As StandardTime has been RealEyes Media’s time tracking tool of choice for almost two years now, I decided to start my review process out with a fresh look at this application to fairly compare it with the other tools we’re evaluating.

Product Information

Standard Time uses a database that is installed on an agency’s own servers (although a hosted option is available). Users have several options for entering time using the desktop client including form-based and stopwatch methods. The reports are very configurable, if not always pretty, using a Crystal Report like interface that can be extended by the agency (or by StandardTime for a fee). Because the database is housed on the agency’s servers, it is possible to extend StandardTime functionality easily, which is something that RealEyes Media has done by building an enhanced graphical reporting application. A big drawback of the desktop application is that it must be used in the same network as the database server and no offline time entry is supported.

Website: http://www.stdtime.com/
Pricing for 10 users: $1,335.00 one time fee

Meeting Our Goals

Using our initial goal list as a reference, StandardTime does a good job of meeting our overall time tracking objectives.

StandardTime allows users easily to :

Bill for time: Separate billing rates per client, project, employee, or task type are available, as is integration with QuickBooks.

Estimate time: Estimations can be done on a per-task basis. You can also log an estimated number of hours and cost in the project view, but StandardTime doesn’t track against these values.

Run reports: Reports allow us to customize the report criteria as well as the level of detail shown, so that aggregate time for a group of tasks (what StandardTime calls a subsystem) can easily be shown. The report can be exported as CSV/Excel which is nice as the report format is a bit too Plain Jane for us, and we haven’t spent the time learning the reporting interface to alter it much.

See how much time was spent doing X or X-type tasks: The ability to assign a task to grouping criteria such as a category (used across projects) and a subsystem (used within a single project) and run reports against these groups is very powerful when analyzing data.

With more effort we can:

Integrate with some other project management application: StandardTime integrates with MS Project out of the box, which is a tool that is overkill for us to use currently. With some additional effort, we can write extensions to the ST application to integrate with other tools that we use. However, we’ve been too busy working for clients to do this for ourselves.

Use it for resource allocation: You can schedule resources in advance for project work and run reports against future allocation. However, this isn’t done in a one screen easy-to-view way and you have to enter in other data, such as time estimations, that aren’t always practical for some project administrative tasks.

Write notes about what was done: You can write specific notes for each time entry, but this isn’t a seamless workflow step. There is also room for some overall project notes in the project view. We have had some spotty issues with logged notes not being actually recorded in the database.

Running Reports

In my opinion, the best thing about StandardTime is the flexibility that users have in running reports. If you take the time to set up your project at the beginning, you can glean gobs and gobs of data from it and answer nit-picky, low-level questions about how time was spent.

Entering Time

StandardTime has three primary vehicles for entering time: desktop application (Windows only), web application, and a mobile application. The mobile application is designed for the PalmOS and Windows Mobile platforms. Unfortunately, our one employee with Windows Mobile couldn’t get the application to work for him.

With StandardTime you can log time:

• Using a desktop widget.
• Using a timer.
• Using a form.
• From a mobile device? Potentially. Navigation of the web interface is difficult on the iPhone.

With StandardTime you cannot log time:

• While outside the network with the database server.
• While offline.

Integration with Other Tools

StandardTime integrates with some applications out of box, and can be extended to integrate with others with some programming and database knowhow.

StandardTime integrates with:

• Project milestone application - MS Project
• Issue and defect tracking - StandardIssue
• Billing - QuickBooks
• Reporting - Does itself
• Resource allocation - Does itself (and through MS Project), but not optimal for us.

StandardTime does not integrate with:

• SVN
• Project documentation

Other Considerations?

Found bugs/functionality issues:
Since we’ve used StandardTime for quite awhile now, we’ve also encountered some major functionality hiccups along the way that we didn’t notice during our demo period. As these will figure into our decision making process, I’ll list them here, but feel that this intimate knowledge of the application may unfairly weigh against it.

• Cannot use dropdown menus in secondary monitor
• Users must be connected to internal network to use desktop application (can use web tool though)
• No off-line time entry possibilities
• Application can randomly freeze, sometimes causing sustained loud system beep
• To see new tasks or projects sometimes users must re-open StandardTime.
• Occasionally, timer logs high number of negative hours.
• Occasionally, custom notes written by a user are not recorded in database.
• Time total in Project Task view does not always match that in a generated report. FYI, the total in the report is correct.

Use our servers for database hosting or allow for easy export of all time tracking information. Check, StandardTime uses our database for storing data.

Allow for new projects to be created easily using template for tasks. This can be done through duplicating a project, but watch out when duplicating a project and changing the client name at project level. The individual tasks will still be set up for the original client and your reports will be off.

Allow for import of past project time tracking data. Not out of box, but as we control the database, this could be possible, if not fun to implement.

Allow for unlimited number of users. Our license supports up to 10 users, and we’re almost running out of room. Each additional user is $149.00.

Reasonable cost (per month or one-time). Since we’ve used this solution for almost two years, it’s proven to be cheaper than a hosted, per-month subscription over time.

Support from company. Every person at StandardTime has been truly concerned with any problem that we have faced and any resolution they were able to provide was done very quickly, sometimes by the company’s owner. Additionally, it’s nice for RealEyes to support others in colorful Colorado.