Dave, you've not filled out your timesheet.



  • No matter what you do or where you work you probably fill out a timesheet. It could be a simple timesheet showing the hours you worked, or one that shows which projects you've been working on. It could be paper only, a spreadsheet, or a web based application. Let's say you have a web based application and you want to automatically populate fields based on previous input. There's a few ways to do it, a checkbox asking the user if they want use the pervious sheets time, autopopulate the fields, or maybe give them a selection of past timesheets to copy.

    This guy decided on a different approach. The AI driven timesheet.

    Everybody can click on URLs in emails to open them in a nearby web browser. Obviously all of these URLs need to contain information about the day and the login credentials of the user so that you don't have to login on some site after you click the URL. Every URL would thus contain login stuff and a particular entry to the timesheet tracker. Something like this:

    http://timesheeting.com/Xgt4q/_8_hours_Project_ABC
    http://timesheeting.com/FpE26/_6_hours_Project_ABC
    http://timesheeting.com/2Jt9a/_4_hours_Project_OCH

    The first part of the URL is an encoding of the user's login and the date (date of when the email was created) and the second part is so readable that you can find which one suits you by simply reading the URLs. If you need to enter a comment for every piece of work you do, that comment form can be shown when you click the URL on the site.

    Why simply show the user what they've worked when you can use a simple AI to generate multiple unique URLs? Just think of the time saved with this method. Instead of loading pages from a web server, processing the commands and then rendering them you simply scroll through a list of URLs until you find the one that suits you.

    Anybody else have "clever" solutions to the difficult task of filling out a timesheet?


  • Garbage Person

     Windows logins. Naturally, this means you don't get paid for reboots - or paid for being offsite.



  •  Fortunately, I don't have to fill out a timesheet at present... my employers over the last 25 years occasionally succumbed to the timesheet fad and tried to get workers to fill them out in various styles, but it always died on the vine after a few weeks when it turned out that management didn't want to be bothered to actually try to do anything useful with the information on the sheets so they just piled up unread.

     



  • I keep my hours on paper, using a self-invented format to denote quarters and half-hours. That qualifies as "clever", I guess. I do that because having a timesheet open at all times is annoying. I manually enter the data each week, which is also annoying, but timesheet keeping is always annoying, so, feh.

    The paper version is almost guaranteed to be more accurate and complete than the one in the database.



  • My project manager fills this for me.



  • @dtobias said:

    my employers over the last 25 years occasionally succumbed to the timesheet fad and tried to get workers to fill them out in various styles, but it always died on the vine after a few weeks when it turned out that management didn't want to be bothered to actually try to do anything useful with the information
    Every single time. We've had management ressurect this crap 3 times in the past. The first two times I would write down everything, then the boss woul come over the next day and ask me stuff I'd already reported. Each time I was the last to give up on it. The third time it was a no-go from the start. I put in a couple of entries, then let it die. If ou can't be bothered to read what I wrote, then I certainly can't be bothered to write it. Besides, I'm already writting this stuff down in source control and the bug database. Go find someone else to bother.



  • @Weng said:

     Windows logins. Naturally, this means you don't get paid for reboots - or paid for being offsite.

    I wonder how that work work if you virtualize your windows and suspend it. (Like I do, login once every... month or so?)



    We are using Tim Enterprise. Which only scores a WTF for being Java. Other then that it works :-|



  • @dtobias said:

     Fortunately, I don't have to fill out a timesheet at present... my employers over the last 25 years occasionally succumbed to the timesheet fad and tried to get workers to fill them out in various styles, but it always died on the vine after a few weeks when it turned out that management didn't want to be bothered to actually try to do anything useful with the information on the sheets so they just piled up unread.

     

    In the US, you need timecards for SOX compliance. At least, that's what our accountants tell us... I put them in each week, so they can be completely ignored by everybody. But, hey, we're SOX compliant!



  • If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.



  • @Medezark said:

    If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.

    In what state/country? Not true here in Washington State.



  • The timesheets don't affect our pay. We need it so we know how much time has gone to each project. That's perfectly legal. If I log overtime in a week, I don't get paid extra for it because I'm on salary here, but we do charge it as time spent on the project. So, we always end up with "project time + admin time > hours paid for"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dtobias said:

     Fortunately, I don't have to fill out a timesheet at present... my employers over the last 25 years occasionally succumbed to the timesheet fad and tried to get workers to fill them out in various styles, but it always died on the vine after a few weeks when it turned out that management didn't want to be bothered to actually try to do anything useful with the information on the sheets so they just piled up unread.

     

    In the US, you need timecards for SOX compliance. At least, that's what our accountants tell us... I put them in each week, so they can be completely ignored by everybody. But, hey, we're SOX compliant!

     

    TRWTF is when you have monthly timesheets that have to be submitted to the master list three days before the end of the month by your manager, who insists you get them to him three days before that, with the result that the last week's worth of monthly figures are projections at best (and pure science fiction in the most probable real-world case).

    And you can only charge time against projects that are fully funded, when in most cases you're spending the bulk of your time on projects that are still waiting for funding, so you put the numbers where they want to see them rather than where they actually belong.

