Did you know?

Timesheet screens can be customised by you, to suit your business.

The timesheet entry screens are the most used areas of Abtrac. And within them, you have complete control over what data is seen by all users, and what rules they have to follow when entering timesheets.

Your business’s Abtrac Administrators set the overall rules about what can and cannot be seen, and what has to be entered by users on their timesheets. And on a job by job basis, job managers can add additional rules to ensure the data is captured to suit their project management needs.

Each individual user can then further determine how they want their timesheet to look like by choosing one of four layouts within the constraints and requirements set at the business level and job by job level.

Here are some simple examples.

Linear View

One user likes to see their timesheets on a row by row basis in what we call the ‘Linear’ view. Because the administrator has enabled various fields, they are allowed to see their charge rate. Note too that they can also optionally enter their time directly into the Units field or they can enter a start and stop time and Abtrac will work out the hours worked based on the difference between the start and the stop times. The two types of linear view are ‘linear grid’ and ‘linear form’. The ‘linear form’ view has a form-like format at the top where you enter the details, instead of typing straight into the grid in the ‘linear grid’ view.

When entering Public Holidays, they do not have to choose a Phase. But when entering time against the job 05-404, they are forced to pick a phase because the job manager has put that rule onto that job requiring a phase to be entered.

The ‘Comment’ field is available too, into which users can optionally annotate the time spent.

You can have alphas or numbers for jobs codes. If you tell us how your job codes are put together, we can usually show you how to achieve it in Abtrac so the codes automatically generate how you want them.

Crosstab View

A second user may prefer what we call the ‘Crosstab’ view of the timesheet. This is set as their default view from the Home page by clicking on the profile symbol and then clicking on the ‘Edit My Settings’ button.

Within their timesheet, the user can switch between Linear or Crosstab at will by clicking on the ‘View’ button.

The Cross Tab view doesn’t show the rate nor the start time/stop time. But it gives a clear total of time entered day by day and for the week. Similar to Linear View, the two types of Cross Tab view are ‘Cross Tab Grid’ and ‘Cross Tab Form’ as shown below.

A second benefit of the Cross Tab view is that users can clone(copy) their timesheet from one week to the next using the ‘Clone Timesheet’ button.

Configuring every page in Abtrac to suit your business

When trialling Abtrac, have a look at Administration >> Settings >> User Control Settings.
Here you will see a drop down box containing the names of all the pages in the web site where you can control the fields people see, the size of each field, and the order in which it appears on the web page.

You can configure every page in Abtrac to suit your business.

Also have a look at Administration >> Settings >> System Settings.
Under the ‘Clients and Jobs’, ‘Timesheets’ and the ‘Miscellaneous Config’ tabs, you can see a range of options which set the business rules around timesheets.

Within an individual job, the project manager can put ticks in boxes such as ‘Task Required’ or ‘Activity Required’.
This forces the user to pick a task or activity respectively when entering time against that particular job.

N.B. Under Administration>> Settings >> System Settings >> ‘Clients and Jobs’ tab, you may have noticed that you can enter your own alternate word for Task e.g. Stage or Phase.

And you can also enter your own alternate word for Job e.g. Project, Matter or Engagement. Similarly you can decide what to call client owners e.g. Director or Account Manager.

Ditto job owners maybe called Project Manager or Consultant. Whatever you want.

These words then ripple throughout Abtrac so it speaks your language, rather than ours.

So not only can you configure Abtrac to suit your business, you can also configure Abtrac to speak your language.