Frustrating to use

[tassiecelt]

I'm having  trouble understanding the way TM works.
I completed a job in three sessions, the last session went from 1pm to 2:15pm yet TM says the session ended at 4pm (noticed this at 2:30pm) and so the calculation is therefor wrong. If I depend on this app I will be overcharging the client.

[Adam]

I have never heard of anyone having a problem with the start and stop times.  I really can't even hazard a guess as to what you are seeing unless the clock is wrong on your device for some reason, you traveled thru different time zones or manually changed the duration of that session.  Were all three sessions done in the same day?

[tassiecelt]

No, I've remained in the same area, but sessions did span a couple of days and between 2010 and over to 2011.

[Adam]

Sessions are only to be used for a single day in a single Time Entry.  Do not create sessions for multiple different days inside of one Time Entry.  Sessions are not meant to be used like that and will cause problems.  Sessions are primarily meant to keep track of your "punch in & out" times during a single working day.  Only the "sum" of the durations for Sessions will be "rounded" in the main time entry.  This allows you to do many short sessions, but round the main Time Entry as a whole.  We cannot restrict the date because some workers may start late at night and work into the next morning, otherwise we would.  Time Entries allow a maximum time of 24 hours, thus the sessions must be less than 24 hours.

So when using sessions, you must create a new Time Entry for any subsequent days, with it's own session for that day.  Hope that makes sense?

[tassiecelt]

not sure if I understand...still thinking this is more complicated than it needs to be.

So, eg. I start a job on Dec 1, 2010, do an hour's quoting. Today if I continue that job can I carry over the time already spent, or must I start again with a new entry?

[Adam]

Yes, if you did work on Dec 1st, that Time Entry is completed and you do not "add" to it.  If you are doing more work today, you must create a new Time Entry for today.

[tassiecelt]

Thanks for that explanation, obviously I am not using TM correctly, but what you describe is not the way I prefer to work.

Back to the previous example - if I create new entries over, say, a couple of months then the only way to do a total of time is generate a report, right? This would mean editing the start and finish date to get a full report. This would take a few more steps than I used to take with Inertrak - my last app I used.

[Adam]

Each Time Entry is only for 1 single day.

Yes, you will want to Generate a report for that whole date range or it can be much larger.  For example I always have mine set from January 1st to the end of the current month.  Once you send out the report, you are prompted to "mark these items as Reported?"  If you answer YES then they will be marked as reported.  One of the "Filters" on the report generator page is "Reported".  If that is set to NO, then when you Generate a Report, the items that *are* marked as Reported will *not* show up on the report.  That is what that is for and that is how it works.  If you are using the optional Invoice module, you would use the "Invoiced" status instead.