Welcome to the Timekeeper™ 3.1 Tutorial. If you're new to PandaWare™ Timekeeper, go through this tutorial to get up to speed quickly. There's a lot more to learn in the documentation, so don't forget to print out the manual and read it as well!
For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to pretend that we work for a graphic design firm named “General Design,” where we’re required to turn in daily timesheets for each day’s work.
Before we begin working with Timekeeper, here are a few terms you’ll want to be familiar with in this tutorial:
Daily Log: The screen where you enter data on the projects you’re working on each day.
Job Sheets: Individual pages (or “cards”) for each project, where data is stored for the long term.
Timesheet: A report on a day’s work. You can quickly create a timesheet for any date you’re tracking with Timekeeper.
Load The Software
1) Insert the Timekeeper 3.1 disk in your floppy disk drive. Double-click on the “Timekeeper 3.1.sea” application icon in the floppy disk’s window. At the first dialog box, click “Continue”. At the file save dialog, navigate to the location you want the Timekeeper Folder saved and click “Save”. The software will be installed on your hard drive.
2) If you don’t have HyperCard Player or HyperCard version 2.1 or higher on your hard drive, install Timekeeper Engine in your Timekeeper folder. Double-click on the “Timekeeper Engine.sea” application in the floppy disk’s window and follow the same steps as above.
3) Finally, install the Timekeeper documentation by double-clicking on the “Timekeeper Documentation.sea” application icon in the floppy disk’s window. Again, follow the same steps as above to install the documentation on your hard drive. If you have a copy of Microsoft Word 4.0 or higher, open the “Timekeeper 3.1 Manual” file. You can discard the Timekeeper 3.1 Manual.rtf file.” If you own another word processing application that opens rtf-formatted word processing files, open your word processor and use it to open the Timekeeper 3.1 Manual.rtf” file. You can discard the Timekeeper 3.1 Manual file.” If you’re not sure what formats your word processor opens, try opening your word processor and then opening either file. Print the documentation to have it handy in case you have a question about working with Timekeeper.
Open Timekeeper
4) Let’s make a copy of Timekeeper to work with in this tutorial. Click once on the Timekeeper 3.1 icon on your desktop, and select the “Duplicate” command from the Finder’s File menu. After the duplicate is created, double-click on the “Timekeeper 3.1 copy” icon. Timekeeper will open to its Daily Log screen:
Create A Daily Log Entry
5) Click anywhere on the dotted lines below the words “Client” or “Project”. A dialog box will appear with the words “General Office,Miscellaneous” on the left, and a number of buttons along the right. This is your project list dialog. It will contain a list of projects you work on so that you can record time against them with a few clicks of the mouse. Right now it has only one project listed, but we are going to do something about that.
6) Click the “New” button. A smaller dialog box appears, with the words “General Office” on the left, and a few buttons along the right. This is your Client list dialog. You use it to select clients whose projects you’re working on. We’re going to add a client now.
7) Click the “New” button. Another dialog box appears asking you for a client name. Type “General Eclectic” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
8) The New Client dialog box disappears and another, similar dialog box appears, asking you for the name of your project. Type “Lightbulb Packaging” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
9) The cursor changes to a watch while Timekeeper creates a Job Sheet for the project you just created. The Job Sheet will hold all your entries for this project as you add them each day. We’ll look at it in a minute, but first we’ll finish entering the data for this entry. In a few seconds, another list dialog box appears. This is the Activity list dialog, and it is empty. This list is where you select different activities you perform on each project. Click the “New” button.
10) The New Activity dialog appears. Since we’re pretending for this tutorial that we work for a design firm, lets use “Design” for our first entry. Type “Design” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
11) The New Activity dialog disappears and another dialog appears, asking you for a billing rate. This is where you enter the dollar amount that you charge clients for that activity. Type “100.00” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
12) The New Activity dialog disappears and another dialog appears, asking you to enter hours. Type “2.5” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
13) The Hours dialog disappears and another dialog appears, asking you for a note. This is where you can enter descriptions of each entry. Type “Rough design concepts” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
Congratulations! You’ve just completed your first Timekeeper Daily Log entry. The client, project, activity and hours data is all in the appropriate columns of line 1. There is also a filled circle at the end of line 1, indicating there is a note stored for this line. At the bottom right of the screen is a white box with your total hours for the day (which happens to be the same as the only hours entry). Now lets look at the Job Sheet for this project.
14) From the Timekeeper menu, select the “Project List...” command. This brings up the large Project list dialog box we started with. The project we just created, “General Eclectic,Lightbulb Packaging” should be highlighted. Click the “Go To” button and Timekeeper instantly goes to the Job Sheet for this project.
15) This Job Sheet shows the client and project names on separate lines at the top, along with a job number Timekeeper generated itself. Below are areas for date, activity, comment, charges and hours entries. These areas are all blank now because we haven’t yet transferred Daily Log entries to Job Sheets. Let’s fill out more entries on the Daily Log before we do that.
16) Select “Daily Log” from the “Go” menu to go back to the Daily Log screen. Select “Client List...” from the “Timekeeper” menu. The Client list dialog appears. You can double-click on “General Eclectic”, or because it’s already highlighted, you can click the “Select” button or press the Return or Enter key.
17) The Client list dialog disappears and the New Project dialog appears. Type “Personal Stereo Ad” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
18) The New Project dialog disappears. Wait a moment while Timekeeper creates a Job Sheet for this project. The Activity list dialog appears, with the Design listing highlighted. Click the “Select” button or press the Return or Enter key. There is no billing rate dialog this time because you did not create a new Activity listing. All Design entries are billed at the $100.00/hour rate you originally entered.
