|
InformationWeekTenrox's Time & Expense and Sage U.S.'s TimeSheet Professional help employees keep track of their projects and help companies better manage workers and their expense reports
Keeping track of the time you spend on every project is the best way to ensure that you get paid for the work you perform. Writing out these hours by hand on time sheets is sure to drive you crazy when you're working on more than two projects at the same time. The work life of any project-oriented or often-interrupted support team can be simplified by using a time-tracking software package. Several packages are on the market, including HourTrack from Vitrix Inc., which we reviewed last year "Make Short Work Of Employee Scheduling," InformationWeek, April 20, 1998), TimeSheet Professional 6.5 from Sage U.S. Inc., and Tenrox Time & Expense from Tenrox Corp.
A good time-tracking system will not only let your users record when they've worked on a particular project, but also track the comings and goings of employees, update project time lines in project-tracking tools such as Microsoft Project, exchange paycheck information with payroll software, and let employees enter expense-report information to be processed as part of the standard payroll run. Of the two packages considered for this review, Tenrox Time & Expense is the better choice, although neither package may fill all of your needs.
Tenrox Time & Expense
Tenrox Time & Expense comes close to the ideal for a time-tracking system. It supports multiple projects and clients, provides a link to Microsoft Project for updating tasks and assignments, exports payroll and billing information to Computer Associates' Accpac for Windows (not included), and lets users enter expense-report information.
However, the package doesn't include an interface for handling workers who only need to clock in and out for the day, without requiring the rest of the project time-tracking features. An upcoming release, due soon, will include this feature. Tracking an employee's location--for example, at lunch, in a meeting, or out of town--is also not a part of the product's feature set.
The user interface for Tenrox Time & Expense resembles Outlook, with a list-oriented task bar on the left to select the form view and the form viewer occupying the remainder of the application's main form. Multiple forms can't be opened at one time.
Tenrox Time & Expense is a client-server application, with support for back-end Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle Server databases. Only Access support is included for free; Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle support are priced at $1,600 to $5,000, depending on the number of users. The client application can run on Windows 95, 98, or NT. Tenrox Time & Expense also supports a Web-browser client for entering time and expense information, as well as performing management and reporting functions. The server portion runs on NT 4.0.
Time sheets can be entered in a detailed (including the start and stop time) or summarized (total hours only) view. These hours can be assigned to specific projects, clients, or tasks. Once an employee has completed a time sheet, he or she then specifies that the time sheet is complete. This affirming step will help prevent premature data uploading to the payroll package. The employee's manager also then has an opportunity to approve or reject the employee's time sheet. Budget tracking is also included to control how many hours and expenses can be assigned to a particular task or project. Budget overruns, incomplete time sheets, and upcoming evaluation dates can be configured to trigger an automatic E-mail notification.
Reports within Tenrox Time & Expense use the Seagate Crystal Reports 6 engine, letting you create and add your own reports as you need.
Overall, Tenrox Time & Expense has a lot to like, provided you aren't managing hourly assembly-line workers.
TimeSheet Professional
Sage U.S. sells a couple of time-tracking products, including TimeSheet Professional 6.5. TimeSheet Pro provides numerous configuration settings, but it is difficult to use and complicated to configure. It's also missing several desirable features, including support for a mechanical clocking system for hourly workers, real-time employee location tracking, and budget handling. The application doesn't include direct links to project-management or accounting packages, although they can be purchased separately.
TimeSheet Pro supports billing hours to clients, projects, or specific activities. You can also add six more levels of classification, and assign expenses to these same classifications, although the user interface is overly cumbersome for entering anything more than a single expense item at a time. Entering hours and expenses is accomplished with dialog boxes, the results of which are then shown graphically in either a daily summary or a hour-by-hour view. TimeSheet Pro's user interface doesn't support a number of common Windows functions--such as drag-and-drop--that would have simplified the user's interaction. One useful feature is the ability to use a timer for a meeting or phone call; once the timed activity ends, TimeSheet Pro automatically records the time spent against a project or activity.
TimeSheet Pro has numerous configuration options, including the ability to define holidays, task rules (linking activities or employees to a particular client or project), pay rules (including exceptions), and application terms. Another example of the product's unnecessarily difficult user interface is the way you enter holidays. The user is expected to enter the date of the holiday for each year tracked by the program. TimeSheet Pro offers no automatic way of defining when a holiday occurs. Once the holiday is defined, you can't go back and graphically view all of them at once on the calendar; users also aren't provided with any visual cues about a day's holiday status.
TimeSheet Pro is configured either to support only desktop databases or as a client-server application. Only Windows 95, 98, and NT are supported for the client application. The application's database can be created and stored in an Access database or--in the case of the client-server version--a database engine from Informix, Inprise, Oracle, Microsoft, or Sybase. Web access via Internet Explorer 4.0+ or Navigator 4.0+ is available to provide remote users with a way to enter time and expense information.
Reporting, as with Tenrox Time & Expense, is accomplished using the Seagate Crystal Reports 6 engine, and several reports are included with the package. You can also add your own reports. However, as with the rest of the product, the way you select and manage your reports is very confusing and unnecessarily difficult.
TimeSheet Pro provides a lot of features, but the user-interface hassles will limit its appeal.
By: Tom Jacobs
|