TimeTable tracks time spent in meetings, events
Today's Best Tech Deals
Picked by Macworld's Editors
Top Deals On Great Products
Picked by Techconnect's Editors
-
Steven Riggs TimeTable 1.7.2
GemFest 2009
- GemFest 2009 begins
- AirRadar surveys your wireless signals
- Application Wizard makes program...
- AppShelf tracks software licenses
- Add an OS 9-like app menu to OS X with...
[Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]
If you tend to put all your events, appointments, and client meetings in iCal, TimeTable can help you figure out exactly how much time you’ve spent on each task, making it a great tool for consultants or anyone who needs to break down how they spend their time.
Launch TimeTable, and it lists all the iCal events in the chosen calendar over the chosen time frame (by default, the previous month). For each event, TimeTable shows the start date, the total time of the event, and the event name; by right-clicking on any column head in TimeTable, you can show additional columns for iCal’s Notes, Location, URL, End Date, Start Time, End Time, Start Weekday, End Weekday, and Calendar fields. You can also rename any column in TimeTable’s preferences.
You can change the calendar and time period using the controls in the main window or by opening the Set Timeframe drawer, which gives you both preset periods (such as Previous, Current, and Next Day, Week, Month, and Year) and graphical calendars.
In addition to calculating the length of each event, TimeTable displays, at the bottom of the window, data about all events in the current time frame: the total number of hours spent on all events, the average number of hours for each event, the length of the longest event, and the length of the shortest event.
(If you don’t want “all-day” events to be considered as 24 hours in these calculations, TimeTable includes an option to specify how such events should be handled. Since I use all-day events mainly as reminders or “unavailable” markers, I’ve told TimeTable to treat them as events lasting 0 hours.)
What’s especially useful about these statistics is that they’re calculated based on whatever events are listed in the window. Which means you can use TimeTable’s search filter to display—and, thus, provide statistics about—only those events that match your search; for example, meetings with a particular client. In the image here, I’ve filtered the view to show only staff meetings in the past month, which tells me I’ve spent 2.5 hours in those meetings.
Of course, because this filtering is based on event names, you need to name your events appropriately and consistently for TimeTable to be useful; for example, Client meeting: D. Anderson or Project meeting: Web site redesign.
TimeTable also offers an option to calculate billable hours. If enabled, an Hourly Rate field appears in the main window, and a new Cost column appears in the list; enter a rate and TimeTable shows you the billable amount for each event, as well as the total billable amount for all events in the list.
You can export your data to text or comma-separated-value (CSV) documents; these exports can be customized in TimeTable’s preferences. You can also export a blog-style list of notes you’ve entered in iCal for events. There’s a Send To Mail feature, too, but it’s hard-coded to use Apple’s Mail program; if you use another e-mail client, you’re out of luck.
TimeTable also lets you use iCal to-do items as a way to quickly limit the event view to events associated with a particular task.
One feature I’d like to see is the capability to view all events in all calendars simultaneously, and it would be useful to be able to choose multiple—but not all—calendars. I wish TimeTable could show times in hours:minutes notation, rather than—or in addition to—decimal representations. Still, it’s tough to argue with utility. If iCal is your calendaring program of choice, TimeTable lets you make better use of your scheduled events.
Want to stay up-to-date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your inbox. You can also follow MacGems on Twitter.
Our 186-page Mac Gems Superguide is a veritable greatest hits of Mac Gems. It's available as a PDF download, PDF on CD-ROM, or as a printed book. Learn more about the Mac Gems Superguide.
[Dan Frakes is a Macworld senior editor.]
GemFest 2009
GemFest 2009 features great free and low-cost software for your Mac.
Increasingly, the airwaves around us are a jungle of competing wireless signals. Koingo Software’s...
Application Wizard--which operates as an OS X System Preferences pane--displays four colored...
If you need to track licenses and registration information for a large number of applications,...
If you who miss the OS 8/9-style application menu, two programs, ASM and multiXFinder, aim to fill...
If you’d prefer a simpler way to work with disk images, Click Archive is one such solution.
This program aim taps into iPhoto's Faces feature so you can attach images to Address Book entries.
GlimmerBlocker is an ad blocker that is safe to install because it doesn’t hack Safari.
If you find yourself inundated with a huge assortment of documents that are difficult to track, a...
FileBrowse is a beautiful, well-made media browser program, though how useful you find it will...
Zipeg is a free utility that’s useful to keep around as a complement to OS X’s built-in archiving...
If you juggle work all day and find yourself switching from one set of apps to another, you can...
Wx is a meteorological program that is for anyone who’s serious about the weather.
If you regularly receive winmail.dat files from business associates, Letter Opener is well worth...
Riverfold Software's Clipstart is to video clips what iTunes is to music, or iPhoto is to digital...
Do you find the standard OS X Address Book too limiting? If so, BdContacts might be just the...
Typically, while using your Mac’s iSight camera with one program, you can’t use it with another....
Have you ever wondered what a non-Apple software installer actually installs? Or what files a...
If you work extensively at cooking or event planning, or you’re just intensely organized and...
Digital Sentry is an aptly named program that monitors your computer for any of a number of events.
This simple program aims to fix the problem of lost or forgotten warranties by providing you with...
Full-featured accounting programs like QuickBooks can seem overwhelming and complicated. For...
Monitor is a small and lightweight freeware application that seeks to put these regularly visited...
Precipitate is a System Preference pane that lets Spotlight search your Google Docs, Google...
Tweetube is a complementary app to the third-party service of the same name that allows you share a...
Yum 3.0.7 is a solid, no-frills recipe manager, but its lack of some key features may have you...
If you want to use the same custom location several times in iMovie '09, you can use...
If you tend to put all your events, appointments, and client meetings in iCal, TimeTable can help...
DeskCover is a free program that adds a customizable background behind the icons on your desktop.
Instead of logging in and out of different user accounts on your Mac, rooSwitch lets you switch...
Whether you’ve deleted photos, reformatted your media card, or had a card go bad, Klix recovers...
Photo Wrangler makes it easy to quickly scan through a folder of photos and sort them into separate...
Rife as Mac OS X already is with slide-show capabilities, PhotoPresenter builds onto those and puts...
For image editing, Sumo Paint offers many Photoshop standbys. And best of all, this Web-based...
With ViewIt, you can simply drop your camera’s photos onto the ViewIt window, view and mark what’s...
You’ve probably heard about the Faces feature in iPhoto ‘09 that makes it quick and easy to find...
As great as video sharing Web sites like YouTube are, they often don’t allow you to directly...
Shape Collage turns a collection of photos into a collage of practically any shape, whether you’re...
Aquafadas’s PulpMotion produces professional multimedia presentations that are anything but...
When you want to create iTunes playlists based on tempo or need to find the BPM of your songs,...
VideoDrive aims to make video conversions easy.
Cooliris is a super-handy browser plug-in that lets you scope out images and video content in a...
SousChef is a recipe organizer with an iTunes-RSS feed sensibility that can help you get your meal...
If you have an even moderately large media library and like the idea of having everything neatly...
As a grand finale to GemFest 2009, here’s a list of some of our all-time favorite Mac Gems.