. So imagine a setup where each job or project is on a single row of the spreadsheet, with five cells along the row: Job Name / Number; Employee Name; Date; Start Time; Stop Time.

When the employee begins work on a job s/he enters the current date and also the start time (Ctrl + Shift + :/; ). When the employee stops working on the job s/he does the Ctrl + Shift + :/; thing in the Stop Time cell. The total time spent on the job is, of course, the result of deducting Start Time from Stop Time, which Excel could do automatically by formula.

You mentioned having a capability for adding notes, which could be another cell on the row, or handled via the "comments" feature. Also, such an arrangement would make it easy to summarize total time both by employee and by job.

In all likelihood what I've described is too simplistic for your needs. But a more on-point recommendation isn't possible without knowing your situation and specifics. My point was to give you a starting idea you could maybe run with, and then juice it up to create a workable arrangement. For example, if you have some familiarity with VBA, you could really develop a more sophisticated timeclock program, based on Excel and using the basic functionality I described.

Evan
11-14-2012, 06:36 PM
Programs like TOGGL work, if you're interested in tracking time by projects.

billbenson
11-30-2012, 08:04 PM
I'm still curious of the benefits of micro managing employees this way?

Pack-Secure
11-30-2012, 08:15 PM
What about an old fashioned punch time clock?

billbenson
11-30-2012, 08:19 PM
What about an old fashioned punch time clock?
For remote professional employees? I haven't punched a time clock since 1979 or so.

I've never heard of professional employees, remote or otherwise, punching a time clock.

Pack-Secure
12-01-2012, 12:59 AM
What about an old fashioned punch time clock?

Sorry my sarcasm did not come out very well in that post. :(

billbenson
12-01-2012, 01:39 AM
Sorry my sarcasm did not come out very well in that post. :(

No biggie. I am still interested in why something like this is necessary. It had nothing to do with your post.