Pre-Calculus

Sometimes you just have to be pleased with yourself. Today I started back to work and one of the things I really wanted to do was figure out how to make Excel calculate my time correctly on my time sheet so I didn't have to do any manual work calculating anything. Last time I had a nice time sheet but I still had to manually add up the hours I worked each day, and then the hours I worked for the two week period, and then multiply that by my hour rate.

I KNEW that Excel could lessen or eliminate the work for me, but I didn't know how to make it see my time, convert it to a number so I could use that for the adding up of the time worked, and then multiply that out. So I decided if I'm working for another three months, I needed to figure this out.

First thing I did was remove the Lunch column from my spreadsheet and instead have two Start/End time columns. In this way, I am only adding up the pre-lunch and post-lunch hours.

Next, I figured out which time format to use to convert the added to a simple time number without the application adding the AM/PM or anything else.

Finally, and this was the part that took a bit of time, I figured out where in the Help file to find how to convert a time number to a non-time number in a way that I could then use to multiply to get my money due amount based on my hourly rate. It turns out you have to use the following formula:

=(A1-INT(A1))*24*HR

Where "A1" is the field in which the time number is located and "HR" is my hourly rate. This converts the time number into an integer and then multiplies that integer times 24 (hours in a day) and then multiplies that by my current hourly rate. Formatting the cell to give me the results in a dollar figure gives me the number I need for my invoice without me having to do any calculations of my own.

When using Excel or Access, I often find that my main impediment to getting any task done is usually one of language. I don't speak or necessarily know the terms that the particular application wants me to use to ask it questions or perform a task. As my friend and former boss Renee would often comment on, an application, help file, or document is really only as good as its index. If you can't come up with enough ways in which a person will term a given task or item, you will leave someone unable to find the help they seek. I find that Microsoft's documentation is particularly poor at indexing things using terminology I think of to use. So I fail more often than I succeed at finding the help I need even though I may be certain the application can do what I want it to do.

At this point, I only need to enter my start and end times and my total hours worked per day and per week auto-calculate for me, and shows me the dollar figure I need to submit and the dollar figure I need to set aside for taxes.

Now that I have this task accomplished, I can refocus my attention back to the list of documents the company wants me to edit, create, and maintain.