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Tic Toc Does the Clock !

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As Freelance or Entrepreneur, the main equation often is 🕓= 💸, also know as :

Time is Money !

Then, tracking your (and your team!) time is not only essential, this is a matter of life for your company, to check if the time spent in your different projects is correct, according to your budget or estimation.

Here is an introduction for building a cool time-tracking tool, and stay focus !

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🛠️ Construction of the time tracker

For this work, we assume to use a people and a project database, that for sure you already have.

My People Database

@Scar @Pumba @Timon @Simba

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My Project Database

@Be Cool & Sing “Hakuna Matata” @Fight Scar @Kill Muphasa

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Nota : if you work within a team, instead of some database-text users, you can use official “people” column, and eventually User() function

🚀 Then, just create a database for time tracking, that will take into account user, project and a few other columns: Start time, Finish Time, Total Elapsed Time, button start and stop, and an “action” Column. The idea 💡 is to configure start button to activate starting time, stop button to finish it, and a 🎩 magical Action Button. Then, you will be able to completely hide Start/Stop Buttons, because your “Action” column will automatically update according to the current state :

if both start and finish time are empty > Start Working

if start time is set, and finish time is not > Stop Working

If you’ve stopped your work, the action will only say to you that “Work is Finished”

Users

Project

Action

Start Time

Total Elapsed Time

Finish Time

Clear Row

ButtonStart

ButtonStop

Stop Working

10/1/2022, 10:01 PM

1181 days 3 hrs 52 mins 15 secs

Start

End of Work

Stop Working

10/1/2022, 10:08 PM

1181 days 3 hrs 45 mins 45 secs

Start

End of Work

Work is finished

9/29/2022, 10:00 PM

1 hr

9/29/2022, 11:00 PM

Start

End of Work

Start Working

Start

End of Work

Work is finished

10/1/2022, 10:00 PM

1 hr 53 mins

10/1/2022, 11:53 PM

Start

End of Work

There are no rows in this table

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Here are the configuration for the different column. Then, please

Erase all the time tracking

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and create your own rows to play with start/stop and see the modifications in real time, also in the “Display the time tracker” section just below !

ButtonStart : ModifyRows(thisRow,thisRow.[Start Time],Now())

ButtonStop : ModifyRows(thisRow,thisRow.[Finish Time],Now())

TotalElapsedTime : this one is more complicated, as the display will change if

the task did not start

the task is in progress

the task has finished

Action : For this, you can also see my page about

Wrap Your Button For Cards !⁠

that use the same trick about Button() formula, but this column is not mandatory, as you may only keep the view of Start and Stop Button, and use “disable if” ability !

To have a more efficient view, then hide Start/Stop Button, thanks to the “Action” Column that dynamically changes :

Users

Project

Action

Start Time

Total Elapsed Time

Finish Time

Clear Row

Stop Working

10/1/2022, 10:01 PM

1181 days 3 hrs 52 mins 15 secs

Stop Working

10/1/2022, 10:08 PM

1181 days 3 hrs 45 mins 45 secs

Work is finished

9/29/2022, 10:00 PM

1 hr

9/29/2022, 11:00 PM

Start Working

Work is finished

10/1/2022, 10:00 PM

1 hr 53 mins

10/1/2022, 11:53 PM

There are no rows in this table

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📺 Display the time tracker

Once your timetracking database is set, you can display the database “people” and “project”, and add to it some columns with this formula to get the databack :

For the project :

For the people :

You can then play with all the review your need, as the different project the people has worked on, etc...

Obviously, this is all DYNAMIC !