It’s the nature of my work that I work on multiple projects in any given day, some of which are billed and some of which aren’t. I’ve never needed “timeclock” or “client time” timers to keep track of things, but now I find that budgeting my time well in a complex stretch of months could use some help.
I need an app that will sit quietly on a Win7 desktop and allow me to quickly track time on up to half a dozen “channels” - count-up would be fine, but if it allows count-down from preset amounts it would be perfect. I want to start my day by assigning a time budget to the various major tasks, then use it like a chess clock or client timer as I switch between jobs and track my total time involved. When time hits a certain level (or, ideally, hits zero) I have to set that task aside for the day.
I’ll be honest in that a major need for it is to keep me from spending too much time on personal and non-billable stuff, which is always more interesting than hour 126 of editing a client’s video project.
This is also the sort of trivial applet I’d probably write myself if I wasn’t so busy that I needed it.
I use OfficeTimeto track billable time. You can track multiple projects (clients) and assign categories (the services you provide). It’s easy to switch from one project/category to another, and it has nice reports that can show the total time spent per day, which would show you when you’ve reached your budget. It’s not exactly the feature set you’re using, but it can be used to give what you want.
Thanks, this looks like a 90% match for what I want (so far, it won’t let me adjust the time font without crashing… but it has the features I’m looking for).
If I may side-pit, while installing this I realized I had QuickBooks Pro Timer available, so I installed it from the disc… only to find that it absolutely will not run on screen resolutions above 1920x1080. At all. And hasn’t for around ten successive generations (I noted references to v2002 in the thread).
I can’t imagine the reason for a screen resolution limit at all, let alone in a 2012 version of the program after having the limitation for 10+ years. I guess that’s why I never used it… I am NOT reducing my screen rez to accommodate an applet. Pit U, Intuit…