Podio can be a great tool for tracking time spent on projects, or for recording employee timesheets. This is an overview of some of the potential ways this can be set up.
Tracking time spent on projects
It is best to use an app where you will record all time spent on projects. You can call this "Time tracker" or whatever you think is best. This app will need the following fields:
- Single line text field for a title
- Contact field to record who spent that time on the project
- Duration field
- Relationship field (pointing to whichever app you would like to record time for, such as Projects or Deliverables)
Other useful fields can include:
- Date field to record the date that the time was spent
- Multi line text field to record details on that time spent
To use this app, have your colleagues add an item whenever they need to record time spent on a project. Be sure to have them use the relationship field to tie the time spent to the correct item - we recommend making this a required field so that it can't be left out.
Reporting on this data
Now you can create a report to see how much time was spent on each project.
Tracking individual users' time with Timesheets
You can use apps to have users record their timesheets, and tie this in with their hourly wages to calculate their paycheck. There are many ways you can set this up, but we will outline one method here. You can modify it to fit your own workflow as needed.
We recommend using two separate workspaces for this: One app in a private workspace where you keep employees' wage information, and another app in a public workspace for your employees to record their hours worked. This allows you to keep wage information confidential, while still tying it into the information your employees enter into their timesheets.
The app in your public workspace will have these fields:
- Relationship field pointing to the app in your private workspace
- Date field
- Duration field
The app in your private workspace will have these fields:
- Single line text field for Employee Name/Week number
- Money field for hourly wage
- Calculation field: Hourly wage multiplied by Sum Duration*
*Before you can enter this calculation field, you must first save your app and then go back to modify it. Otherwise the fields from the referenced app won't be available.
Here's what the process will look like:
- You will create items in your private app for each employee, for each billing period (e.g. "John Doe Week 2/17-2/24").
- Your employees will add an item to the Timesheets app every day, recording the item from step 1 in the relationship field and filling in the duration for time worked that day.
- From the item in your private app, you will then see the calculation showing the total wages earned for that billing period.
Keep in mind you can also add any other fields to these apps if needed - this is just the minimum requirement.