Track Design Hours - D-Tools Forum

Mauricio · 12-13-2007, 07:57 PM

Maybe this is available already, but is there away to track design hours on a project one is working on? We are about to hire more designer and I would like to track their hours per job.

dtechy1 · 12-14-2007, 12:58 AM

That's a great question. I would like to know too.

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 12-14-2007, 01:39 AM

Although it is possible in the workorder creation environment to see the design hours for items as a result of the design 'sub-phase' carrying hours into the project, there is nothing that can be done with them.

I agree that tracking the 'sub-phase hours would be useful and that more enhancement to workorders would enable this.

The design hours will push over to Quickbooks and can be tracked there particularly if you are running your payroll through Quickbooks.

Right now to have a way to track the design hours within D-Tools would require leveraging workorders and the only items that can be worked with in workorders appear to be line items (either products or labor items) and not items coming form the sub-phases.

If you built design hours into your projects as line items and not as factored sub-phases, you could do it as they would be able to be 'touched' in work orders.

So as MC Hammer says...

Can't touch this.......!

01-25-2008, 03:15 AM

If you are using AutoCAD, try the command EDITTIME. If you're using Visio, and also have MS outlook installed, visio can automatically create journal entries tracking how long a particular .vsd file has been open. (AutoCAD is a little more advanced in that it will timeout after 10 minutes of inactivity so you don't accidentally bill for time spent away from your computer etc)

Mauricio · 02-19-2008, 08:05 PM

That's great news, how do you do this with visio 2007?

04-04-2008, 08:48 AM

Managing change and documentation hours has been an issue for us as well.

What we do now is that we've made a phase that we call something like "changes in design and documentation" and have labor SKUs assigned to that phase.

There we track IARCH meetings, Client driven changes, documentation hours by adding the hours spent by adding labor SKU.

We also change the description field per SKU to be able to document the added cost to the client if neccessary. I add this to unassigned room and zone, to keep it away from the project itself.

A way of doing this in a more automated way would be great.

04-16-2009, 01:59 AM

We've been using www.clockingit.com for almost a year now and have found it to be quite useful in tracking/billing design time. Highly recommended.

Andy N · 04-23-2009, 03:24 PM

Originally Posted by BDG

We've been using www.clockingit.com for almost a year now and have found it to be quite useful in tracking/billing design time. Highly recommended.

Ive gotta agree on this one. ClockingIt Allows me to account for (and bill accordingly) for small snippets of time as I may jump in and out of several projects throughout the week. All of a sudden 10 minutes here, 17 minutes in Visio here, 9 minutes here 24 minutes here and I have a full billable hour of time that otherwise would have gone by the wayside and never accounted for.

I do agree that an easy to use time tracking tool would be beneficial to integrate in a future release to keep it all in one place.

04-23-2009, 04:49 PM

Originally Posted by BDG

We've been using www.clockingit.com for almost a year now and have found it to be quite useful in tracking/billing design time. Highly recommended.

I just signed up for Clockingit. At first glance, it seems easy to use. Now I just need to condition myself to hit the clock. But I think this will improve my billable time tracking. And I can use it in the field when I'm out programming.

DTools, it would be handy to have something like this embedded within your software but with a weblink as well. I would think that many of your users are project managers, programmers, or field engineers that travel away from the office and a quick website and/or mobile compatible website that links to our lansync server would be really nice.

Any other thoughts?

04-24-2009, 12:28 AM

Yes / no - I'd like a tool like this - and I have it... D-Tools is NOT your accounting software - thus I don't think it should track time. That's a function of your accounting software (in our case, Quickbooks) - and a TIMER function for billing IS available currently in Quickbooks... though I'll admit - I wished it was better (ie: I'd like to have it NOT require Quickbooks to be running, in order to use it). Just my 2 cents.