Scheduling Work for Clients - software

looking for software that helps schedule workload

[avibodha]

Hi, I'm juggling 5-10 clients at any one time and I'm needing some software to help me schedule and plan my work.

How do you guys handle scheduling your workload and planning 2-3 months out? And tracking/updating when your schedule slips?

I've thought of using those wall charts and either postits or magnetic things to keep moving things around as schedules change.

Has anyone had sucess using project planning software? Anything you can share would help.

thanks,
---avibodha

[edited by: jatar_k at 11:21 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2007]
[edit reason] no sigs thanks [/edit]

[Corey Bryant]

You might check out www.freelancerpanel.com as a solution

-Corey

[avibodha]

thanks for the idea, but I'm looking to schedule my workload.

For example, I have 5 clients with lots of pieces of work each. I need to put these in my schedule and know when I'll have free time to schedule my next client or take new clients.

How do you handle your scheduling?

[Fortune Hunter]

avibodha:

In the past I have used Microsoft Project Manager, but it is a bit cumbersome and I am not sure it will do exactly what you are looking for, but it may be worth checking out to see.

At the moment I don't use any master scheduling program, although I should. I use an application called Time Trax that keeps track of hours I have on a project, but it doesn't do master scheduling.

FH

[avibodha]

Thanks for replying FH, I would have thought there would be a commonly accepted software package for doing this by now. Yes, Microsoft Project is such over-kill for a small design shop....

If anyone is reading and DOES using something, please let us know. I'm guessing quite a few just use a spreadsheet. I'll try some open source packages that do project management and post back my findings here in case some else is interested.

thanks,
---avibodha

[classa]

We looked at dotproject at one point and I believe it will do master scheduling, but it was almost too much to work with. It is open source and free to download and install. It also lives on the web and allows you to keep open communications with your clients.

[avibodha]

I looked at dotProject and I believe that their roadmap shows Resource Leveling as a future feature. Please let me know if I'm wrong - I checked it a few days ago.

For people who don't know, resource leveling allows you to enter all your tasks, and the program schedules those tasks into your calendar. This makes it easy to see when a project will be complete and when you have some "free" time in the future.

I'm trying out Effexis Achieve Planner right now and it seems to be working pretty good. Very limited import/export, no calendar printing, but it does handle many nested tasks and it does do resource leveling (they call it rescheduling).

Also trying out Microsoft Project, but I haven't yet made all the necessary projects (one per client). I didn't see a way to give a client his part of a project so it looks like you need one project file per client and a few for general tasks. Not sure how resource leveling works across all these projects though...

fyi,
---avibodha