Help! Web-Based Time-Tracking

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
Hey all, wondering if you can help. I've been hunting around for time-tracking tool that meets some specific needs of my boss (VP) while also being light and easy.
 
I've played with Toggl and Harvest and they both fall down in some pretty significant ways, so I'm back to square one. Our goal: client / project load & task type monitoring, and potentially capacity planning.
 
Key Needs:
- Teams & Approval chains - so PMs can approve projects, regional lead boss can approve local PMs, and VP can approve regions
- Project Templates - We basically have 4-5 types of projects with the same tasks under each one. A template/duplication feature is critical
- Web-based - because what idiot wants to install anything?
- Reports - Want to slice and dice by employee, team, client, project, task type
- Exports/API - Some way to throw data back into Salesforce
 
Don't Care:
- Payroll integration/features
- Expenses - we use Expensify, thank you
- Realtime clock - cute, but no thanks
- Attendance - same as above. Not necessary
 
I'm now looking at Clicktime, Timesheet.com, Replicon. Looking for more options as I tear my hair out. And no, Excel/GSheets is not an option.
 
Help!
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
zenter said:
I've played with Toggl and Harvest and they both fall down in some pretty significant ways, so I'm back to square one. Our goal: client / project load & task type monitoring, and potentially capacity planning.
 
AlNipper49 said:
We use Harvest
 
The key issue with Harvest is the approval chain. I asked and the sales guys didn't even promise it as a future thing. I like Harvest, but I want to explore my options.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
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Apr 3, 2001
44,855
Mtigawi
Ah sorry lazy reading on my part. Harvest is awesome but it's not like they pump out updates frequently. If they don't have what you need then I'd punt.
 

Kevin Jewkilis

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Dec 5, 2006
1,241
Lafayette Sq., Cambridge
Check out Beebole.  My organization is currently in the process of implementing it (goes live 7/1), so I haven't seen it beyond the pilot stage, but I think it does everything you're asking for.  And we've found they're pretty responsive with support requests and implementation advice.  (Hopefully that will continue once we go live and go from 4 admins playing with it to 80 users...)
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
Kevin Jewkilis said:
Check out Beebole.  My organization is currently in the process of implementing it (goes live 7/1), so I haven't seen it beyond the pilot stage, but I think it does everything you're asking for.  And we've found they're pretty responsive with support requests and implementation advice.  (Hopefully that will continue once we go live and go from 4 admins playing with it to 80 users...)
 
Had not seen this one. Looks like it ticks all the boxes and is cheaper than Harvest - thanks!
 
Do you know what other options your company was looking at?
 

Kevin Jewkilis

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Dec 5, 2006
1,241
Lafayette Sq., Cambridge
We also looked at Harvest, PeopleSoft (which was good but way out of our price range), and I think one other.  I'll try to find out what that last one was (or if I'm making it up).  It's been a good five months since we went through all the demos, so I don't remember that many specifics.  (Heck, the main reason I remember PeopleSoft is that it sounds like the villain of a dystopian sci-fi franchise.)
 

JimBoSox9

will you be my friend?
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Nov 1, 2005
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Mid-surburbia
Atlassian's JIRA has a cloud product, and function-wise it certainly checks all your boxes no problem.   It is however, much more enterprise-level: getting the templates/approvals config'd initially will be painful as hell and the UX isn't great compared to some of the newer, lighter options.
 

Catcher Block

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Mar 7, 2006
5,826
St. Louis
Just to throw another option out there, my company uses AceProject for time tracking, and it sounds like it might check most/all of the boxes you mentioned. 
 

uncannymanny

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SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,081
JimBoSox9 said:
Atlassian's JIRA has a cloud product, and function-wise it certainly checks all your boxes no problem.   It is however, much more enterprise-level: getting the templates/approvals config'd initially will be painful as hell and the UX isn't great compared to some of the newer, lighter options.
 
Atlassian: Pour yourself an entire bottle of whiskey and get configing!
 
Their products are so powerful but managing them is brutal.
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
JimBoSox9 said:
Atlassian's JIRA has a cloud product, and function-wise it certainly checks all your boxes no problem.   It is however, much more enterprise-level: getting the templates/approvals config'd initially will be painful as hell and the UX isn't great compared to some of the newer, lighter options.
 
uncannymanny said:
 
Atlassian: Pour yourself an entire bottle of whiskey and get configing!
 
Their products are so powerful but managing them is brutal.
 
Interesting. Our tech team is migrating to JIRA and I'll be implementing Confluence in a month or so for our Ops team. I don't see real time-tracking there. Is there some documentation?
 

JimBoSox9

will you be my friend?
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Nov 1, 2005
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There's a ton.  Does it apply to the version you're using?  Fuck off, mate!  Hope you have whiskey.
 
Edit: this is time-tracking, we don't use it so I've never played around with that aspect.  Workflows & Screen Schemes 4 eva.  Also, keep in mind the pretty robust extensions community when scoping functionality.
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
JimBoSox9 said:
There's a ton.  Does it apply to the version you're using?  Fuck off, mate!  Hope you have whiskey.
 
Edit: this is time-tracking, we don't use it so I've never played around with that aspect.  Workflows & Screen Schemes 4 eva.  Also, keep in mind the pretty robust extensions community when scoping functionality.
 
Jeebus. Yeah, Beebole seems more useful. Don't need to spend a year building something. At that point, I'll want to just use Excel anyway.
 

zenter

indian sweet
SoSH Member
Oct 11, 2005
5,641
Astoria, NY
I take that back. Beebole doesn't appear to do project templating. In other words, we have 4-5 standard types of project packages with tasks that are always done under them. When I create a new client and add projects under said client, I want to have the tasks for that kind of project pre-populate.
 
Plus the UX is craaap.
 

TFP

Moderator
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Dec 10, 2007
20,380
We use Unanet, it's more for Professional Services and goes deeper than just straight Time Tracking, but overall it's not bad. It has everything you ask for and more (i.e. it has expenses, etc) but it could fit. I have no clue where it falls on the price range though, but it's worth exploring.
 
Other companies we deal with use OpenAir as well, but that sucks from what I understand.