Need a replacement for Quickbooks Pro 2004's Timer.

November 17, 2004 9:21 AM

Need a replacement for Quickbooks Pro 2004's Timer. [MI]

My company is around 20 hourly folks spread across 5 departments. We use Quickbooks Pro 2004 for accounting. The default timer currently tracks by Client/Project and Employee/Class/Service Type. But, it's a POS that crashes all the time and often loses data.

I need a replacement timer that runs on Win2k and XP and can import/export with Quickbooks. Needs to run off a local or networked workstation instead of being web-based. I'd love to be able to track sub-tasks within a Project. It's ok if I'd have to run reports within the replacement app. itself to get these special breakdowns on times as long as total time gets imported into QB properly.

Ditching Quickbooks entirely is not an option. I have some demos via Google I'll be trying, but wanted to hear from anyone who has found and uses a good replacement timer.

posted by Sangre Azul to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

My company has also had the same problem. The timer program now gives me an error every time i start it, and no amount of uninstalling/reinstalling/cleaning registry is going to solve it (so says the intuit people). So now i have to edit my .iif files in a text editor and send those in.

I haven't found any replacements that will fit our needs, so i'm planning on writing one, actually. I've only found a web-based solution, but it seems that you and i both want a regular windows application.

I've also looked into using their QBXML features (and writing my own application using them), but then it would basically require that the timer program to establish a connection to the computer running quickbooks pro. Using QBXML, there is no way to just export/import like you do now, which is ideal.

In short, i haven't found any programs that do what i want them to do. I'm eager to see if anybody else has found a solution. At this point, i think i'm going to be having to write a program that just replaces the timer and understands the .iif format.
posted by escher at 10:19 AM on November 17, 2004

Thanks, escher. Glad to know I'm not alone. I contacted Intuit today and they told me this:

"The QuickBooks Timer has not been changed in 8 years. It is not a supported product nor one we have any plans to update."

Just wonderful.
posted by Sangre Azul at 2:25 PM on November 17, 2004