aC forum: Time Budgets

Post #24 by Apps Magnet - Nirav Mehta

Apps Magnet - Nirav Mehta — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:06:32 CST

FWIW, Planning module for activeCollab allows you to estimate time for tasks, milestones, tickets, checklists and pages. You can the use activeCollab's time tracking feature to add time to these items. Coming back to Planning module will show you the actual vs estimated time for each item.

It will even total up the estimates / actual times.

HTH.

Post #23 by rickdronkers

rickdronkers — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:07:13 CST

We are also open to collaborate on this module! No need to reinvent the wheel ;)

Post #22 by bryanw

bryanw — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:23:18 CST

We are evalutating this now for use corporate wide as a contractor/integrator, but we need to be able to track time against budget by task & milestone. Has anyone developed a module to do this yet or has Active Collab been working on this to include in a release? Please let me know as this affects whether or not we will be able to use Active Collab.

Post #21 by troy

troy — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:54:59 CST

Having used project management tools for 13 years, I have found they each miss something major. This one is missing the estimate/actual budget element which is critical to small businesses. Entire departments can be eliminated if they cannot prove that they deliver projects on budget.
Microsoft Project never handled it well through version 2003 Enterprise either and depended on another application to do it any justice. Just keep in mind the balancing act that all PM's must do well at to survive: manage scope, budget, and schedule.

Post #20 by ESBertrand

ESBertrand — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:01:40 CST

If anyone has coded up something like this and is willing to share the module, please do so. We may attempt to code something up, and would be open to collaborating with the understanding that we'd share what we come up with.

Erik

Post #19 by ESBertrand

ESBertrand — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:42:23 CST

The ability to set up basic time budgets by category within each project is very nearly a deal breaker for us, but we can proceed without it for now. In our estimation, it would only require these basic features:

-- definition of categories (probably at the global level) that could be assigned to each task, or instead at time entry
-- following entry of time, display current summary of time used out of total for the category chosen
-- at the project level, display summary of all categories and the time utilized for each
-- (optional) at project level, display list of time entries assigned to each category, along with user, amount of time spent, and time entry summary

With a category figured in, you could combine multiple tasks/lists in reporting, and get a very good view into how efficient (or not) the project went.

We're first going to try and arrange our milestones, checklists, and tasks in such a way that we achieve this categorization, though there doesn't seem to be a way to report on time spent on each task/list/milestone. With seemingly little effort, this would be a killer feature to integrate into the product, A51!

Erik

Post #18 by Protobit

Protobit — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:28:51 CDT

I would love to see this feature as well. Most of all, we would need time estimation for tickets and milestones, since we use those the most.

On a side note, it would be nice to be able to create a time report for a specific client. For instance, we work on many projects for a single client, and at the end of each month, we send them an invoice for the time spent on all of their projects.

There would also have to be an option in the report creation, whether actual time spent or time estimates should be displayed. When creating an invoice for a client I would need the estimates. On the other hand, when calculating payment for our part-time employees, I would need the actual time spent.

When printing our a report for an invoice, it would also save me a lot of time, if I could easily mark all the displayed time entries as billed. As far as I can see, this is now only possible per project. With the current functionality, I have to go into every project and mark the time entries there, which is quite tedious.

Post #17 by Mjenn123

Mjenn123 — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:10:53 CST

I would love to see this in an upcoming release, as this feature is rather vital to the way we do business. We haven't really found any good ways of getting an overview of remaining hours on a project. Or good reports on how our hours have been spent. This feature has my vote.

Post #16 by mehrdafon

mehrdafon — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:32:35 CST

We are very interested in this feature request. project planing features are necessary for our daily work.

Best Regards,
danx

Post #15 by evanhall

evanhall — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:01:15 CST

I would be very interested in this too! And also to add various hourly rates to various types of work. That would be very nice indeed!