Time is the stock-in-trade of a surprising number of small businesses, but keeping track of it, and billing for it, is far from easy. Manual timesheets can be cumbersome, contact-management tools complex and expensive.

Which is where Timesheet Xpress comes in, neatly filling the gap between the two.

Timesheet Xpress does nothing more, or less, than record time. It identifies customers, clients or projects involved, the tasks and associated costs, with tools to later analyse, report and bill for that time. It can be installed onto any PC running Windows 95 or later and uses an on-screen timesheet as its primary interface.

Looking much like an Outlook calendar, each timesheet covers a fixed period of a week with user-definable timeslots that can be anything from five minutes to an hour long, in five-minute increments.

Time can be allocated to a list of clients or projects, defined manually or by importing existing details from a csv file, with integration into the Act CRM application also possible.

A separate user-defined task list is used to categorise time allocations, with facilities to colour-code time allocations and distinguish between chargeable and non-chargeable items; for example, to record time spent on office admin or when users are at lunch, on leave or off sick.

Free-format notes can be added to the time records, with personal expense recording another built-in option.

Data can be entered into any time slot, although the program keeps track of and highlights the current time, automatically entering whatever client/project and task you have open into the active timeslot.

When installed on a Windows 2000/XP PC, Timesheet Xpress will be configured to run from the taskbar with the option of maximising the program on a regular basis as a further, very useful, reminder.

It’s all delightfully simple and straightforward, very much like filling in a paper timesheet and, as a consequence, very easy to use, even when it comes to analysing the data and running reports.

Options let you select time periods, clients, tasks and other parameters with analyses showing the data in a spreadsheet-like display that can be saved in Excel, HTML and other formats.

Reports can, of course, be printed or saved in a variety of formats including pdf and, although there’s no report generator, the reports provided should cover most requirements.

A useful invoice-generation tool is also included, although this is limited when it comes to customisation, plus you’ll need to enter the data into your accounts package separately.

Each timesheet is stored as a discrete file which can be viewed, printed or emailed – this last option enabling timesheets from multiple users to be collated and managed by a central co-ordinator.

A multi-user version of the software is also available (from £57 ex VAT for three users) to allow multiple users to record their time in companies where PCs are shared.

Client/project and task lists, billing rates and timesheets can also be stored in a network share, with users only allowed to update their own timesheets, not others.

Admittedly the client/customer management facilities are pretty basic, but then Timesheet Xpress isn’t designed to be a CRM application.

It just records and bills for time, does it simply and effectively and is an affordable tool that will appeal to any small business in the service sector.

System requirements

1GHz Pentium III processor or faster, minimum 64MB of Ram
30MB free hard disk space
24bit colour with 1,024 x 768 resolution recommended
Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP
Internet Explorer 4 or later