The Site

Online timesheets and project administration

Tables

The 4EVER-Uren system works with a database of tables. Partly to store data and partly to driver the application.

Projects

With this application a user can register his/her own spent time on a given project activity. For this reason there is a project table in which information about the project itself is stored.

Specifics per project:

•	a unique id
•	a project name
•	a description
•	start and or end date
•	a marker if the project is a “fixed price” project
•	the maximum man-hours to be spent
•	linked activities for this project

Activities

Specifics per activity:

•	a unique name
•	a description
•	the links to one ore ore projects
•	whether or not a certain project/activity combination is chargeable or not

Users

Everyone who can use the application is a user.

The application can handle three kinds of users:

user	A "normal" user who can input and update his/her own timesheets
superuser	A "super" user who can input and update his/her own timesheets and who can generate reports
administrator	An "administrator" user who can input and update his/her own timesheets and who can generate reports and who can maintain all the tables

Specifics per user:

•	a unique username
•	a password
•	the name of the user
•	his or her e-mail address
•	his or her telephone number
•	the standard or default hourly rate for this user
•	the type of user (normal/superuser/administrator)
•	whether or not this user(record) is active or not (any more)
•	the links to one or more usergroups (see below)

Usergroups

Within companies users are often working for departments that carry out specific tasks for the organization. The 4EVER-Uren application provides means to assign users to one ore more groups.

Specifics per usergroup:

•	a unique group name
•	per project activity: whether or nor group members may book their hours

Costs and Tariffs

The systems works with hourly rates, exclusive of VAT. The calculation of the real costs is done on basis of the inputted hours (or parts thereof) with a minimum of 15 minutes.

Hourly rates can be recorded for these levels:

•	per project activity (provided they are marked as "chargeable")
•	per users for a specific project activity
•	per user (the user's standard hourly rate)

Calculation method

Is there an hourly rate for the combination of User/Project/Activity?
Yes : use this rate
No  : Is there an hourly rate for the combination of Project/Activity?
      Yes : use this rate
      No  : Is there an hourly rate for this User?
            Yes : use this rate
            No  : use 0,00 as the rate

Note : The application knows no currency although all the fields that deal with money are accounted as such.

Example:

Suppose a senior graphic designer has a standard rate of € 50 per hour. He works on project “X”.

Whenever he works on the activity "Graphical Interface Design” he costs € 45 per hour.

But for project “X” he only costs € 40 per hour.

Whenever he works on the activity “Adjusting Images" in project “X” he costs € 65 per hour.

Thus:

e.g. 8 hours “Graphical Interface Design” costs € 320

e.g. 8 hours “Adjusting Images” cost € 520

So the project costs € 840 and not 16 x € 50 (= € 800)

When the system is well organized one can get an accurate real time insight in the productivity of all the users that use the system. If everyone would enter his data every hour, you could almost "see" the progress grow.

More realistic is to use the reports daily or weekly.

Chargeable and non-chargeable hours

The 4EVER-Uren system can distinguish between chargeable and non-chargeable hours.

e.g. It could be important to record time spent on "Telephone conversations with customer" but not charge this time to the customer.

The 4EVER-Uren system provides for this.