I do service calls to client locations, some of which is billed by the hour.
I’m looking to make a shortcut that will be a 1-tap stopwatch on the home screen for when I arrive on-site. There is an option in the Clock app to force press and get options for timer, stopwatch, alarm etc but it’s a dead end from there for using the elapsed time.
The shortcuts options only allow the starting of a timer that I can see. Searching online there are some JS code examples for stopwatches on web pages but I don’t know if that’s applicable.
just needs to count upwards in hh:mm only
will pass to Drafts () for invoice template
and maybe in the future I can geofence to my Fantastical call addresses for the day …?
As I write this it is sounding like a project-tracker app
Some people use toggl.com for tracking time like that, but it is a paid for service.
Log and Calculate It
It sounds like rather than trying to count elapsed time, you might want to consider tracking points in time and calculating the time elapsed. You could record that directly in a running Draft, a Google spreadsheet, an Airtable table, or simply a text file in iCloud/Dropbox.
The only thing I’m not sure about is if this would give you enough of a visual cue as to if you have a timer running or not. You maybe able to work around that through good habits/processes and maybe even using something like Launch Center Pro and an NFC tag (in your car or on your notebook/laptop/tool bag) to trigger the logging of a time.
You could combine that with minimum/maximum time thresholds between updates to query if you missed any time entries and allow you to insert corrections.
Periodic Query
If your work enables it, you could have your device query you to ask which client you are working for. You note that you work by the hour but task tracking was minutes. From that it isn’t clear how you actually calculate it (rounding, part thereof, etc.) but if for example it was to the nearest hour or half hour, you could get prompted for each hour of your working day to ask if you have changed client. This could be done with a number of apps that can generate reminders that can then trigger other actions through a URL. When you have and select to trigger an action, could then record the number of hours/half hours/etc. against that client of the day (e.g. client #1, client #2, etc.)
There’s a few ideas on approaches and for all you could certainly use Shortcuts or perhaps an app like Scriptable or Pythonista to carry out the actions.
Good advice there.
I use Hours for tracking my few projects, and with the free version and sensible use of projects I get all I need, including reports telling me how much time I spent on each project that week. If it’s to help billing clients, paying might be well worth it.
You could create a shortcut with a flow such as:
Get time and date
Menu of client name to pick
Input any other details
Menu to choose if starting or stopping the timer
Save text to a Note or spreadsheet
You could then parse that later to get what you need. You could even save it to a text file when starting the timer, and have the shortcut work everything out for you by reading that text file when you stop the timer.
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