7. Example : Time Tracking

Case: You are a consultant and have a handful of customers, and you get paid by the hour. Your customers also may want detailed report of the work done
Solution: Use InfoQube to enter the work done, calculate total hours and provide detailed report.

In this grid:
  • the duration is calculated based on start-end times. If EndTime covers more than a day, it assumes 8 hours per day (this is a user setting, see item 1.2 which lasts 17 hours over 3 days). This is done using a user-defined equation (Duration = WorkTime( StartDate , EndDate , 8) - ( NonBillable ))
  • Since task items are created under a parent (Project Lear or Somiro), it will inherit the Project field automatically (Field Management > Inheritance is checked).
  • NonBillable hours (i.e. lunch) are automatically substracted.
  • This detail can be exported as an HTML page with the columns you select. You can include that page as an attatchement to the actual bill. Example available here.
  • You could also add work notes as sub-items under each Task entry (or in the HTML Editing Pane)
  • If you want to hide already billed hours from the grid, activate the filter.
  • Actual bill to be printed/PDF/e-mailed could also be generated by InfoQube (will be the subject of another post here)
  • Worked information can be entered in this grid or in a user-defined form.

Putting the task as a sub-item of the project allows: expand/collapse, automatic project field assignment, and gives you great viewing flexibility:
  • View work done by project as show above (grouped together) (Grid > Context parents checked)
  • View work done chronologically (context parents unchecked) to see your whole week/month

The pivot table on the lower part of the screenshot gives the totals hours, per project and per month that need to be billed. Change BillingNo in the pivot table to see specific bills if desired or to see total work done last year, etc.


So when customers call, you can quickly tell them how many hours have been done and left on the budget!

BTW, this is not some theoretical billing solution, I've actually been using this for the last 2 years for my consulting activities, so it is a well tested solution!
The InfoQube default template (File>New) has been updated to include this sample.
Next step is 6. Example : Generating Invoices