== INTRODUCTION

For our small (15 person) Urban Design office, we are looking for
software that can keep track of the hours spent on each of our
projects, and can also provide support for project planning and
billing.
The software for this project planning / time tracking process does
not need to be very detailed. We would like the software to follow our
current process as much as possible (without too many bells and
whistles), and therefore we would like to have it implemented in
Access.
We would like to have a good starting point for our software that we
can have adapted by an Access programmer. The part of the hour
tracking and project administration has probably already been
implemented in Access, so that is what we are looking for.

== QUESTION

We are looking for timesheet / time tracking software programmed in
Access that we can have extended (i.e. modify the source code) to meet
our needs (for planning and billing, to be specific).
A good example of such software is Actitime
(http://products.actimind.com/actiTIME/features.html). However, is not
allowed to extend this software, and the interface is not programmed
in Access. We are looking for something similar, but completely
programmed in Access. The costs should not exceed 300 US dollars.

== SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE TIMESHEET SOFTWARE

= General
?	Easy to use and learn for the users.
?	Easy to adapt to our current and future needs. Simple adaptations
should be possible by some of our more IT minded staff members.
For these reasons we chose Access as the platform to develop on.

= Project administration
It should be possible to:
?	Add new projects, including customer data (addresses, contact persons, etc).
?	Add internal (non-billable) projects.
?	Add  declarations for costs that do not involve hours worked (travel
expenses, expenses made by external parties, etc.).

= Staff administration
It should be possible to:
?	Add new staff members (names, holidays per year, default hourly rate, etc).
Hourly rates per project
?	Define hourly rates per project member per project. (so each
employee can have different hourly rates on different projects).

= Hour administration
Project members should be able to:
?	Register the hours worked on each project.
?	Register holidays, overtime and sick leave.
Preferably, project members should not have to have Access installed
on their computer. This is not a mandatory requirement, however.

= Authorization
We foresee 2 levels of users, which should have different access
rights: Project members vs. Project leaders / management.

== SPECIFICATIONS FOR OUR CUSTOM EXTENTION (Capacity planning, project
planning and invoice planning)
>>> NOTE: The rest here is not part of the question, but it wouldn't
hurt if the software supports these specifications also <<<
Our monthly planning process is as follows; the software should follow
this process as closely as possible.
1.	For each new project, a quote is made and sent to the customer. The
quote is based on the number of hours spent per staff member, and the
hourly rate of this staff member for this particular project. We call
the total amount of the quote the ?budget? for that project.
2.	Based on the hours spent per staff member, a high-level monthly
planning (usually without sub-tasks) for each project is made.
3.	A monthly overview of all projects and project members is made, and
it is checked that there are no capacity problems. If there are
capacity problems, the planning for the projects (step 2) is repeated.
At the end of the month, the actual hours are compared to the planned hours. 
4.	The monthly invoice is made by comparing the actual hours worked to
the original quote. Some interpretation is done here, so that the
amount on the invoice is not too far from the quote, and ads up to the
total budget (unless extra work is required).
5.	The planning for the future invoices is adjusted, based on the
actual hours worked and the status of the project. Again, this step
involves some interpretation.