Customize the Log Hours for the past and future days

Customize the Log Hours for the past and future days

Until recently, you were able to log time only for today and for all the past days. Now, Zoho Projects has come up with an exciting new addition - 'CUSTOMIZE YOUR LOG HOURS FOR THE PAST AND FUTURE DAYS'.  Wow....!!! I could feel that excitement in you, as you read. Well, now you can allow or disallow time logs for both the past and future dates from the current date. Choose Allow, Don't Allow or Customize and define the time-log period settings.

Available: Premium, Enterprise, and Express

Accessible: Only Portal owner

Use cases for customizing log hours in the future

  1. Customize log hours in the future and pre-log hours for your vacation or holiday. Say, your billing cycle is biweekly and there is a vacation or holiday that falls between the pay periods. In such cases, the user can pre-log his vacation time, which will help in calculating the billable hours.
  2. Customizing the log hours in the future plays an important role while generating invoice.  Such as meeting timelines for the payroll folks.
  3. The timesheet hours is vital for creating your invoice. In some organizations, employees  need to complete their timesheet by 25th of the month. If you customize five days in the future, they can log time till 30th. This will help the managers to estimate the work that they will do until 30th.

Note: By customizing the log hours in future, you can define a particular date and restrict the users from logging entries beyond the specified date. All the other dates are grayed out from logging entries.

Example: Jennie runs an automobile showroom, she uses Zoho Projects for managing her team and she is the Portal owner.

How to enable the time-log period settings?

  1. Click the Set Up icon at the top right and select the Org Settings tab.
  2. In TIME-LOG PERIOD SETTINGS , you will find the Log past time and Log future time sections.
  3. Select the drop-down and choose any one of the following according to your preference: Allow , Don't Allow and Customize .
  4. Click Update to configure the settings.

Now, Jennie customizes 15 days in the past and 10 days in the future.

 

Example: David is an employee in that portal and he wants to add log hours for his task. However, he will not be aware of the number of past or future days till which he can log entries. 

Where will the time log settings reflect?

An alert shows up in the Add Log Hours section as shown below:


Now, David will get to know the date range for logging entries. So, he will have a deadline in accomplishing the task.

  What if, Jennie creates a strict project?

Strict projects will have a defined date range (say, from 09/01/2016 [MM/DD/YYYY] to 11/30/2016). Time-log periods setting functions as the same only if the customized days is within the strict project's date range.

Take a look at our help guide for more details...

Isn't it an interesting enhancement that lets you plan well ahead? Give it a try and let us know your feedback.

 


Happy Logging!!!

Monica. R



      • Sticky Posts

      • Tip: How to print the Gantt View

        Though we move from the traditional project management system (using papers) to an online project management system, we still prefer to have a printed copy of the activities/tasks that are to be done in the project. This way, we can carry the to-do lists with us for the meetings and refer when we are offline. The print option, available at the right side of the page, allows the users to print the project information across all the modules. However, this option failed to print all the tasks & milestones

      • Project Management via Emails in Zoho Projects

        We write mails to communicate. In Zoho Projects, we can write mails to collaborate. Yes, Zoho Projects supports Email based project management. The mails that you send turn into tasks, bugs, project comments, forum replies, etc. The following are some of the frequently asked questions that might be of some help to you. What are the pre-requisites to manage my projects through Emails? You need to have a personal / business mail ID that is registered and confirmed with accounts.zoho.com To learn more

      • Four types of task dependencies

        "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs."                                                                                                                  - Henry Ford Projects, small or large, are driven by simple work units called tasks. Monitoring standalone tasks might look simple but as the workflow becomes elaborate, tasks may start relying on one another. In project management, this relationship between tasks is termed as "Task Dependencies". Dependency between tasks arise

      • Task and Project numbering

        Zoho Projects now generates a unique number for each project, task, and issue added. The auto-generated ID is a combination of a prefix and a number which is assigned by Zoho Projects. The unique IDs for projects, tasks, and issues will be useful to track, identify, and search easily. You can modify the settings to enable or disable the Project and Task IDs.  Learn more on how to modify Prefix & ID settings for projects and tasks. Issue IDs cannot be disabled, only its prefix can be changed (tasks

      • Task Inline Editing Enhancement

        Hi All, Today, we have made an enhancement in task inline editing. In 4.0, task edit is moved in a single screen in a pop-up. We designed this in-order to make the task edit across the product to be the same. Let it be in Feeds, Tasks & My Tasks tab, Calendar & My Calendar tab, a click on the task title will open the popup and user can edit the values. Customers pointed us the inline editing was very useful to them & how much they miss that in 4.0. Based on the feedback, we have rolled out this enhancement.