    I wish it had occurred to me to fill out all my monthly timesheets for a project at the beginning and just dribble them out as the schedule required.  It would have saved a lot of jiggery-pokery.



  • We don't do timesheets.  If we think a developer is under-producing, we'll just replace him.



  • Back when I used to travel from site to site all day long I used a webserver at my house and a Windows program that resided in my system tray to keep track of my hours.  The Windows program was in my startup group, and when it started it sent my laptop's current IP to the webserver.  The webserver recorded the laptop's reported IP, the IP the request actually came from, and the current time to the database.  The two IPs together allowed my program to figure out exactly which site I was at (some sites shared a firewall and some sites had the same private subnets so both IPs were required).  While I was working if I right-clicked on the icon in my system tray it popped up a small message box letting me type in a short description of what I was working on.  When I shutdown my laptop the description and laptop IP were sent to the webserver which recorded the description, both IPs, and the time to the database.  Each site was billed from 5 minutes after the time I shutdown my laptop before I logged in at their site until 5 minutes after I shutdown my laptop at their site (basically they were billed for travel to the site and time spent at the site).  All this (times, locations, and descriptions) was prepopulated on my timesheets, I just had to touch stuff up occasionally if I didn't enter a description while onsite or was delayed leaving a site or stopped somewhere on the way to a site etc.  Usually when I got to a site that I didn't actually need my laptop for, it was easiest just to turn it on in the parking lot before I left just long enough for it to report its location over the wifi.  Occasionally I'd think about making my Windows program a service so it could report without me having to login, but I never got around to it.

    Now that I rarely go onsite, my timesheets are based on my email sent and received messages (approximate time it took to read & write each email), cell phone call records, IM logs, telnet & ssh logs, and tollway records.  I just last week finished my timesheets for 2009.  I need to figure out a new automated system :(

     



  • @Pascal said:

    I just last week finished my timesheets for 2009.  I need to figure out a new automated system :(
    Are we a little behind in our work then????



  • @jasmine2501 said:

    The timesheets don't affect our pay. We need it so we know how much time has gone to each project.
    Time sheets do affect my pay if I do more than 16 hours OT in a month. But the question I have been meaning to ask my boss, is that all time gets booked against a project (and preferably against a billable project), so that first 16 hours gets removed from the project, but doesn't flow to me. So where does it go?


  • Garbage Person

    @OzPeter said:

    so that first 16 hours gets removed from the project, but doesn't flow to me. So where does it go?
    Executive slush fund. Duh.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Medezark said:

    If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.

    In what state/country? Not true here in Washington State.



    Nor Missouri.

    The 2nd scuzziest profession, IMHO, next to lawyerin' is accounting. See, years ago accountants convinced everybody that if a company spends its CAPITAL on a big item, like a truck, the expense for that truck can be spread out over time for tax purposes. So, if you're working on a CAPITAL project, the cost to pay you is likewise CAPITALIZEABLE. Whereas if you're working on maintenance or day-to-day stuff, it is not.What a crock.

    On a less crocky note, a company with, say, 1000 IT employees will have a couple million IT man-hours in a year. It would behoove them to know at least at a ballpark level how many of those hours are spent doing what. 

     TRWTF is companies with MULTIPLE time entry platforms, and those which require submission of time entry for a period before that period ends (requiring one to later "adjust" said time entry in the frequent cases where one's crystal ball failed to accurately predict the allocation of one's future time).



  • I have written computer programs to do timesheets, for other companies, including the pie charts and those kind of things, but it is just manual entry, and it works. These timesheets are not difficult (I do not use them myself since I do not use timesheets in my work, but they say it works and is not difficult).



  •  The "timesheet" i fill every month for my current employer is a home-brew excel file. It has a macro that fills my normal hours for each day, marks weekends etc.
    At the end of every month i copy that file, run the macro, zero-out any days that were holidays** and email to my boss. Everything else, like taking days off, being late or leaving early is mostly ignored as no one gives a fuck.

    PS: My salary is a set per-month value, unrelated in any shape or form to the above but that timesheet is required by law.

    ** Holidays in my country are... complicated. While most of everything (including salaries) uses the Gregorian calendar (like the rest of the world), holidays are on a different, hybrid solar-lunar, calendar. That calendar can have either 12 or 13 months per year, most of the months can have 28-30 days and the total number of days in a year can have 6 (i think), wildly different values. The point being that translating that to normal gregorian dates programatically is very non-trivial, hence the manual step. Bonus point if you can guess my country from that description ;)




  • @OzPeter said:

    @jasmine2501 said:
    The timesheets don't affect our pay. We need it so we know how much time has gone to each project.
    Time sheets do affect my pay if I do more than 16 hours OT in a month. But the question I have been meaning to ask my boss, is that all time gets booked against a project (and preferably against a billable project), so that first 16 hours gets removed from the project, but doesn't flow to me. So where does it go?

