ClickTime Blog

ClickTime 5.6

We have another update for you quickly on the heels of our last update. This release includes compatibility improvements with the ClickTime Mobile Edition, a new version of web services and updates to the new Week View (beta) time entry interface.

• ClickTime Mobile Edition - We've made several enhancements to the timesheet and expense functionality in the Mobile Edition. The changes should significantly improve usability for BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile users. We also added a nice icon for iPhone users when adding ClickTime to your home screen.
• New Week View (beta) - We updated the new Week View (beta) edition to allow you to easily switch between using type-ahead or the standard "pop-down" selectors when specifying the project and task you are working on. The type-ahead option is very useful when you have long project or tasks lists.
• Web Services 2.1 - We have a new version of web services with an updated and enhanced API. Contact support for documentation on what's new. If you're currently using an old version of web services we encourage you to migrate to the new version as soon as possible. The old version will only be accessible for a couple more months.

For more details about the changes in version 5.6, see our release notes.

ClickTime 5.5

We are happy to have released version 5.5 of ClickTime last week. The new version includes some great new features. These are the highlights:

1. QuickBooks Connector - The ClickTime QuickBooks Connector helps you integrate timesheet and expense data seamlessly with QuickBooks. The integration tool communicates directly with QuickBooks, making it more efficient than traditional IIF export/import methods.
2. Excel Linking - This allows you to download ClickTime data directly into your own Excel spreadsheets without logging into the ClickTime web application. You can create your own custom reports in Excel (pivot tables, charts, etc.) and then dynamically update the information from ClickTime with a click of your mouse.
3. OpenID - We now provide support for login using OpenID. See our previous blog post for more info.
4. Week View (beta) - We added auto-saving and many other improvements to the Week View (beta) time-entry interface.
5. Reporting Improvements - A bunch of reports got updated with new columns, filters and output options.
6. Safari 3.1 Compatibility - We now officially support version 3.1 of the Safari web browser for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

For more details about the changes in version 5.5, see our release notes.

Happy New Year

From all of us at ClickTime, we hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and the beginning of 2008. We are anticipating an active and productive year. You can look forward to new features as well as expanding many of our existing features.

We recently released a minor update that improves the ability to synchronize your user list with other applications. Additionally, if you are interested in making bulk updates to your user list (adding and editing), please contact our Professional Services department for more information.

We also encourage you to tell us what you’d like to see added or changed in ClickTime by filling out our suggestion form. We look forward to hearing from you.

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.

Safari 3.0 beta

Back in June, Apple released a beta version of their Safari 3.0 web browser for Mac and Windows. The browser received a great deal of attention due to its availability for Windows and our customers definitely noticed. We are seeing people logging into ClickTime every day with beta versions of Safari.

Officially, we don't support beta versions of browsers and there's a good reason why. Beta versions of web browsers typically have bugs that impair usability and the current beta version of Safari is no exception. We like playing with new tech toys just like many of you do, but we don't want this new technology to interfere with your ability to be productive. We strongly recommend you use a web browser from our supported list.

Of course, we're already testing ClickTime using the beta version of Safari 3.0 to detect any issues. We're currently aware of the following bugs with the current Safari beta version (3.0.3) when used with ClickTime:

1. The stopwatch feature may not work properly.
2. An error can occur when running reports due to Safari's incorrect handling of the date range selector.
3. Errors can occur when saving time due to issues selecting tasks in the time entry interface.

We have reported these bugs to Apple and look forward to a new release of Safari that fixes the problems.

Until Safari 3.0 is finalized, we recommend you use Safari 2.0 or an alternative web browser.

New Reporting Tools

As the product manager for ClickTime, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to speak with many of our customers regarding how you track time, what you want to accomplish and what new features and functionality you want to see added to our time and expense tracking service. The most frequent requests have to do with reporting and the desire to breakdown and evaluate your data in unique ways.

In our most recent release, version 5.0, we’ve added new powerful reporting tools. The new Report Builder gives you the ability to create charts, graphs, pivot tables (also referred to as “cross tab” reports), columns with formulas and more. There are so many things you can do with the Report Builder that it’s too much to cover in one blog entry so I’ll focus on one aspect for now.

Filtering Data with Report Builder: The Report Builder provides you with the ability to create multiple filters for reporting on your data. For example, you may only want to see how much time 5 specific people have worked on 3 jobs during the first quarter of the year. Filtering is possible with other reports but combining multiple different filters for people, clients, jobs and tasks at the same time often required that you export the data to Excel.

To try out the Report Builder:

• Go to the Reports section under the Company tab.
• Click the “Run Report Builder” link.
• Click the filter icon (it looks like a funnel) to show the options.
• Select the column to filter on and specify the options you want (e.g. clients that start with the letter “c”).
• Click the “Add” link.

The report will refresh showing the filtered data and you can proceed with adding additional filters.

After you’re done applying some filters, try the other options (sorting, add/remove columns, create your own calculated formula column, etc.) and you’ll quickly realize the flexibility and power you now have for analyzing your time entries.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding Report Builder or any other feature, please let us know.