timesheets

Excel is capable of doing all kinds of useful things, if you have the time and know-how to take advantage of its features. If you'd like to use Excel--or OpenOffice, or Google Docs--to keep track of employee timesheets but you don't want to mess around creating templates on your own, try Simple Employee Timesheet Template. This simple set of templates makes it easy to track your hours either weekly or biweekly in three of the most popular spreadsheet programs.

Simple Employee Timesheet Template is a set of four templates: weekly and biweekly timesheets that track partial hours as … Read more

FlameBrain's WatchMe is a terrific little timer tool with a twist: it incorporates multiple, independent timers in a single interface, which makes it supereasy to track multiple events. You can track everything from when food should come out of the oven to when it's time to pay the car insurance. WatchMe is portable freeware, too, so you can take it with you on a thumb drive or laptop.

We extracted WatchMe's zipped executable and opened the program. The default interface is a compact rectangle with five separate timers under a tab labeled My Timers, each with its … Read more

CyberMatrix Timesheets Standard is a basic program that allows employees to keep track of time spent on specific projects. Although it has some appealing features, functional problems undermine its usefulness.

The program's interface is plain, and the creators didn't go to any great lengths to make it attractive or intuitive. Still, it's not terribly difficult to figure out. You add your employee and client information, and when each employee logs in, he or she can record the time spent on specific clients' projects. Projects are listed on drop-down menus within the timesheet. The program allows up to … Read more

The publisher's description of Senomix Timesheets claims that it's designed for "engineering or project-based offices." We think this is a good thing, as it will likely take an engineer to figure out how to use it.

It's not that the program lacks instructions. The problem, in fact, is that the publishers have gone to the opposite extreme. Who has time to read a 31-page "getting started" guide? Better yet, who has time to read the full 84-page user guide, or the admin user guide, which weighs in at a staggering (and ridiculous) 256 … Read more

Cashbook Complete Accounting can help manage your company's finances. It can handle most any bookkeeping task. It will manage incoming and outgoing expenses, employee timesheets, list of contacts, and invoices for projects and jobs. You can also use it to run and print invoices, balance sheets, and profit and loss reports, and e-mail them to your customers or export them to financial-planning software. It will manage your company's bank accounts and even import data from your bank. There's a built-in backup utility, too.

Cashbook Complete Accounting is a good accounting solution for small- to medium-size companies. The … Read more

Timeless Time and Expense provides a simple tool for managing the complicated world of client billing. With helpful tools to help you organize and calculate expenses, this is a fantastic tool for those who make their living on billable hours.

The program's interface was impressively simple, considering the complex work it handled. We didn't need to visit the Help file's instructions because the onscreen direction was intuitive enough to keep us on track and quickly billing. We were able to divide our time between clients and projects by creating a simple file tree display. Beginning and ending … Read more

Easy Tracker Standard provides the tools for tracking time and managing projects. Unfortunately, the program doesn't flow smoothly, even with all its attempts at being helpful.

This program opened with a seemingly simple five-step Wizard, which instantly excited us. We were able to jump between the five tasks represented in the Wizard, but we still needed a trip to the Help file and glossary for further instruction. The misnamed Easy Tracker perplexed us. It looks easy, but it constantly confused us. One bright spot were the tools for building databases of Clients and Users, which were simple and reminded … Read more

Timeless Time and Expense Multiuser provides the tools employers need for tracking work time by an unlimited number of users. Its smart tools for calculating and tracking time are a great help to small businesses, contractors, and others who make a living through billable hours.

The program's interface was welcoming and professional. We were able to quickly set up tasks and billing just by following onscreen prompts. The Help file's instructions were an afterthought, frankly. This program mimicked the single-user Timeless Time and Expense in every way, except that we were able to set a password and user … Read more

Advanced Time Reports Professional is an intuitive program that allows users to easily track the time they spend on various projects. Unlike other programs of this type, Advanced Time Reports Professional avoids the trap of trying to cram too many features into one program, instead leaving users with just the necessities. This makes the program extremely easy to learn and use.

The program's interface is clean and uncluttered. The first time it's opened, users are instructed to enter clients and their respective projects and rates. Users can then easily track their activities by selecting the proper client and … Read more