We have an exciting announcement: LiveTimer is going to be renamed Syncd on Sunday, February 14th! Along with a new name, we're going to re-launch our service at Syncd.com with new features and an updated look.
We'll be sending out emails to all of our customers very soon. Please read the official announcement and let us know if you have any questions at all.
We're very excited about this transition and look forward to sharing more details soon!
This is part of a series of feature previews for a major update that's in development.
LiveTimer currently allows billing rates to be assigned to either clients, projects and tasks OR to users. However, many consultancies are looking for a hybrid approach, in which a default rate can be set for each consultant and then overridden for select clients, projects and tasks. Our upcoming release takes just such an approach.
For instance, the following options will be available when setting the billing rate for a client:
If you've been following along with our previews of the upcoming release, you can probably tell that we're adding quite a bit of flexibility to LiveTimer. The challenge has been to do so without adding complexity, and we hope we've struck the right balance.
This is part of a series of feature previews for a major update that's in development.
LiveTimer currently allows users to be assigned to the middle of three possible levels of classifications, which are typically named clients, projects and tasks. In an account that uses all three levels, users can only be assigned at the project level. This is limiting because:
- Time and expenses can't be tracked at the top level because users can't be assigned at that level.
- User assignments can't be differentiated at lower levels. For instance, you can't assign tasks to particular users if assignments are made at the project level.
We're going to eliminate these limitations by making user assignments much more flexible in our upcoming release. First of all, we're going to allow assignments to be made at any level of the new work structure. Assignments can be inherited or overridden at lower levels. For instance, you could assign all of your users to a particular project, so that everyone could work on that project's tasks. You could then override assignments for tasks that should only be visible to a few select individuals.
Furthermore, users may be assigned to projects as individuals or via groups, as mentioned in our introduction to user groups. Individual and group assignments can even be mixed for a particular project.
We hope that this additional flexibility will help you better manage your assignments.
This is part of a series of feature previews for a major update that's in development.
User groups are coming to LiveTimer. We've added this often-requested feature to streamline user assignments and report filtering for multi-user accounts.
Groups should simplify the assignment of users to projects and activities. For instance, let's say you have a group of developers who all work on the same projects. Instead of assigning every individual to every project, you'll be able to assign them to the Developers group, which can then be assigned to the appropriate projects. When a new developer comes on board, just add her to the Developers group to make her a member of all of your developers' projects.
Reporting can also be simplified through the use of groups, which can be used as report filters. For instance, a weekly time summary report could be created for the Developers group mentioned above. Group and individual user filters can even be mixed.
You'll be able to create as many groups as necessary, and assign each user to as many groups as you like.
We hope that this feature removes some of the tedium of managing assignments and running reports.
This is the first in a series of feature previews for a major update that's in development.
We've always tried to make LiveTimer adaptable to your business, rather than forcing you to adapt your business to LiveTimer. One of the ways we've done this is to allow for flexibility in how you define your work.
LiveTimer will soon allow even further flexibility in the definition of your work. Instead of limiting you to three levels of work, you'll be able to define up to five. You'll be able to merge levels together or split them apart. It will also be possible to define multiple levels of the same type of work if, for instance, you want three levels of "tasks".
At each level, you'll be able to define capabilities (whether time and expense tracking are allowed) and which properties are available (IDs, external links, descriptions). For instance, in the configuration below, expenses can only be tracked at the client level, while time can be tracked at any level. Also, ID and external link fields will only be shown for clients.
We hope that these configuration changes will make LiveTimer more adaptable to your business.
It's been over six months since our last major update to LiveTimer. During this time, we've been working on some significant improvements that are finally nearing completion.
We originally planned to develop and release these improvements separately. However, once development began, it became clear that an extensive re-architecture would be required. In turn, the scope of this work led us to tackle several related improvements together.
Feature Previews
Although we don't normally preview upcoming features, we thought it would be helpful due to the scope of this release. We hope to get you thinking about how you'll use the new features within your own accounts. And of course we look forward to your comments and questions.
Previews will be posted below as they are published:
We just released a few features that should make it easier to both input and output expenses.
First of all, we made a few tweaks to improve the speed of expense entry. For instance, when you add a tax percentage and then choose "Add Another", the tax percentage sticks around for the next entry. Try using "Add Another" to persist other data between entries as well.
Furthermore, expense reports can now be exported in XML or CSV formats, just like time reports. XML data is particularly useful to developers, while CSV (comma-separated values) files can be opened with spreadsheet applications such as Excel. In order to download any report in these formats, look for the links in the upper right corner of the report (next to the printer icon).
We're now getting back to work on our time and expense review features, which we hope to release soon.
We've refreshed LiveTimer's logo and general appearance just in time for Spring (well, in the Northern hemisphere). We've added more color to brighten up the site, hopefully without being distracting.
For instance, the Timer page has gone from this:
To this:
So why update the appearance now? We're getting ready to roll out a new LiveTimer support site, which will include a number of articles and screenshots. We thought we should take a weekend to refresh our "look" before snapping all those screenshots.
We certainly hope you like the changes. Please feel free to let us know what you think!
We've just added new filters and grouping options to our reports. Time and expense reports can now be grouped and/or filtered by the billable status of entries. Expense entries can also be grouped or filtered by their reimbursable status.
For instance, the following expense report is grouped according to billable status:
How is Billable Status Determined?
The billable status of time and expense entries depends on the level at which you've defined billing rates for your account (see Settings / Billing Rates):
- Clients, Projects & Tasks - A billing rate must be assigned to a project or task for it to be billable. This can be overridden by a "not billable" activity (if activities are enabled for your account).
- Activities - A billing rate must be assigned to an activity for it to be billable. This can be overridden by a "not billable" client, project or task.
- Users - A billing rate must be assigned to a user for his or her time to be billable. This can be overridden by a "not billable" client, project, task or activity.
In order to keep these rules fairly simple, we decided that even billing rates of $0 / hour would be considered "billable". We also added explicit "not billable" flags at the project and task levels to override a rate set at a higher level. For instance, the following billing settings should be available at the task level (assuming your billing rates are set at the client, project and task level):
This gives you the option of considering gratis work billable or not. Assign a billing rate of $0 / hour to keep it billable, or else use the explicit "not billable" option.
How is Reimbursable Status Determined?
Expenses are reimbursable if they're associated with a reimbursable payment method. The following payment methods are created by default when expense tracking is enabled (of course, these can be customized):
More to Come...
These reports are a big step toward the addition of invoicing to LiveTimer. Along those lines, we're working to add the ability to review time and expenses for yourself and others within your organization. As part of this review process, you'll be able to mark entries as billed and/or reimbursed. This will give you the ability to create invoices (billable time that hasn't yet been billed) and reimbursement reports (reimbursable expenses that haven't been reimbursed).
We're getting there - thanks for your patience!
When selecting from multiple classifications (such as clients, projects and tasks) to make a time entry, it can be difficult to distinguish between your classifications by just their names. This is especially true if a colleague named them and you need to decipher those names.
For this reason, one of our users made the excellent suggestion that we should display detailed descriptions when you mouse-over items in the selectors. This seemed like a great use of the description fields that you can already enter for classifications in the Manage section.
We've just completed this addition, which we consider to be a subtle yet elegant way to clarify your assignments and perhaps save a few clicks.
If you have any suggestions of your own that could help streamline our interface, please comment below or send us a suggestion from the Help tab in your account. Thanks - we'd love to hear from you!
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