[Orgmode] Re: Clock logging -- possible to include seconds?

[Bernt Hansen]

Carsten Dominik <address@hidden> writes:

> On Dec 22, 2009, at 4:16 PM, Bill Powell wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Thanks again to y'all for org-mode. Here's a quick question: how hard
>> would it be to include seconds in the clock logging? It may sound like
>> a silly request, but I often have to work on two or three billable
>> different projects in a day, sometimes switching back and forth
>> between them. When you add up all those intervals for an invoice
>> covering a month or more, counting those half and quarter
>> minutes might add up to an additional hour or so of billable time.
>>
>> It's possible I'm just misunderstanding the org-mode algorithm, and
>> that its rounding turns out to be almost as accurate over the long
>> haul. Plus, many people expect to be billed by the half hour anyhow.
>> But I time various projects for myself, too, so this is really an
>> interest for my own work. What do you all think?
>>
>> Bill Powell
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> I would think that this will average away.  When clocking in,
> Org only notices the full minutes.  If you are clocking in at
> 14:22:59 and out again 1 second later at 14:23:00 you will
> cheat 59 seconds into the clocking interval and bill a whole
> minute.  So this kind of *cheating* goes both ways and will
> average out.
>
> And yes, it really would seem strange to clock by the second :-)

I also think clocking by second is overkill.  I clock time spent on
things in a day and normally bill hours worked per day.  When billing
for time spent over an entire month I go through the clock reports for
each day separately and add up the hours for each project.  Rounding
clocked time to less than 15 minutes per day when doing billing doesn't
make sense to me -- most people I think round to half or full hours.

I often work on multiple billable items per day too - and switch all
back and forth on my clocking items.  I try to keep my clocking items so
that they include every minute worked from the start to the finish of my
day - then I just look at the time spent on each billable project at the
end of the day to figure out how much to bill.

-Bernt