Time in quarter-hour increments

[Susan Krzywicki]

I’ve tried searching this forum and Googling this question – but didn’t find an answer. So, I am hoping a forum member can help.

I have a client time accounting database – very simple: Date of activity, type, notes and a field where I put in how much time I spent. Currently, the field is set as a Number field and the format is set as “Time (hrs, mins)”. This os OK, but I bill in 15 minute increments, and would like to simply type in 1.75 for an hour and 45 minutes, etc. It would be easier for me to type, and when I export it to Excel to prepare customer invoice (I am not yet technically competent enough to even try this within Tap Forms), I have to retype the info because it comes across as text, “1 hrs, 45 mins” and won’t add up.

I have been using Tap Forms like this for several years and have close to 1000 records in the db and am anxious about making any changes…!!! (hair on fire).

Is there a way to convert this field to a number field without this time format, without having to change all the records by hand?

Is there a better way to do this?

Any help would be wonderful!

[James Hayes]

One way to do it is to export the data, open it in Excel, create a new column with the values using a conversion function and then copy the result back into the original field and import everything back into Tap Forms.

I would recommend creating a new number field in Tap Forms to hold the data and then exporting all of the data to a CSV file. You can then open it with Excel or Numbers and create a function that calculates the new value and then reimport the data back into Tap Forms. This way you would be able to compare the old and new to make sure everything looked correct and so that your original data will remain untouched.

I can help you with it if you would like.

[Brendan]

When you have a number field with a formatter like that, Tap Forms does a calculation for you to convert the value you enter into seconds. So 3600 seconds would be 1 hour. You can change the formatter to HH:MM if you like. That might make it easier to deal with in Excel. Not sure though.

You can also simply change the Number Format to Decimal and the fields will be formatted in seconds. That could be useful for exporting to Excel.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Author]

Posts