I am wondering what Daylite users use to track time spent on projects. Daylite's time tracking features don't seem too robust, and they dedicate only a few lines to time tracking in the manual. I don't think there are any reporting capabilities.

I use MYOB for billing and so don't need the invoicing aspects of Billings (plus I find the integration between Billings/Daylite to be a bit confusing).

Are there people out there who only use Billings for time tracking versus, say, an online app like Harvest?

What about the reporting capabilities of Billings vs. Harvest?

Thanks for any opinions.


Rand

Personally, I use DL for time tracking as follows:

I have a category for tasks and timeblocks called "Billable". I also have a report which finds my billables. I then basically use that report to put my billables into QuickBooks.

Simple as that. Not the perfect solution, but it works...

quote:

Originally posted by George Qualley:
Personally, I use DL for time tracking as follows:

I have a category for tasks and timeblocks called "Billable". I also have a report which finds my billables. I then basically use that report to put my billables into QuickBooks.

Simple as that. Not the perfect solution, but it works...

Thanks.

I assume there is no reporting capability in Daylite, however? "Show me how many hours were spent in category 'billable' over this time span"?

quote:

Originally posted by RSDA:

I assume there is no reporting capability in Daylite, however? "Show me how many hours were spent in category 'billable' over this time span"

Ah, but that's where you go wrong. In fact, there is exactly the capability you speak of (just look around the forums a bit). Moreover, DL actually has a quite robust report engine. The learning curve can be a bit steep, but there are several good resources that MC has provided to help you through and it is very powerful if you take the time to set things up.

I guess I'm going to have to really dive in on the reporting side.

Daylite clearly has a much steeper learning curve than many other applications, even for someone who is fairly tech-savvy like me. We are all used to seeing options for nice pre-formatted reports. I have found the Daylite report editor to be daunting, but only because I don't understand it yet.

This added complexity is of course just a reflection of the great flexibility of the program itself.

It all starts to click after a while!


R

Rest assured that you're not alone in finding the reports section a bit dense. However, I can tell you that one nice thing is that once you've worked your way through one report (or also, a merge template) you will probably be able to use that work as the foundation for many more similar projects. Which, of course, greatly speeds things up...

Good to know...