Give PMs ability to prevent users from Logging Time to Completed Tasks | Community
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Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
March 13, 2017
Declined

Give PMs ability to prevent users from Logging Time to Completed Tasks

  • March 13, 2017
  • 33 replies
  • 4450 views

One of the biggest complaints from our PMs is that there is no easy way to ensure that users stop logging time to a task after it is "Completed". We will have situations were at the end of the month a person it needing to update their timesheet and they are entering hours beyond the date the task was closed. So it becomes a 'dumping ground' for hours. We have created exception reports to help the PMs monitor when someone is logging time to a Task beyond the Actual Completion Date, however, it's just extra overhead for them that takes time away from more important PM functions. They would really like it if they have an way to stop this from happening; they already have enough reports to monitor.

There is one option that they can attempt to stop this, but it requires that they update the Sharing Option for each person assigned to the Task to un-check the "log time" option, which is also very time consuming depending on the number of Tasks that need to be updated and the number of people assigned. So this isn't perceived by them as a "easy" solution for obvious reasons.

33 replies

New Participant
September 26, 2018

Not our case, we have some T&M projects with a monthly fixed budget, we encourage our workers to fill their timesheets as they work and we track this budgets very tightly, if we close a task is because all the budget has been used, logging the time late will mean having to discuss this with the client and getting approval for invoicing over this agreed amount. Maybe a checkbox allowing or not retroactive logging time?

Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
September 26, 2018

I wanted to further "qualify" this original Idea. Not only would it be good for PMs to be able to prevent users from logging time to a Task/Issue after it is marked "Complete / Closed". It would also be a PLUS if any Assigned Resource could log time retro-active to the Actual Completion Date.

Here's the use case:

In our organization, all resources have until the end of the week to log their hours for that week. We have a task that can be marked "complete" on Tuesday of this week. If we change the status of the Task to "complete" on Tuesday, we want to ensure that if an Assigned Resource is updating their timesheet on Friday afternoon, that they are able to apply hours on days up through Tuesday (Actual Completion Date) for this Task, without allowing them to apply hours beyond Tuesday. :)

Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
September 26, 2018

45! :)

Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
September 25, 2018

Up to 44 votes!!! Sooooo close! :)

Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
September 20, 2018

@Lidia Constantin - on the Home Page for the Idea Exchange it states,

" Authorized Support Contacts can vote and comment on as many of the ideas as they like, but you can only vote (up or down) for each idea once."

If you have more than 1 authorized support contact, make sure to get all of them to vote on this one!

We are sooooo close to tipping this one. Let's do it before EOD, tomorrow! :)

New Participant
September 19, 2018

We also have projects with multiple tasks, when a task is complete we rename it with a CLOSED at the beginning, in capital letters and we set the task to complete, unassign it and remove sharing... guess how well that works? :-D if they have the task pinned they still log their time there... we need those 4 votes so badly!

Kelly_Wehrmann
New Participant
September 18, 2018

Well, the good news here....all of the latest conversation on this idea has jumped it up to 41 votes....we are so close to the "critical vote threshold". Maybe if we can keep this one relevant for the rest of the week, we can get it up to 45 by Friday! :)

New Participant
September 18, 2018

@ Al - Probably as well as unassigning all the users from the task when they already have the task pinned to their timesheet and can still log time to it anyway.... ;)

I ahve also utilized renaming the task as follows:

xxx Project - Planning - Dev to:

DO NOT CHARGE TIME - xxx Project - Planning Dev.

Guess how well that works? ;)

New Participant
September 18, 2018

@Stacy - our situation exactly!

We append `***CLOSED***` to the task name and mark the task as complete... guess how well that works LOL

New Participant
September 18, 2018

Yeah, my example was pretty standard as well:

A project with planning and execution tasks for the same groups. When planning is done you want to close that and block any time, for when execution starts, etc. This is a pretty standard way to manage projects. During the execution stage the project obviously needs to remain open, and people need access to charge time. The problem is they have "pinned" the planning task to their time sheet and continue to use it.

I sent this issue to the support helpdesk, and they have confirmed that there is no way to prevent people from charging time.