Many companies can be sticklers for time tracking, and need to know how your work time is spent for billing and accounting purposes. Keeping tabs on how much time you've spent on various tasks is also important on the other end for consulting gigs that pay hourly.
You could try to keep track of your time using a pencil and notepad. Then again, you could commit a grievous mathematical error that results in your severe underpayment because you forgot to carry a digit. It's not NASA satellite-destroying bad, but it's still bad enough to ruin your day.
Or you could pick up a copy of yaTimer, a charming little application that uses colorful graphics and intuitive controls to make time-tracking a breeze. yaTimer lets you create any number of tasks, which are then represented on your screen like stopwatches, easily identified by color and your own written description. Whenever you begin work on one of your tasks, just click a button and the timer will start counting up or down (your choice). If you take a break, or move onto a different task, just click the pause button, and yaTimer will maintain a running total for that task.
Each task can be maximized so that you can fill-in more detailed comments, and indicate whether the time is billable, and at what hourly rate. yaTimer also lets you print out a report that shows how you split your time between different clients, as well as a timesheet report that can serve as a master summary of your activities.
yaTimer strikes that fine balance between being an application that is instantly approachable and easy to use, but with deeper functionality that demonstrates real power and flexibility.
The computer must be on for the timers to work – but you can manually add time you worked when the computer was off (or you were away from the computer).
(it's actually possible, under some conditions, to keep the timer running when the computer is in sleep mode - but this is an accident and not by design - and as such not very reliable).
And to Albert and Tom - thank you for the recommendations.
Hello
Does this program can work in automatic mode, so that when I assign a program X do action Y, time will be counted automatically towards action Y when program X is active? Does it support automatic idle time, so that fe. if there is no activity on computer for 1 minute, and program is still the active application, counting stops?
I have used yaTimer and found it very useful for timing my activities.
I like the way it maintains several independent timers, categorizing things, and keeping good track of things in broad categories, e.g., billable, non-billable, individual activities, etc.
It keeps track of each individual period of activity and allows you to add comments to each period of timing. Further, you can see how much time you've spent in the current period (since your last break) as well as overall.
You can also start activities with a countdown timer, and it allows you to see your progress against time budgets. It generates all sorts of reports, on screen and printed.
Especially nice, its main screen "zooms" very conveniently and intelligently.
This has the feel of the new Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and it was one of the very first commercial apps to do so.
The developer was very responsive and helpful.
Recommended.
Posting here will also email Nbd-Tech directly.
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