    Depending on your accounting department, it might go nowhere. Our accounting rule basically screws the business departments if we work overtime. I get paid for 40 hours - the company never spends more money than that, for me as a resource. However, if I work 60 hours in a week, I might bill all those hours to projects, and the stakeholders in those projects will "pay" for 60 hours worth of my time, at the 40-hour-per-week pay rate. The extra 20 hours that they pay for doesn't actually exist. Your situation sounds like the opposite one.



  • I have to fill out timesheets that are terminally incorrect.  Generally, the project I'm working on is not a listed option (and I can't add it), so I don't apply my time to anything.  A few weeks after the project is complete, I've stopped bothering to check the timesheets because happily billing 8 hours a day for masterbating to internet porn.  Around that time, it shows up on the listing (the project, not the masterbating) and somebody yells at me for never filling out my timesheets. 

    @bdew said:

      Bonus point if you can guess my country from that description ;)

    I'd say Israel.



  • @bdew said:

     The "timesheet" i fill every month for my current employer is a home-brew excel file. It has a macro that fills my normal hours for each day, marks weekends etc.
    At the end of every month i copy that file, run the macro, zero-out any days that were holidays** and email to my boss. Everything else, like taking days off, being late or leaving early is mostly ignored as no one gives a fuck.

    PS: My salary is a set per-month value, unrelated in any shape or form to the above but that timesheet is required by law.

    ** Holidays in my country are... complicated. While most of everything (including salaries) uses the Gregorian calendar (like the rest of the world), holidays are on a different, hybrid solar-lunar, calendar. That calendar can have either 12 or 13 months per year, most of the months can have 28-30 days and the total number of days in a year can have 6 (i think), wildly different values. The point being that translating that to normal gregorian dates programatically is very non-trivial, hence the manual step. Bonus point if you can guess my country from that description ;)

    I would have to say India. We Hindus follow the lunar calendar.



  • @Medezark said:

    If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.

     

     How I wish that was true.  At time-and-a-half, I'd be making about 35% more if I actually got overtime pay.

    My time sheets are actually pored over, too, since they're used for billing our customers for my work.  I need the right activity code and the right customer code for everything I do, else I'll get end-of-the-month calls asking me to clarify what I was doing tuesday morning three weeks ago.



  • @Cat said:

    @Medezark said:

    If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.

     

     How I wish that was true.  At time-and-a-half, I'd be making about 35% more if I actually got overtime pay.

    Does anybody know what locality/city/county/state/country/planet Medezark is talking about? We should all move there.



  • @Cat said:

     How I wish that was true.  At time-and-a-half, I'd be making about 35% more if I actually got overtime pay.

    We don't get overtime where I work but we do get time off in lieu at manager's discretion.  My manager is very fair and is happy for me to disappear early if I've been working late.

     

    @Cat said:

    My time sheets are actually pored over, too, since they're used for billing our customers for my work.  I need the right activity code and the right customer code for everything I do, else I'll get end-of-the-month calls asking me to clarify what I was doing tuesday morning three weeks ago.

    Same with us here.  I have to write everything down in a small pocket diary so I can remember where and when I was for any given day.  We too bill our customers for the actual hours done but our timesheet system only lets you put in 7.5 hours for any day.  The rest of the time has to be fudged into other days or lost.

     



  • @Yaos said:

    Dave, you've not filled out your timesheet.

    I'm sorry Hal, I can't do that.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Cat said:

    My time sheets are actually pored over, too, since they're used for billing our
    customers for my work.  I need the right activity code and the right
    customer code for everything I do, else I'll get end-of-the-month calls asking
    me to clarify what I was doing tuesday morning three weeks ago.
    I take it you have some meta-codes for the 3 hrs per week it takes to deal with timesheet related crap?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Cat said:

    @Medezark said:

    If you are salaried - exempt and your company forces you to log time sheets then you are being treated as salaried non-exempt and thereby due any overtime you may have accrued.

     

     How I wish that was true.  At time-and-a-half, I'd be making about 35% more if I actually got overtime pay.

    Does anybody know what locality/city/county/state/country/planet Medezark is talking about? We should all move there.

    The vast majority of workers in my country gets paid a monthly fixed-value, and works over an 8hr schedule (usually 9am-6pm). According to the law, every hour worked beyond that has to be payd a 50% or more increased rate. Of course, most companies ignore solemnly the law (that includes my wife's boss, who's a human-rights lawyer).

    Truth to be said, in a previous life I was a tech-suport "telemarketing monkey" and got payed extra for working the night shift (other requirement by law).



  • @DaveK said:

    @Yaos said:

    Dave, you've not filled out your timesheet.

    I'm sorry Hal, I can't do that.

     

    Congratulations, you got the joke.



  • I worked on a system for timesheets that had a feature to use the entries you just made for the week as your default. We actually had managers ask to remove that feature because too many employees got confused about where the hours came from on a new time sheet and didn't bother to correct it if their actual time worked was different that week. As a compromise we wiped out the defaults in the db for the people on that project rather than anger all of the other users with a clue. So in some cases an Artificial Intelligence is is a lot more intelligence than you will get out of your users.



  • @PJH said:

    I take it you have some meta-codes for the 3 hrs per week it takes to deal with timesheet related crap?
     

     Code 119, customer 0 is "Logging time".


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