An interesting, non-web based idea for keeping track of billable hours. The journal feature comes with catagories such as "phone call, task, document, fax, letter, MS Power Point, MS Word, MS Excel" etc. You can also type in the company name, and the subject of the entry. This feature also allows you to hit "start" when you begin the task/project/phone call, and "end" when you are done. The entry will then record how much time you spent on the task/project/phone call and it will be kept with the other information (as well as the date, etc). You can sort the journal entries by contact (company), category, or by type. I just thought this was neat, and helps so you aren't constantly checking the clock to see exactly how long you worked on something (just don't forget to click 'end!').

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NuTech VA
www.NuTechVA.com

I just tried this - very cool feature! Thanks for the tip!

This is great to know! I wonder if there is a way to import the entries into a timesheet format like myhours? Or if we can input/import into Quicken/Quickbooks? Thanx for the tip.

I'm not sure if you can make it into a time sheet format, but I do know you can export it to an excel file if you want (which I suppose you could turn into a timesheet). I just tried it.

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NuTech VA
www.NuTechVA.com

With the new versions and new high-speed computers, this may not be an issue anymore, but the "journal" feature used to cause other applications (Word, Excel, etc) to run quite slow - because the "journal" was doing all this recording in the background. For quite a while the answer to speeding things up was to turn the "journal" feature off - or to turn it off for a particular application.

As I said though, it may not be an issue any more. It's worth a try. If you notice things slowing down, you can always try turning Journal off and see if it helps.

Deb

I have tried the Journal feature before, however, did not find it as useable as some other people do. Perhaps it is because I use "add-ins" that tend to automate my Outlook to the 'enth' degree (so to speak) so tend to like my time reporting done in another program.

Time reporting and billing always seems to be an issue, though. I have tried severl very expensive programs and some that are free - both online and off. Somehow I have not found one that does everything the way I like it. MyHours tends to go down and have issues from time to time, and software like Easy Time Tracking is not customizable for the invoice part (I do believe in "branding" everything). So right now I am using a little program called Legal Billing and it exports perfectly into my personal invoice and is not a memory hog ;-).

All in all - great ideas.

This is great to know. Right now I have to keep my expenses down and I can use the journal feature temporalry. As Revaville pointed out she belives in branding and so do I. So my goal would be to find something that will export. But for now I can manually enter my hours from the journal to my invoice.

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Jessica Nix
www.virtuallylinkedva.com

I use Outlook but haven't used the journal feature but it sounds like something I might use. I think I'll play around with it to see how it works. Thanks

I am going to give this one a try! Thanks for the heads up!

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Kristina ~Success Office Solutions
Our Solutions Equal Your Success!

I've found Outlook and it's business contact manager and stuff to be very clunky to use. I've started using Act 2009 and really like how ties everything together - tasks, contacts, email, etc.

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Julia