Outlook Journal Reporting
If you’re a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), then you know the top critical success factor is to have a trusted system for everything. Over the years, I’ve tried just about every combination of system you can imagine, from paper to pda to computer to online. Nothing ever had all the features necessary to make it my single trusted system. I finally settled on Outlook using the GTD Outlook Add-In from NetCentrics.
One troublesome aspect of my life as a solo developer involves record keeping. I have to be able to easily capture the time I’m spending on client work with enough detail to properly justify an invoice or time sheet. In order to keep everything together, I use Outlook’s Journal feature to create time records for later invoicing or reporting. However, getting this information into a usable report format is not something Outlook does easily. In order to get the reports I need, I had to create a macro that accepts certain criteria and creates a new Journal item containing the report I need as the body of the item. I can then copy/paste this information into Invoice detail lines or a status report email.