19) The Activity list dialog disappears and the Hours dialog appears. Type “1.25” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key.
20) The Hours dialog disappears and the Note dialog appears. Type “First rough concepts” and click OK or press the Return or Enter key. You have now completed your second line, and the total at the bottom of the Daily Log screen shows your current total hours.
Fill Out The Rest of Your Day’s Entries
21) It’s time for another entry on your Daily Log. Select the “Project List...” command from the Timekeeper menu and double-click the “General Eclectic,Lightbulb packaging” entry. Click the “New” button in the Activity list dialog. When the New Activity dialog appears, enter “Meeting”. When the Hourly Rate dialog appears, enter “100.00”. When the Hours dialog appears, enter “1”. When the Notes dialog appears, enter “Presenting roughs to Fred”.
22) Let’s do one more entry for today. Select the “New Client” command from the Timekeeper menu and enter “General Nils”. In the New Project dialog, enter “Cereal Catalog”. Select “Meeting” in the Activity list dialog. Enter “.7” in the Hours dialog. (Timekeeper rounds it off to .75.) Finally, make up a note to enter in the Note dialog.
23) Let’s say that’s it for the day. It’s time to transfer your Daily Log entries to the appropriate Job Sheets. Select the “Transfer Data” command from the Timekeeper menu. In a moment, Timekeeper will notify you the transfer is complete and ask if you want to set up for another date. Click OK. A dialog will appear with the next day’s date (the date following the one at the top of your Daily Log screen). Enter a different date if you want to, and click “OK”. Now let’s look again at your Job Sheets.
Browse Your Job Sheets
24) Another way to go to the Job Sheet section is to select the “Job Sheets” command from the Go menu. This takes you to the first Job Sheet, which happens to be for the “General Office, Miscellaneous” project. Browse through the Job Sheets by clicking the left and right arrows at the bottom of the Job Sheet section’s screen, or by pressing your keyboard’s right and left arrow keys. The right-arrow takes you to the next Job Sheet, the left-arrow takes you to the previous Job Sheet.
You’ll see your time entries for each of the projects you worked on. You can refer back to a Job Sheet for a project you’re working on to update a client on costs, or refer back to an old Job Sheet to estimate a new project.
When you get to the last Job Sheet (for the project “General Nils, Cereal Catalog”), a right-arrow takes you to the first Job Sheet again. Going through the Job Sheet section is like shuffling cards from the top to the bottom of the pile. After you reach the end, you’re back at the beginning. You can quickly go to the first or last Job Sheet card by pressing your keyboard’s down or up arrow keys. To break out of this endless circle, select the Go menu’s Daily Log command, or click on the right-angle arrow icon at the bottom left of the Job Sheet section screen. Before you return to the Daily Log, note the date for the entries on the Job Sheets. We’ll use that next to create a Daily Timesheet.
Create A Daily Timesheet
25) In the Daily Log screen, select the “Create Timesheet...” menu from the Timekeeper menu. A dialog will appear, asking for a report date. Enter the date you just entered data for (the date on your Job Sheets). Timekeeper will work for a few moments, and then go to the Timesheet section where your first daily timesheet report has been created. Since we’re pretending you’re required to turn in a daily timesheet, let’s print this report. First click where it says “Click here to change” and enter your name. Then either click on the printer icon or select the “Print” command from the File menu.
Time Your Work
26) Go back to the Daily Log screen. Now you’re going to time your work. Select the “New Client” command from the Timekeeper menu. Enter your name. In the New Project dialog, type “Learning Timekeeper” and click on the “Time this project” box to check it. In a moment, a small clock icon will appear to the right of the date at the top of the Daily Log screen. This is both your reminder that you’re timing your work, and a button to stop timing. Click on the clock. In the dialog that appears, click on the “Pause” button. A coffee mug appears to remind you that you’ve temporarily stopped timing this project. Click on the mug and then click on the “Resume” button. The clock reappears because you’re timing yourself again. Click on the clock icon again, and this time click on the “Stop” button. Timekeeper enters the client and project names, and the time you worked (it should be 0.00 in this case). When the Activity list dialog appears, click “Cancel”. We’re going to delete this line.
27) Click on the number at the left end of this partially completed line. A dialog appears asking if you want to clear this line. Click “OK”. Timekeeper deletes the line. Let’s see how you time yourself on a project for which you’ve already created a project listing.
28) Click on any empty Client or Project line on the Daily Log screen. The Project list dialog appears. Click once on any listing. Now click on the clock icon towards the bottom right of this dialog box. The dialog box disappears and the clock icon appears again to the right of the date. Stop timing yourself, and cancel the Activity list dialog again.
Replace Data Entries
29) Instead of deleting this line, let’s see how to replace information on a Daily Log line. Click on the Hours cell. The Hours dialog appears. Enter “2.5”. Click on the empty rectangle at the right end of the line. Enter a note. Click with the mouse on the Activity cell for this line. The Activity list dialog appears. Select an Activity from your list. Click on the Client or Project cell for this line. The Project list dialog appears. Select a project from your list.
Read The Documentation
30) You now have the basics of working with Timekeeper under your belt. There’s a lot more you can do with Timekeeper. This is the time to start reading the documentation you printed out in step three. You can also get online help while you’re working in Timekeeper by clicking on the Question Mark icon, or by selecting “About Timekeeper” from the Apple menu.