Output Timesheets

Quick way to make an advanced output of timesheets over a period of time as a html email or PDF, using your own house style.

Miel De Rycke avatar
Written by Miel De Rycke
Updated over a week ago

Some clients will expect you to share what you've been up to in the last week or month. This is often the case for retainer work, where being transparent about the work performed helps build more trust and a better relationship with the client.

Another example is where freelancers receive a monthly report listing the timesheets they recorded in Streamtime so they can issue an invoice to your company.

Streamtime allows you to search the right timesheets, but to share them with the client, you'll need to export a CSV, tweak the styling and columns, add subtotals and totals and then send it off to the customer. Quite a few steps if you think about it. wayahead's Output Timesheets report helps you automated all of this. Here are the main benefits:

  • Quickly send a timesheet report as a HTML email or PDF document.

  • Use your own house style (CSS)

  • Create sub summaries on multiple levels.

  • Choose the data (columns) you wish to share.

  • Make last minute changes before sending the report off.

Apply Filters

You start by applying the filters you need to find the timesheets you wish to share. You'll recognise these filters from Streamtime, they're basically all the same options. Click "Find Timesheets" after setting the filters and wayahead will fetch the related todos.

Choose grouping and columns

The grouping options allow you to make summaries and sub summaries on multiple levels. You can choose between 6 categories and create summaries up to 5 levels. For instance, you may want to group the report by client, then by job and then by item. Simply drag and drop the boxes in the grouping order you prefer. As you do that the report will automatically update.

You can also change which columns you wish to share. By default the cost column will be hidden. You can toggle the columns on and off. The type column refers to billable, internal, newbiz or leave. The status column confirms if the todo is completed or incomplete.

Again, the report automatically updates as you make changes to the columns.

Output

For the output you have 2 choices: either you can send the report off as a html email or you can download it as a PDF and send it off manually.

In case you choose to Send Mail, you can first choose the recipients, subject and type a custom message. The recipients are automatically searched in Streamtime's people list. You can choose to leave the recipients blank, in which case the mail will automatically be sent to yourself.

Styling

One of the nice things about this report is that you can predefine the look and feel of the report to match your house style. You do this one time and get the same style every time afterwards, without having to worry about it again.

The styling is determined using CSS stylesheets, which any web developer should be able to create for you. The stylesheets are manipulated via the Setup > Styling Preferences.

When you open the styling preferences, wayahead simply finds the last 200 time entries in Streamtime to display some sample data. As you modify the CSS code, the example at the bottom of the page will update.

Keep a backup copy of the CSS before you start editing it, so you can always revert back to the original. Should you choose to ignore this advise and end up cocking up the CSS after all :-) then you can just press Insert Default CSS to start again from the standard layout.

Via styling you can change your company logo. Just search for #companyLogo in the CSS and insert a new URL in the content attribute and manipulate the exact width and height:

#companyLogo {
content: url('https://www.my.studio/images/mylogo.png');
height: 120px;
width: 240px;
position: relative;
margin-top: 30px;
margin-bottom: 30px;
}

Manipulate the data before sending

Say one of your designers entered some comments in a todo that you feel you can't share with the client. Perhaps the comments are simply missing. Or you may find some time entries in the job that shouldn't be included in the report at all. You can go back to Streamtime, find the todo, fix it and run the report again, but this is going to take some time.

So to make life easier, you can manipulate the data directly in the report.

Hover over the description of any todo (it will highlight yellow) and click to edit the data.

When you click outside the input field, the data is automatically saved for the report and wayahead will ask if you would like it to update the original todo in Streamtime with the new description. Click update Streamtime to modify the original todo with the new data or No, Thanks, to leave the original data intact.

As you hover over the individual todos, you'll see a red cross at the start of the line. Click the x to remove any time entry from the list. To get the time entry back, you'll just need to run the report again. But once again, you can update Streamtime, so you don't end up excluding the same todos from the reports over and over. If you update Streamtime, a special note will be added at the end of the todo description, so that this todo is automatically excluded from the report in the future.

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