"More than a spreadsheet"

I was reading a user review for Timeless Time & Expense on of the major software download sites the other day. It was a short review, not much more than a single line that said "more than just a spreadsheet". It reminded me of the early days of Timeless Time & Expense.

Time tracking at its simplest is a piece of notebook paper using a line for each time entry. Like most time tracking systems this usually degraded to a once a week memory exercise. The next step for most was the use of spreadsheet software. This wasn't much better. Each project entry required a fair amount of typing and the memory exercise remained. With cut and paste it was faster to fill out the timesheet at the expense of accuracy.

Since many software developers we required to track their time it wasn't long before many tried to solve the problem. They typically created a 'better' spreadsheet. Dropdown lists were added to select clients and projects. This reduced the errors by limiting the selections to valid values. It was a litte faster and easier so more likely that time would be entered before the end of the week avoiding the same old memory excercise. But it was still just an automated piece of paper. The more detail you needed, the more time it took to select the correct information. This means it is only efficient for tracking time for billing - not for project management. Effective project management requires more detailed time tracking.

This is where Timeless Time & Expense was born. Detailed time tracking for project management requires a different paradigm - one taken from project management. To effectively manage a project, tasks must be broken down to a level of detail which allows the tasks to be easily estimated and tracked. This naturally results in a tree hierarchy with many levels of parent-child relationships. This is the paradigm Timeless Time & Expense uses. A paradigm that is as easy to use with two levels as it is with twenty (more on that in a future post).

This ease of use for our customers come at a price for the developers. In the limited, spreadsheet approach reporting is simple database queries. With a dynamic project hierarchy, it is much more complicated. Luckily, we have developers who are up to the challenge and are currently working to expand and simplify reporting for Timeless Time & Expense 3.0.