Session Tasks?

[RiversEdgePM]

I have been using Time Master for my consulting business for about 6 months now on a daily basis.  I use it exclusively to track my billable hours and so far it seems to really work great.  I use the sessions tracking throughout each day for my individual clients, and more often than not I will simply do a "Copy & Start" from the previous day to ease my morning set up.  My problem (and my question) is that I never remember to change the task related to an individual session so when I do my reporting I end up with ALL of my billable time categorized into one task.....I then go through Excel line by line and change as needed - very tedious.   Is there a means to have TM force a task selection for each session (much like it forces a session note)??  That would be extremely helpful.

[Adam]

Sessions themselves are not assigned a Task per se.  The Task is in the main Time Entry section.  You can change the Task in the main screen and when it is Reported it will change in the Sessions listing.  You will need to change the Task sometime after you have done the Copy and Start and have stopped the Timer.

[RiversEdgePM]

Right - but is there a way to assign a task to sessions?  Or can you put that on the 'would-be-great' list?  I like to itemize all billable time t/o each day but having to create a new time entry for each session would take way too long. 

[Adam]

No, sorry we do not assign Projects, Tasks, etc. to Sessions.  Sessions are meant for one of two things.  First for people who need to report their "punch in & out" times to their employers and second for people who just want to keep track of punch in & out times for their own information.  The *sum* of the session time gets Rounded in the main Time Entry, so you should not be reporting session information to clients (unless you do not round time).  If you are doing different Tasks for that Client, you should really be creating different Time Entries.

[RiversEdgePM]

Ahh but the use of sessions is what makes this so easy and useful.  For example, when a client is calling - it takes me only a few seconds to hit the start button and create a new session that will then have a detailed note stored with it.  If I had to create a new time-entry for each action/task, I'd either be missing a lot of calls or being forced to go back after the fact and create an entry........which would mean surely missing/forgetting to log some.  As is right now, I keep TM running on my iPad all day on my desk - I can very quickly pull it up and start and stop timers as needed.  Taking that functionality out really would lessen the benefit of this software to me.  I'll figure something out....thanks.

[Colin]

Unfortunately what you're describing is a real world example Just like a journal or punch-card style task tracking, where it's the punch - the current time grab + current client/project/tast - that defines what's recorded.

From what I've seen the OnCore folks don't live in the real world. Their "Select the Client first, then start a timer" workflow is unsuited to a mobile platform and more like retrospective time sheeting.

There's a fundamental flaw with the way TimeMaster has been developed which seems to be a UI and database limitation, almost like this app was developed as a prototype iPhone DB, then upsized to iPad with no real usability study or innovation beyond their archaic DB.

The whole app needs to be re-thought -- take a look at your successful competitors, those with hundreds of thousands of users!

Yes, I am a TimeMaster OWNER(you probably count me when you try to say "we -are- in the real world look at our thousands of USERS!") but I am not a TimeMaster USER...

[Ernesto]

TimeMaster already supports starting timers without having to add a Time Entry and going through the process of selecting a Client/Project/Task, etc, even Session settings, by duplicating an older entry. It can actually be configured to do that (including starting the timer) on a single tap.

You can also configure sessions to prompt for a note immediately after stopping the timer, so you can do it on the spot and don't have to remember later.

As far as using templates for annotations (or anything else, really), TimeMaster fully supports TextExpander, a third party app that allows you to define keyboard shortcuts you can use to expand macros into full blown notes. The reason we opted to add support for it it's because we understand that users want the flexibility to use such templates not only in session notes, but all over the application and even other applications.

My recommendation to RiversEdgePM is to stop using Tasks, and instead use the Session notes to describe what you were doing when the session ended. I'll also incorporate your wish to have some sort of session note templates to our wish-list.

Lastly, I can confirm On-Core folks live in the real world and use TimeMaster to track time and do billing. We also understand that different people and industries have different methodologies to track time, do billing, etc, and that TimeMaster might not appeal to everybody. What we are definitely proud to say is that TimeMaster development since it's inception has been entirely customer-feedback driven (even the Sessions feature, which was not originally part of TimeMaster, was added due to the request of our users).

We understand that TimeMaster still has room to grow, and we encourage our users to contact us and provide feedback so we can understand their needs and make the product even better.