Working on a FOSS tool to convert raw work time data into a clean report for your boss or client. Any interest?
It's almost done (it would take one or two weeks to clean it up for FOSS release). It's a CLI tool. It works great for my use case, but I'm wondering if there's any interest in a tool like this.
Say you have a simple time-tracking tool that tracks what you do daily. The only problem is that there are gaps and whatnot, which might not look nice if you need to send it to someone else. This tool fixes pretty much all of that.
Main format is a JSON with a "description", and either "duration" or a "start"/"end" pair. It supports the Timewarrior format out of the box (CLI Time tracking tool).
Outputting clean reports is one thing, but "normalizing" the time to make it look better, or as though I'm more busy, is something else entirely. I appreciate the effort, but this tool has the very real potential to get a contractor or employee sued for time fraud. I highly recommend against normalization of time data. The contractor either worked a full 30 or s/he didn't. It's black and white. Saying s/he worked for 30 when s/he worked for 25 is a lie, and subject to lawsuits and further legal action.
Mainly, this is because I was writing official docs, then took a quick Lemmy break, but my brain stayed "official" hahahahaha that's all. 'they' should absolutely be used in this colloquial context.
Don't know why you would jump to that conclusion straight away. MĂn billable hours and time spent thinking on the problem is a thing. Taking regular 5m breaks (pomodoro technique) also helps with getting things done and so on and people should be paid for it.
I mean, you should technically stop the clock if the wife calls to ask if there's pasta at home but nobody really cares.
Adding significant amount of hours to a report would not be ethical but adjusting 10% to get paid for time laying in bed thinking about problems is still ethical from my point of view. It's way more value than most meetings.
What someone feels is ethical and what may be legal don't always match. From a legal point of view in every country I've worked at as a contractor, "time laying in bed thinking about problems" isn't billable time.
As a personal time management solution, I don't see any issues here. As a billable time report maker, it has the very real potential to get the user into legal turmoil.
Use at your own risk and made damn sure that the laws match your idea of ethical billable hours, is all I'm saying.