Programming Excel® Services

Timesheet Application

Consider a request by a client to build a timesheet application. Let's use the example of a small consulting firm that has five consultants who work in the field on a daily basis. These consultants update their timesheet at project completion with billable hours. The accountants in the accounting department keep track of the billable hours by using a spreadsheet. The accountants are accustomed to running reports and macros to extract relevant metrics at the end of the month.

The consultants note that the single spreadsheet version shared among team members often leads to accidents and versioning issues. These accidents and out-of-sync spreadsheets cost the company money through inaccurate reporting.

There are many approaches ...