Managing timesheets with Google Calendar

Posted by Stijn Van Vreckem on Dec 04, 2009

I just watched this Arrrrcamp video about the Timekeeper gem by Koen Van Der Auwera. Koen explains why he created a command line tool to manage time-sheets.
This triggered me to write this blog post.

Why ?

Filling in time-sheets is a task that needs to be performed every month in most service oriented organizations to prove work. (sometimes on a weekly basis)
For years, I used to write everything down in my notebook to keep track of things.

Because the XAOP team has grown to 7 people in the last year (who are usually working in small teams of 2-3 developers), it became more and more difficult to manage the billing for the different projects. It was time to look for a better/transparent solution to keep track of everyone's time.

How?

After some internal discussions, we introduced (at XAOP) a time-sheet process based on Google calendar.

• We create a calendar in our Google Apps environment for each billable project we want to track.
• These calendars are shared with the team members working on the project.
• Each team member registers his activities by simply putting them on the correct project calendar.
• As a result, everybody in the team can see, who is working on what task in the project.
• At the end of the month all invoices are created based on the activities of the project calendar.

Now we only need to generate the time-sheet reports for the client:

• A background Ruby application connects to the Google Calendars with the Google Data API (via GDATA gem) to collect the activities.
• The Ruby application then generates a monthly PDF report(with simpletable of PDFwriter) of the project calendars.
• These reports provide a detailed overview of the activities for each person in the project.

What are the disadvantages of our process ?

• We get a lot of calendars, so cleanup will be necessary.
• The Google calendar User Interface is not clearly indicating who has created the event. This creates confusion when you work with a big/larger team on a project calendar.

What are the advantages of this approach ?

• Lightweight time-sheet application.
• Calendar can be filled in when you have the time.
• Google Calendar User interface is very simple and accessible for everybody.
• Freelancers/External people working on XAOP projects can be added to the calendar of the project without complexity.
• This is a web based solution that can be used via a PC or mobile phone.

Conclusion :

XAOP team members don’t need to keep track of the projects. They only need to keep their calendars up to date. Invoices are now generated and we provide transparent reporting on each hour of work.
XAOP recently invested in new mobile phones and our time management solution worked without any changes. Since these HTC devices (Hero and Magic) integrate seamlessly with Google Apps, we can fill in our time-sheets from anywhere.

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