I am an architect and would like to use Outlook Calendar to track, manage and report time for projects and provide that data for invoice and records (posisbly in Quickbooks). Can I easily setup Office 365 to do this without implementing third party software? For example, www.timesheetreporter.com offers such features but it's yet another third party account I'd have to subscribe to and "maintain". I'd prefer to setup the functionality myself within Office 365 tools/software.
I would like to know if this is simple, possible and cost effiecient for a small office with very limited funds for tech support. Where would I begin? I can't find much on forums, support or online or even a simple template or example. (I have found templates for timesheets in Excel but they don't link to Outlook and therefor require double data entry, something I find insane) I'm surprised that the functionality is not already easily provided within Office 365 for small-business end-users like me.
What I would like to do is to work completely on the cloud and have my team enter time allotted for projects in Outlook. That same Calendar entry should serve as a timesheet. Data should be viewable intelligently such as by project, billing cycle and so on. The data should be easily compiled for the office manager to apply hourly rates and enter into Quickbooks.
Currently, I enter time in Calendar, then manually filter the view in a list format for a specific project and pay period. Then I copy the list and paste in Xcel and format the cells as a timesheet. Then manually convert individual time entry format, for example from 2hrs 15m(Outlook) to 2.25(Excel). Then I can apply simple Xcel formulas to sum it all up. It's entirely manual, ridiculous and a pain, but I do this because I just can't trust third party software anymore. I spent thousands trying to work with www.archioffice.com and finally gave up after years of bad tech support. The time wasted formatting data is less than the time, in my opinion, that I would have to spend dealing with limited tech support from a small company that provides third party software. Also, if I can keep the functionality with Office 365 and learn how to manage it then I feel confident we can easily archive and convert data in the future. Sometimes this can't be easily done with third party software. And retrieving old records from such archived data is difficult and tedious.
I'm hoping Office 365 if FINALLY the solution for a small business with very simple time management and time reporting needs. Perhaps the answer is learning how to integrate tools in Access and Sharepoint. My sense is that Microsoft, being the giant it is, prefers to keep the software as open-sourced as possible so their users can customize to their needs. The problem with this in my opinion is that all the little companies like mine cannot afford the tech support to do this. (Keep in mind that 85% of all businesses in the US have less than 10 employees) We end up selling our souls to online project management services like www.basecamp.com. , another smaller proprietary platform that I don't want to be tethered to for the life of my business.
I like where Office365 is headed. It's graphically pleasing and demonstrates that Microsoft finally has a vision to tranfer software expertise from the super IT geek to the rest of us. I've been reading about Sharepoint and Access and have learned that they have become easer for end users like me to manage. Is this true? Should I begin to learn how to implement this software and functionality?