Work Diary

[LMW1990]

For my job I am required to submit a weekly work diary. Not just me, the whole department.

The sheet is broken down into time spent typing letters, phone calls, emails and various other tasks associated with my job.

Despite being very busy almost everyday, it can be hard to account for all of your time when you constantly have to break off from one task to answer the phone and then action the tasks from that call.

I'm looking for an app that might let me, for example, press a button which will time my phone call and then log the number and length of calls each day. I'm envisioning a home page which has my various tasks listed and I simply click the appropriate one when I start something and then again when in finish or have to break off to do something else. I could then pull a daily report with all the tasks and times logged.

Does such an app exist?

At the moment I am writing down as I go but it's difficult to be accurate, tasks do not always take place at my desk but I usually always have my phone with me and by the end of the day I have pages of notes to add up!

Thanks

[SamBeckett]

Watching with interest as I have the same problem, part of my job is admin, part sales and part grunt work it's really hard to keep track of what time goes into what job.

[drsausage]

Toggl.

[juneybean]

Not sure how much it costs but have you looked at timeular?

[BrokenWing]

Does it really need to be that accurate? Especially if it is for internal use only. Do you need to add in going to the loo and talking to Jane in accounts for 5 mins about her latest holiday.

If they do need it that accurate talk to your boss about the standard process/tool your whole department should use for gathering the data or it will be inconsistent/worthless.

[babysharkah]

Make it up with a rough guestimate, its what we all do.

[hormonesorDHbeingadick]

Don’t forget to write down filling in your work diary - 1 minute, every time you have to write down what you are doing.

[SamBeckett]

Mine has to be accurate as depending on what I am doing the pay comes from different departments. Ie when I am working sales my wages come from the sales dep' ( on the revenue of the sale ) the grunt work pay comes from whichever client we are working for at the time .

[LMW1990]

It's a mixture of both in that it needs to be fairly accurate and also a case of showing management that certain tasks take up more time than they think and that yes a phone call may only take two minutes but the related tasks as a result often take much longer.

[SamBeckett]

@juneybean timeular has some good reviews , I will look into it in more detail when we are due to stare a new project , thanks

[RedTideBlues]

Write your diary every hour and log that time as admin. At the end of the day allocate the timings under the various headings that your work requires again logging that time as admin.

[QuckTheDuck]

you could do this with an excel spreadsheet and basic VB coding - literally have buttons and then have the spreadsheet open in the background.

[drsausage]

It's a mixture of both in that it needs to be fairly accurate and also a case of showing management that certain tasks take up more time than they think and that yes a phone call may only take two minutes but the related tasks as a result often take much longer.

Yes I have to do this all the time as a freelancer who works for multiple clients. It's amazing how no one believes that a phone call or email can actually lead to half an hour's worth of work.

Anyway. Toggl. Seriously.