Time Keeper w/ Keyboard Shortcuts + Reports?

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Kiopa_Matt

Banned
May 13, 2011
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I keep trying to keep timesheets, but it just doesn't work for a variety of reasons. The work day moves too quickly, you have people on e-mail / Skype popping up, some tasks only take 10 - 20 mins, some 2 hour tasks are actually a combination of multiple tasks / clients, etc. However, all those 15 mins here and there add up to a sizable amount of time at the end of the month.

What I want is a little desktop application that sits in the background. I can open it up, and define various keyboard shortcuts. For example:

Ctrl+Shift+1 = Unbillable
Ctrl+Shift+A+2 = Client A -- Development
Ctrl+Shift+A+3 = Client A -- Support / Maintenance
Ctrl+Shift+A+4 = Client A -- Bugs
Ctrl+Shift+B+2 = Client B -- Development
Ctrl+Shift+B+3 = Client B -- Support / Maintenance
Ctrl+Shift+B+4 = Client B -- Bugs

And so on, or whatever I decide. So I set my shortcuts, turn the timer on, and while banging away at work I can quickly hit a shortcut key, and the timer will start clocking the new client / task. Then obviously, ability to easily view time sheets, pull reports via CSV / PDF, etc.

I don't want to have to flip over to a web based app like Toggl, and switch the task, or add a new task. Just hit a quick keyboard shortcut, keep pounding away, and look at the timesheets whenever invoice time comes around. Does anything like this exist, or am I stuck developing it?
 


Kiopa_Matt said:
I keep trying to keep timesheets, but it just doesn't work for a variety of reasons. The work day moves too quickly, you have people on e-mail / Skype popping up, some tasks only take 10 - 20 mins, some 2 hour tasks are actually a combination of multiple tasks / clients, etc. However, all those 15 mins here and there add up to a sizable amount of time at the end of the month.

What I want is a little desktop application that sits in the background. I can open it up, and define various keyboard shortcuts. For example:

Ctrl+Shift+1 = Unbillable
Ctrl+Shift+A+2 = Client A -- Development
Ctrl+Shift+A+3 = Client A -- Support / Maintenance
Ctrl+Shift+A+4 = Client A -- Bugs
Ctrl+Shift+B+2 = Client B -- Development
Ctrl+Shift+B+3 = Client B -- Support / Maintenance
Ctrl+Shift+B+4 = Client B -- Bugs

And so on, or whatever I decide. So I set my shortcuts, turn the timer on, and while banging away at work I can quickly hit a shortcut key, and the timer will start clocking the new client / task. Then obviously, ability to easily view time sheets, pull reports via CSV / PDF, etc.

I don't want to have to flip over to a web based app like Toggl, and switch the task, or add a new task. Just hit a quick keyboard shortcut, keep pounding away, and look at the timesheets whenever invoice time comes around. Does anything like this exist, or am I stuck developing it?
Click to expand...

From the sound of things you just need to manage distractions a bit better. Turn Skype notifications off when you work, and give yourself 10-30 minutes every X hours to check Skype and Email. If somethings come up, deal with it/schedule it in your todo's and then go back to work.

In terms of breaking tasks down, just use broader task classification and enter notes when you log time saying what you did. Try to get all your work for one client done in chunks, rather than flipping between them and it eliminates that problem. By jumping around so much you're probably killing your productivity anyway.

All that using that kind of tracking is going to do is lead to you wasting even more time worrying about tracking, and occasionally forgetting to hit your hotkey and leaving timers running, etc etc..
 
Are you time blocking at all? For us service guys time blocking it's crucial because we get hit with Skype messages, emails, aggressive client phone calls, sites will randomly go down, etc.

Also not the answer youre exactly looking for but Harvest/Toggl both have API's which you can probably get someone to make what you're talking about around $100 (I know you're a dev, but I figured youre a busy dev). I don't know of a premade tool with them that does this, but they both have desktop apps and it seems pretty easy to do what youre saying.

Edit:
I didn't think of this until just now, but there is desktop apps that work with Basecamp, and the Basecamp API works with time trackers. So you could easily make tasks from Basecamp to record (from your desktop) and it would then record into Toggl/Harvest
 
I feel your pain. You should be able to set things up using Startly QuicKeys. I don't think it works well with the latest OS's though. I know it has problems with Mavericks and it looks like XP is the latest version for Windows.
 
mituozo said:
From the sound of things you just need to manage distractions a bit better. Turn Skype notifications off when you work, and give yourself 10-30 minutes every X hours to check Skype and Email. If somethings come up, deal with it/schedule it in your todo's and then go back to work.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... not really. Say a to-do list from a client comes in that consists of 30 things spread across six sites and a couple servers. Sure, I could just say I spent X hours on that client, and be done with it. However, I want to break it down a little further.

Completing that to-do list contains various types of work:

- New development
- Bugs
- Grey area (kinda, sort of, not really a bug)
- General support / maintenance
- Server administration
- Investigating security breach / attempt
- Communication / e-mail / report writing
- Unbillable (ie. work on core functionality)
- Research
- Testing

Sure, I can easily see knocking out that to-do list took 6 hours, but I want more of a concise breakdown by classification of work.
 
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