TIME AND ATTENDANCE

Tracking within Abak is centered on projects. Because billing for
special projects is an increasingly important aspect of most firms'
profitability, this project-centric tracking is a powerful tool for
better monitoring of time and attendance expended and dollars invoiced.
All of the time and attendance you enter can be billed in total on a
client-by-client basis or you can opt to select time by project.

Few categories of CPA applications have changed as dramatically over
the last few years as practice management, the group of applications
that include time and attendance, but go well beyond the jobs of capturing
time and preparing invoices.

Also added in the upcoming version are fully sortable tables, enabling
users to run queries and sort data without having to run reports. And,
the thin-client structure should make it easy to perform remote time
and attendance entry from anywhere on a network of over the Internet.

The time and attendance program is not small, and users should not
expect to have it installed instantly. This time and attendance program
can be run on a single workstation but was designed for networks with multiple users. Either way, the initial set-up process requires installation of at least three primary components: the client, server and remote management functions.

The client program will be installed on all workstations using the
program. For the server installation, the company recommends a 700MHz+ Pentium processor and 512MB of RAM.

For client installations of the ABAk 6 time and attendance software, at least a 300MHz processor and 128MB of RAM are recommended. I installed both on the test PC, which has an 800MHz processor and only 256MB of RAM, but I encountered no problems with server operation. The performance would likely suffer with this scenario, however, if there were multiple users accessing the application while it was deficient in memory
resources. (The company noted that it offers technical support to guide
clients through the installation process and promises that questions
will be answered promptly and without delay.) The total program size
requires about 100MB of free disk space for the server and around 10MB
for workstations. The program can run across environments employing
Windows NT, 2000 and XP, as well as Novell 4.0+ networks. For
workstations, the program supports Windows 98/2000/NT/XP. The
application is also 100% Internet enabled and is accessible remotely
with the same interface.