ClickTime Blog

Quarterly comparisons with Report Builder

Are you interested in comparing your time worked on projects from one quarter to another? Or perhaps comparing your company's billable totals for one or more clients from one quarter to the next. Here's a quick example of how to do quarterly comparisons using Report Builder.

1) In the Company tab, click on the Reports option and then click to run Report Builder.

2) Select the date range you want to report on, and click the "update" button.

3) Click the "sort" icon and select the "Entry Date" column with the order direction set to "Ascending."

4) Click the "add" icon to add a column with a formula, enter "Quarter" as the name and "Text" as the Data Type. Then paste in the following formula:

Year([Entry Date]) & " " & IIF(Month([Entry Date]) <= 3,"Q1", IIF(Month([Entry Date]) >= 10,"Q4", IIF((Month([Entry Date]) >= 7 And Month([Entry Date]) <= 9),"Q3","Q2") ) )

Click the "Add" button and the new "Quarter" column will appear in your report.

Now you're ready to create any chart or graph to compare your data across quarters. Click the chart icon and select from pie charts, bar graphs or other charting options to visualize quarter-to-quarter comparisons.

Don't forget to click the "Save As" button so that you can easily review this report again later.

End-of-Year Reporting and Excel

Reporting becomes an important tool at the end of the year for evaluating your company's progress and ClickTime includes many pre-defined and customizable report options for this purpose. For the Excel gurus, we also provide the option to export raw data to build your own charts, graphs and other complex reports. If you regularly export data to use in custom Excel spreadsheets, we can make it easier for you with our Excel Linking feature. This feature adds the ability to have Excel pull data directly out of ClickTime into your spreadsheets.

The Excel Linking feature is included as part of the optional Web Services module. Once the module is added to your account, define the data your Excel spreadsheet retrieves by signing-in to ClickTime and clicking on the Customizable Data Export report. Provide a title for the saved report in addition to selecting the date range, fields and other options and then run the report. This creates a saved custom export that can be requested directly from Excel. See the online help for further details about retrieving your saved export in your version of Excel.

If you'd like to try out the Excel Linking feature, please contact our Professional Services group. Also, if you're using Google Spreadsheets, ask us for a sneak peak of the forthcoming "Google Spreadsheet Linking" feature.

Adding Holidays to Employee Timesheets

Many of you may already be thinking about the upcoming holidays. Whether spinning dreidels, sugar plums dancing in your head, or a tryptophan-induced food coma is in your plans over the next few weeks, we can help you get your employees' timesheets ready for the holidays.

Administrators can easily add company holidays to all employee timesheets or just full-time employees using the Bulk Changes feature. Just sign in to ClickTime, go the Company tab and click on the Advanced option. Then click the "Add time entries to timesheets" link in the Bulk Changes section and follow these steps:

1. Select the date (e.g. December 25, 2008)
2. Select "Company Holiday" (or your company's appropriate leave type) as the type of time off.
3. Enter "8" for the number of hours.
4. Select the condition "Add time to each person's timesheet only if no similar time entry exists on the specified date" in case some of your employees are ahead of you on doing this.
5. Specify all or individual employees (you may be able to pick full-time employees using the Employment Type option).
6. Click the "save" button.
7. Click "OK" to confirm you want to add the holiday time.

Then just repeat these steps for each date your company is on holiday (New Year's, etc.).

If you don't see the option to add Time Off after clicking the "Add time entries to timesheets" link, contact support for help adding the free Time Off feature to your account. Hopefully the rest of your holiday plans will go as smoothly as updating your timesheets.

Federal Mileage Rate Increase

For our U.S. customers, we want to remind you that due to the rising price of gas, as of July 1, 2008 the federal mileage reimbursement rate increased from 50.5 cents per mile to 58.5 cents/mile. This new rate lasts at least until December (see the Wikipedia article for details).

We recommend that you change your company's mileage reimbursement rate in ClickTime if you haven't already done so. In order to edit your company's mileage rate, follow these steps:

1. Login to ClickTime as an administrator
2. Click the "Expenses" link on the menu bar under the Company tab.
3. Click the "Expense Types" link.
4. Click on the name or "edit pencil icon" for a particular expense type.
5. Edit the rate value. For example, enter .585 for the new federal rate.
6. Save your changes.

If your company has setup multiple expense types for mileage rate reimbursement, remember to repeat the above steps for each appropriate expense type.

View Company Policies on your Time and Expense Sheets

Most companies have policies governing how employees should fill-in and submit timesheets and expense sheets. Unfortunately, those policies more often than not end up in an employee manual or on a memo that people can't find when they need it. Instead, take a couple of minutes to add your policies to ClickTime (assuming you can find the memo or your employee manual) and then your employees and contractors will always have an easy way to review this info while entering their time and expenses.

Add your company policies by going to the Advanced section under the Company tab and select the “custom messages” feature. Enter your company’s policies as “info” messages for the time entry, timesheet view and expense sheet entry locations. Activating these informational messages will add links on the appropriate locations in the application so your employees can easily review the policies as needed.

If you don't see the custom messages link in the advanced section please contact support regarding how to add this feature to your account. Also, if you'd like to add messages to other parts of ClickTime, please let us know.

Filling In Your Timesheet - Make it Easier

One of the primary areas we focus on with ClickTime is to make it quick and easy for you to enter and complete your time and expense sheets.

Some of the easiest methods for you to make this process faster reside on the "My Preferences" page and include:

• Default task
• Minimum entries to display per day
• Default expense type
• Default payment type

Correctly setting these values can quickly reduce the number of clicks required to fill in each time or expense entry. Additionally, for people who do the same type of work from day-to-day, our QuickDay and QuickWeek options can quickly fill in your timesheet for you.

It's typically overlooked during a hectic workweek how many times we repeat the same mouse-and-click actions. If we can simplify these activities for you, it can help you quickly fill in your time and expense sheets. These features and several new ones we're currently developing (stay tuned...) hopefully will make your day a bit easier.