General Hints and Tips

The following is a list of general hints and tips to help you use DOVICO Timesheet 's administrative functions to their full potential. See Time & Expense Entry Hints & Tips for specific tips on entering time and expenses.

Administrative functionality tips

Look at what you can do in most administrative views:

• Use the Show/hide columns function to show or hide columns in certain views.

• Use the Filter button to add a filter to show only items matching the selected criteria. To remove the filter, click the button.

• To copy an item, select the item, click copy then paste . Edit the copied item as necessary.

• Create project templates to quickly and easily copy one or more projects including assignments.

• Create a new security group based on an internal security group. From the Security Groups view, select the Internal Security Group that closely matches what is required for the new group. Copy and paste that security group and then modify the settings of the copied security group and assign it to employees.

• You can view the current number of employees registered to use DOVICO Timesheet, by clicking the About button on any toolbar.

• To prevent accidental deletion of projects, tasks, employees, etc, create new security groups, remove the Delete rights from each new group and then apply the new security groups to each employee having access to the Administrative functions.
   

Assigning Estimated hours at the Task level

A work-around for assigning estimated hours to a task, rather than to each task/employee assignment is to create a fake or dummy employee, and assign all estimated hours for a given task to this one employee.  The dummy employee will never enter time and does not require a license. The actual employees assigned to the task will not have any estimated time entered for them, but they will enter their actual time. This work-around should not be used if you need to create detailed budgeted hours and costs at the employee level. Since the estimated costs for the task will be calculated using the rate assigned to the dummy employee, an "average" rate should be assigned to this dummy employee.

Reports displaying estimates and actuals, for projects and tasks, will be accurate at the task level, but all estimates will show under one dummy employee, and all actuals will show under the correct employees. This work-around eliminates the need to split estimates by task and employee, if such detailed estimates are not required or if employees are continually being re-assigned to a task.

Unassign a user from a project without losing reporting and estimate information

• You can hide a project from time and expense entry and keep information for reporting, etc. by either hiding the specific employee assignments or changing the project status to anything other than 'active' or 'estimate'.

Project Alerts

• The ability to create multiple triggers for the same project alert rule (notify when at 10%, 20%, 40%, etc..) also permits a simplistic project progress history to be created.

Apply rates to a project

• You can apply the same pay or charge out rate for an entire project regardless of the task or employee assigned to the project.
  
  Go to the Budgeted Time & Costs view, select the project from the Project drop-down list and click the Budget Wizard button on the toolbar. From the Budget Wizard window, check the "Only view assignments for the selected Projects" box and then select all employees and tasks from both lists. Then check the appropriate Rate box near the top of the window, enter the rate value and click Apply. This applies the rate only to existing assignments for the project. If new assignments are created, those rates will also have to be modified.

Project Conclusion

When a project is finished, rejected or cancelled, you can:

• Inactivate the project. From the projects view, enter the End date for the project and select a new Project Status (other than Estimate or Active). The project will still be available for reporting but it will no longer be available to employees for time and expense entry. If you check the Hide box, the project will not be displayed in pick lists for reporting.

• Archive the project. When you check the Flag for Archive box for a project, the next time you archive information, it will remove the project name and related information from the active database and place them in the archive database. You can report on the information as needed when you open the archive database, however the information will no longer be available for reporting in the active database.

• Deleting the project is not recommended as all related information will also be deleted and cannot be recovered.

New employee

When new employees are hired, here are the steps to follow for setting up the employees for time and expense entry:

• Check for available licenses to make sure you have enough licenses to use for the new employee(s). Click the About button on any toolbar to find out how many licenses have been purchased and how many are used.

• From the Project Assignments view, add the new employee. Take note of the employee's User ID and Password. Make certain you select at least 'Time and Expense Entry only' in the Software Access field and that the Security level is at least set to 'Time and Expense Entry'. This will ensure that the employee can enter time and expenses.

• If cost reporting is used, apply the proper Rate of Wages (Pay Rate) and Rate Charged (Billing Rate) to the employee.

• From the employee's properties window , click the Additional tab and set applicable Approval Workflows, Leave/Absences Rules and Email Notification settings.

• Add the new employee to any applicable Project Approval workflows or scheduled reporting or notification jobs.

• Use Quick Assign to assign projects and tasks for the new employee. If the new employee will have similar assignments as an existing employee, you can use the Copy Employee Assignments function and then edit individual assignments as necessary.

• Review Assignment budgets for the new employee and make any required modifications.

• Add the new employee to any applicable scheduled reporting or notification jobs (Job Scheduler).

• Use the Timesheet Options view to customize the employee’s time and expense entry screens.

• Send the new employee, his/her User ID, Password and the URL or path to login to DOVICO Timesheet.

• Inform the employee how to use DOVICO Timesheet to enter time and expenses or use the On Demand training.

Data Mining

Let’s take a brief look at ways you can use DOVICO Timesheet to create custom reports and link with other software.

• Generate a report in DOVICO Timesheet then click the export button on the toolbar to export it to another application (Excel, Word, etc.) for customization.

• Easily import or export any information in DOVICO Timesheet using the Import/Export Tool.

• Use data mining or business intelligence tools to extract data from the DOVICO Timesheet database. For example, using Crystal Reports or Excel, you can easily select specific fields in DOVICO Timesheet tables and create custom reports using your own business rules.

• Through code (i.e. Visual Basic), you can link to any other software. If you have developed code to link to DOVICO Timesheet, you can post it on our web site, or to download or view add-on code developers from other companies have written, go to http://www.dovico.com/developer.html.

• An active link with Microsoft Excel can be established. Search for "DV1045" on DOVICO's Knowledge Base at http://www.dovico.com/techtips.html.

• A link to Microsoft Access can be established as either a two-way live link, using a Microsoft Access Project or a one-way active link with a Microsoft Access Database. Search for "DV1103" on DOVICO's Knowledge Base at http://www.dovico.com/techtips.html.