Chapter 11
Cross-Log Reports; Where Does The Time Go?

The MultiTimer Pro log windows give you all the information you are likely to need about a particular MultiTimer Pro module. But MultiTimer Pro also provides you with an entirely different way of viewing its compiled information. In addition to seeing a record of your time and expenses for a single module, you can also view this information across a number of modules. For example, assume you work on several projects, and each project is represented by a MultiTimer Pro module. In the course of a day or week, you might work on more than one of these projects, and you might want an answer to the question: “How much time have I spent on all these projects over the past day, or week?” By showing you the total times of several modules at once, and showing the combined total times for all the modules on each listed day. week, etc. MultiTimer Pro’s cross-log reports can answer this question. You can also view the total charges for the modules listed in a cross-log report, answering the question: “How much have I earned from these various projects over the past day, week, month, etc.?”

To create a cross-log report, you must choose two or more MultiTimer Pro log files with which to build the report. Select “New Cross-Log Report” under the File menu, and a dialog will appear allowing you to pick multiple log files. Once you have done this, the cross-log report will be presented in a window like this:

As you can see, you can choose whether to list days, weeks, months, etc. in the cross-log report, just as in a regular log window. A day is the smallest “unit” in a cross-log report, however. You can choose whether to view total times or total charges, and also whether a total charge display should include expenses. At the right end of the window are the “Cross-Log Totals”; the sum of all times or charges for the listed days, weeks, etc. When an entry is marked “---” it means that no sessions were logged for that module on that day.

You can “ignore” days, weeks, and other time periods, just as in a log file. If you want to see – for example – a total for all modules over the past week only, you would first set the ignore for the whole report by clicking in the ignore column of the “Total For Module” row. Then you would “un-ignore” the week you’re interested in by clicking in the ignore column for that week.

As with log files, you can select data in a cross-log report by clicking and dragging to create a selection rectangle. The selected data can then be copied and pasted or dragged-and-dropped. Cross-log reports can also be saved as text, just as log files can.

Once you have created a cross-log report, you can save it to disk. Then it can be reopened with “Open Cross-Log Report” under the File menu, saving you the trouble of selecting the multiple log files again. The cross-log report file contains pointers to the various log files in the report, so whenever you open a cross-log report, the information is taken from those log files, and is always up-to-date (unless there are unsaved changes in an open log file). 

There are some implications to the fact that a cross-log report file contains only pointers to log files. You cannot move the cross-log file to another computer and then open it; MultiTimer Pro would not be able to find the log files the report takes its data from, and you will get an error message. If you delete one or more log files, the cross-log file won’t be able to access the information that was in that log, and again you will get an error message. (The cross-log file will still open as long as at least two of its log files are accessible.) And lastly, because a cross-log report file gives you “read-only” access to the log files it references, any “ignores” you set in the cross-log report will not be reflected in the original log file, and the ignore settings you make in a cross-log report will not be saved when you close that cross-log report. 

Some Uses For Cross-Log Reports:
There are a number of situations in which cross-log reports will be useful. 
• An administrator can open a single cross-log report file to see an up-to-date tally of the amounts of time various employees have spent working on various projects. Opening the cross-log file can access log files across a network.
• If several projects are being performed for one customer, you can use a cross-log report to add up the total amount that should be billed to that customer. 
• If you want to divide a project into several MultiTimer Pro modules, a cross-log report can show you the total time spent on that project.
• A cross-log report can show you how many hours of billable time you logged over a week/month/year.