Project/Client Hourly Rates

From now on you can assign rates to all roles bound to a tracker (client/project/company). To make it super easy you also have the option to set “default rates” within each tracker profile. After assigning your (and your team’s) rate (in dollar, pound or euro) we will be able to convert every timeblock and represent it in a different way.

Budget Tracking

Tracking Time is one thing…It only makes sense if you do something with all these records. That’s why from now on you can set project budgets. As soon as you assigned a projects budget (in total hours or maximum budget), we will show you a progress bar showing you the current situation and every day’s progress.

Timeblock Rounding

Are all those small timeblocks preventing you from seeing the real picture ? Do you want to bill your client by 15 minutes ? That’s exactly what this feature is for. Use the “Timeblocks & Tracking”-tab to active timeblock rounding.

Enjoy !

For all you techies : we are scaling our application horizontally, seperating the database from the web server itself. The specs of the database server : Quad Core Xeon L5410 with 8GB of ram using an SSD powered filesystem (Vertex OCZ).

Any thoughts about this upgrade ? https://trackmypeople.zendesk.com/home

• the window position is now saved. So when you move the widget and shut it down, next time you start it, it will use the last position.
• added a switch item to the tray/icon menu with all your trackers. This way you don’t have to open the widget to switch, you can just switch from the tray.
• the settings panel is now in a separate window
• added autostart functionality. When enable, you will autostart your default tracker on startup (if not tracking already)
• added autostop functionality. When enabled, you will autostop working when exiting the widget

Timeblock Rounding

TrackmyPeople now offers a new level of flexibility by enabling you to set “timeblock rounding” for each client/project/company. Whenever you export your timeblocks we will display the real total as well as the “rounded” total, enabling you to adapt your billing process using the “rounded” totals.

Minimum & Maximum Length for timeblocks

We noticed a lot of you had a whole lot of “mini time entries” in your account. Switching from one project to another, mistaking a project for another or punching time too fast could result in having 1 or 2 second timeblocks. In all reports/graphs/overviews these blocks would be displayed. Not anymore !

Minimum Timeblock Length

From now on you can set the minimum and maximum length for all time entries inside a company/client or project. Want to make sure you never run into these “mini-timeblocks” again ? Just go to your main root tracker, set the minimum length for all timeblocks to “10seconds” and apply to all subtrackers. From then on, your time punching activity will be monitored and all timeblocks that do not exceed the minimum length will be automatically deleted.

Notice you will have to click the “apply to all previous timeblocks” to apply these settings to your current timeblock data.

Maximum Timeblock Length

Before this update the maximum length for a single timeblock was 24hours. In case you forgot to press “stop” before heading home, we would automatically close your timeblock after 24hours. You now have the option to set this time frame yourself. This setting will default to 24-hours, so you shouldn’t notice any difference until you change the maximum length settings.

Both settings can be accessed from the tracker dashboard page. Click a tracker and go to the “time block settings” tab on the right side.

Listing of all User/Client/Project timeblocks

Have a lot of users punching time to your account ? After a while this will result in a huge timeblock listing. In case you just want to check the activity for a certain user or client you would have to filter the “time block  list” to find what you are looking for. Those days are over !

From now on in each user & tracker (client/company/project) profile you will find a tab named “time blocks”. This tab will give you a filtered list of all the time entries for the user/tracker you are on.

• timeblock listings on all users & tracker pages
• options to “include subtracker data” in all tracker pages. This way your tracker page can show reports/totals/timeblocks for all related/sub-trackers
• timeblock rounding (round to 5/10/15)
• better/more flexible reports (custom timeframes, drill down, …)
• project budgets, employees/consultant rates

No ETA yet, but you should be seeing some of the above features arrive in the near future. As soon as the above features are integrated we will evaluate if there is a real need to integrate some kind of “invoicing” functionality.

Remember you can always suggest new features. We hear you !

Update 1 (01/06/2010) – we have integrated timeblock rounding & timeblock listings

In case of lost internet connection (just coming out of hibernation, network down, …) the widget kept going and you were not able to do anything with it. We’ve fixed this and the widget will timeout after 15 seconds.

After that you can just hit the “reload” button whenever the connection is back to start time punching again.

Next to that we have a growing knowledge base (in fact it’s a forum). A rock solid bug/issue follow-up system integrated with all emails coming in over at support@trackmypeople.com. I must tell you we are pretty fast on answering your questions.

Don’t believe me ? Create a ticket or Report a bug, and see for yourself !

Thank you all once again for the tremendous feedback. Rest assured that your emails, bug tickets and feedback is being read and taken into account, thanks !

So, what’s new ?

Multi-Platform Time Tracking widget

We released an “Adobe Air” widget allowing you to easily track your time right from your desktop. Have a look at a video we made showing off the time tracking functionality .

You can download the widget (and some others) from the extras page.

Pricing & Plans available

As of the first of May 2010, TrackMyPeople is now considered ‘production ready’ (I avoided the word ‘stable’). Exactly for that same reason we think it’s time to start charging for our service. We opted for a ‘freemium’ model, allowing you to benefit from most TrackMyPeople features without having to pull out that credit card.

Have a look at our “Plans & Pricing”, and let us know what you think !

Complete Rewrite

As we ran into some performance issues we decided to rewrite TMP from scratch. That was a huge job but we are now on a maintainable & optimised code base. For our users this means improved loading times !

New functionality

A ‘limited’ list of new functionality, readily available from within your account

• User & Tracker Dashboard
• Day/Week/Month calendars everywhere (on tracker & user pages)
• Quick Day/Week time entry
• Improved tracker tree : quickly setup your company structure
• Mass Edit timeblocks
• Exporting Capabilities

Thank you !

Last but not least, we would like to use the opportunity given by this email to thank you all for the tremendous feedback you’ve given us over the last year: exhaustive and mercy-less bug reports, amazing suggestions, super-relevant remarks and deeply hearthwarming encouragements.

Thanks to all of you who helped make TrackMyPeople the lovely experience it has now hopefully become.

This upgrade should improve loading times on all pages making sure you can quickly submit your timesheets and manage your business.