The Time Report

Chronographer not only helps you to plan what you need to do, it also helps you to see how you've spent your time.  One way that it does this is through the time summaries in the Roles and Goals and Tasks windows.  These summaries tell you how much time you've spent on one item.

Another way is through the Time Report.  It produces an itemized report of how much time you've spent not only on the current item selected in the Roles & Goals window but on every item that comprises the current item.

To open the Time Report tool:  1 Choose Tools from the main menu.  2 Choose Time Report... from the Tools menu.

The Time Report window will then open:

Each role or goal that comprises the item currently selected in the browser will be listed, along with the amount of time spent on it. The items are listed in the same order they are in the Roles & Goals browser, first by priority and then by name.  Each level of component items is grouped together with a subtotal for each group.  The final total appears on the last line of the report.

The report can be customized by using the controls in the upper part of the window.  The time period that the report covers is specified by the two dates in the upper left corner of the window:

The Start Date is the first date that the report will cover.
The End Date is the last date that the report will cover.

The start date is inclusive, but the end date is exclusive.  That is, appointments scheduled on the start date will be included in the report, but appointments scheduled on the end date will not.  So, for example, to generate a report for the month of August, you would select a start date of August 1 and an end date of September 1.

The start date begins at the First Hour specified in preferences. The end date ends at the same time on its date.  To change the report dates, use the arrow buttons next to the year, month, and day fields.

The formatting of the report is specified by the form in the upper-right corner of the window:

The Title indent field controls the number of spaces used to indent to the right each level of the item titles in the report.
The Amount indent field controls how much the time amounts are indented to the left for each level.
The Line length field controls the maximum length of the lines in the report.

Note that if the line length is too short or the component depth is too great, the titles and amounts will collide into each other, producing messy formatting.  If this happens, increase the line length (and possibly also the width of the window) or select one of the components in the Roles & Goals window to narrow the scope of the report, producing a less complex one featuring just that component and its sub-components.

Some options for controlling what is included in the report are available below the formatting form:

The Include tasks checkbox determines whether or not tasks are included in the report.  If the are not, only roles and goals are included.  The time allocated to the tasks of those roles and goals is reported, but the tasks are not itemized.
The Include zeros checkbox determines whether or not zero amounts are included in the report.  Currently this option is not fully effective.  Items that have subgroups are still listed even if their total is zero.  This problem will be corrected in a later version.

Once you are satisfied with the changes you've made, press the Run button on the bottom right of the window to generate a new report.

If you wish to have the time report cover a different item or cover just one of the items listed in the report, you can do so by selecting a different item for the report to cover:  1 Select, in the Roles & Goals window, the role or goal that you want to use as the subject of the report.  All of its sub-roles, sub-goals, and tasks and those of its children will be included in the report.  If no role or goal is selected in the window, all roles, goals, and tasks are included in the report.  2 Click the Run button.  A report for the selected item will be generated.

Once you've generated a report, you can print it by pressing the Print button.  You can also copy it to the pasteboard with the Copy button.  You can then paste it into an editor or word processor to customize it.