Track Time

As a professional, your time is important to you. You spend a lot of time in Outlook, so Credenza adds to Outlook a Time Sheets feature to help you track your time. You can use this feature to do instant Time Entries for any of your Outlook activities, plus record your time for everything else you are doing as well. Your Time Sheets can then be sent electronically to your accounting system, ensuring your clients are billed for everything you do.

For those who don’t bill for their time, it is often still important to be able to account for where the day has gone. You may wish to create Time Entries for reporting purposes, rather than for billing purposes. With Credenza you can track time in any number of ways, often with just the click of a mouse.

Central to the time keeping capabilities is the new Time Sheets list that has been added to the Outlook navigation pane. Here you can sort and filter Time Entries based on various criteria.

Credenza can automatically create Time Entries for you as you work in Outlook. Much of the information will be filled in for you including the duration and activity description. For example a Time Entry created for an appointment in the Outlook calendar will automatically include the subject, the duration and the associated file information. You can always go back and modify your Time Entries until you post them to your accounting system.

Note that the amount of time you enter is shown on the Outlook appointment as well as in the Time Entry. Depending on your profession you may also choose to use activity and task codes with your Time Entries. At any time you can choose to show or hide the activity and task codes section on your Time Entries. No need to display the field if it isn’t applicable to you.

Time Preferences
Credenza makes it easy to track and bill for all your time in Outlook. Credenza can be set to remind you to do Time Entries when sending email, saving phone calls, and completing tasks, or it can automatically create them for each completed activity. Preferences include the ability to format the duration in minutes or tenths of an hour, select a minimum duration and specify a minimum rounding time if necessary.

Your Time Entries are always cross-referenced to the applicable Outlook items, so you can always go back to see more details about what the Time Entry entailed.

Time Entries on a File
Clicking on the Time Entries tab on a File displays all of the Time Entries associated with that particular File. Open any one to see more details. Running totals at the bottom break down the posted and unposted time and even include the approximate value based on the applicable billing rates.

Accounting Systems
All of the Time Entries can be posted to your accounting system, printed out and included in reports. The activity and task codes can be sent along as required by your accounting system.

In the following sections you’ll see just how easy it is to create Time Entries for all the work you do in Outlook.