A thought on Small Business version..

[Peter C. Norton]

For a wonderful palm-pilot based tracker, there's a GPL'd tool called
"Timesheet" that has most all of the features asked for by Linas - editable
start and stop times, you can flag hours as billable or non-billable, it has
pulldown menus for clients, job, and task description as well as a free-form
text-entry area for notes.  It does some basic summary reports by client and
task on a week-by-week basis, which makes it very easy to write invoices.

I'd suggest looking at it if you've got some time, because its the only
useable time-tracking software I've used to date.

-Peter

P.S. Here's a link:

http://members.nbci.com/sbnic/palm/tsVersionHist.html

On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 11:40:35AM -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 07:43:04AM -0700, Darren Remington was heard to remark:
> > Linas,
> > 
> > Where does the GNOME Time Tracker tool fall short for
> > you? I installed Ximian's GNOME a while back and it
> > came with the GNOME 1.2 installation by default. What
> > would you like different in your TimeTracker? 
> 
> Well, have yu tried using it?
> 
> First, foremost & most important, I'd like to be able to 
> anotate entries: idealy, free-form strings where I can type in 
> what I've been working on.  But maybe this is not so important,
> If I preconfigure enough entries (project x read mail, 
> project x talk phone, project x write code).
> 
> So maybe a better setup would be a two-level thing:
> in one column, pick project x, or client z, in another column,
> pick task 'readmail', task 'talkphone'.  Yeah, that could work
> well.
> 
> The log file: it only logs start and stop times, 
> and not the project that was started and stopped.
> This should be a trivial fix.
> 
> The log file should write delta-time entries as well.
> The log file needs to be properly escaped, so that tabs/commas
> don't screw up its parsing when we import into gnucash.
> again, these are trivial changes.
> 
> Finally, an edit ability.  This is a bit harder ...
> but if I accidentally leave the tracker running during lunch,
> I can undo the entries.
> 
> I thik that's about it.  That, and an importer of the gtt
> log file-format into gnucash.
> 
> (ohh, ideally, gtt project entries could be picked out of the list of
> clients that I store in the addressbook ... but that bonus points.)
> 
> > Time Tracking & Labor Collection is something I do
> > have experience with - I worked on a tool called
> > Autotime for a company called Applied Automation
> > Techniques. The tool is a middleware solution between
> > ERP and Accounting for big manufacturing operations
> > (such as Boeing or Allison Engines.)
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> > However, having admitted to the experience, I think it
> > would be more productive for me to start with the
> > Addressbook component to GNUCash. I also think the
> 
> Uhh, no. I think the mods to gtt are mostly fairly 
> straightforward and not hard to do.  It'll get you warmed up.
> The addressbok work is harder, I beleive, because its
> more pervasive.
> 
> > addressbook should be integrated with Open Office,
> > instead of Evolution. The Open Office addressbook is
> > actually an integration of the Mozilla addressbook.
> 
> I suppose that's OK.  Making it pluggable, so I could someday
> use the evolution addressbok would be better...
> 
> The evolution addressbook is much much slicker, nicer layout,
> nicer forms.  And it prints out to something beautiful. 
> And its got search capabilities.
> 
> > The addressbook could be incorporated into GNUCash
> > without putting off the 'home user'. But the Time
> > Tracker would be along the lines of small business
> > interest and would fit more into a separate project
> > along with the other business-oriented components.
> 
> sort-of.
> 
> I envision the time-tracker would run more or less independently, 
> and every now an then, one could start up gnucash, and import
> time-tracker log files. (or should I say 'sync to' time tracker 
> logs)  This would *not* interfer with anyone.  
> 
> > What did you think of the name GNUBooks? I could start
> > work on the Time Tracker after I get the Addressbook
> > component made.
> 
> Well, there is a move afoot to modularize gnucash, to make
> it more configurable into different 'products'. Its being disussed on
> the mailing list.
> 
> I'm ccing the mailing list.
> 
> 
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Darren
> > 
> > --- Linas Vepstas <linas@linas.org> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 11:13:17AM -0700, Darren
> > > Remington was heard to remark:
> > > > Linas,
> > > > 
> > > > That brings up the perfect 'itch'. When I first 
> > > > started contract programming, the contracting 
> > > > organization I worked with wanted invoices for 
> > > > my billed hours. I had little idea where to even
> > > > start.
> > > > I ended up using the Star Office spreadsheet as I 
> > > > cobbed an invoice off someone who sent me one that
> > > 
> > > > they used in Excel.
> > > 
> > > This another occasional request.
> > > I hunted around for some time-trackers, but didn't
> > > find any nice
> > > GUI/desktop ones, although there seemed to be some
> > > web-based ones.
> > > 
> > > Someone would need to write an exporter for teh
> > > web-based things, and an
> > > importer for gnucash.  a quickie scheme based script
> > > would be ideal for
> > > this:  you'd learn scheme, and also see how easy it
> > > is to poke data in.
> > > 
> > > I'd prefer a gui time tracker, since the web-based
> > > ones require a web
> > > admin to install aache, then install and config the
> > > tool.  I'm
> > > big on 'trivial install'. 
> > > 
> > > --linas
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > __________________________________________________
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> 
> -- 
> Linas Vepstas -- linas@gnumatic.com -- http://www.gnumatic.com/



-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.