Auto time tracking for android

[HCHTech]

I'm on the lookout for an automatic time-tracker for android phones. Given that:

- all of my customers are in google contacts
- my schedule is in google calendar
- my phone can tell whether it is moving or not
- my phone knows where I am via cell, wifi, gps, etc.
- my phone knows what time it is

there should be an app that can run in the back ground and give me a report at the end of the day that looks something like this:

12:00 - 7:04 - Inactive - Home
7:04 - 8:30 - Active - Home
8:30 - 8:50 - traveling
8:50 - 9:50 - Active - approximate location W, or John Smith (assuming his address is in contacts)
9:51 - 10:15 - traveling
10:16 - 11:40 - Active - approximate location X, or Mary Jones
11:40 - 12:00 - traveling
12:00 - 12:35 - Active - approximate location Y, or McDonalds (click here for coupon)
12:35 - 1:05 - traveling
1:05 - 4:00 - Active - approximate location Z, or GT Industries
4:00 - 4:30 - traveling
4:30 - 11:00 - Active - Home
11:00 - 12:00 - Inactive - Home

you get the idea. And, I want all of this without me interacting with the darned thing at all if possible. I get it that location is limited to the accuracy provided by what signal is used, but I can also imagine that comparing the address from the entry on the calendar for the current time to the approximate detected location could result in a pretty good guess plus or minus.

I have tried a couple of the geofencing apps out there - the latest one is "Timesheet Geofence v3". But none of them are as smart as they ought to be given everything that the phone already knows about me and the world around it.

Maybe I should be looking for a programmer to write this app, I don't know. haha.

 

[Moltuae]

I can't help with the app I'm afraid but you could try asking the NSA; they've probably got all that info

 

[TurricanII]

Are you trying to use this for billing? I have looked for auto time trackers that record where you are and which windows are active on your workstation to try and automate billing. Nothing seemed to hit the spot. For us, there was no better solution than having a call logging system that allows us to record time in minutes with each note, and forcing ourselves to be disciplined to make a note of arrival time and billable time on site.

I sometimes use a voice recorder app to record my notes of what was tried while I was on site and how much billable time there is. The recordings have time date stamps that can be useful, and I find that listening back to voice recordings allows me to recall a lot more detail than handwritten notes. I review the notes and transcribe later. Voice recording is also very handy when auditing sites, for those observations/model & serial numbers that are not easy to grab automatically.

 

[HCHTech]

Not for billing - this is more of a productivity thing. I'm trying to track my own and my technicians' use of time without requiring punch in / punch out on paper or otherwise. I'm not trying to discover intentional misuse of time, just get a good average for everyone on how much of their day is billable and how much is non-billable and why. It's the first step in an efficiency effort. We don't have hard start and stop times for anyone's day - it all depends on the calls that are scheduled.

So this doesn't sound difficult - "Please write down your time for a week so we can measure it". The trouble is in the execution. When I start this process myself - it is inevitable that it goes ok partway through the day, then something happens to disrupt the schedule, then the end of the day gets here and I realize that I stopped writing things down a few hours ago. I've been trying it for a week or two now and I haven't made it through a single day without forgetting something. It's maddening.

So, I figured there must be an app that we could run to help with this process. We bill hourly when in the field, so it's not difficult to get billable hours there, but we don't record start and stop times for calls - we just look at the clock at the end of a call and figure how long the job took for billing purposes, create the invoice and go from there.

I don't want to start writing start and stop times on the invoices somehow (we use mhelpdesk) - that seems like needless complication. Come on, technology, help me out here!

 

[seedubya]

This seems to do some of what you want.

 

[frostbyte5014]

May possibly find a GPS app that will take care of your needs.