> > Just like I've always done, I planned my schedule on a bit of paper, a process which took me roughly four minutes. I then spent two and a half hours attempting to retroactively fill it into the spreadsheet in such a way that the same results came out and it looked like I had used the spreadsheet to plan the schedule.
>
> You have my complete sympathy. Where I work we are blessed with "The Tracking Report All Must Bow Down To And Worship". Not as insanely complicated as yours sounds, but equally non-optional, its purpose is to make sure ALL THE FIELDS in the FORM are FILLED IN. FIELDS that are NOT FILLED IN mean IMMINENT DISASTER. These fields are rumoured to bear some relation to events happening in the real world, but of course this is just a myth parlayed by the I/S people who created it. We in the trenches know that an empty field doesn't mean imminent disaster, like managment claims. It means "oops, someone forgot to fill in the field when they were supposed to".
>
> koala"that, and about an 45 minute exercise in busywork"mom

Back at the last place where I worked, I usually logged an hour or two a week specifically for "filing out weekly timesheet". At my current place, it's worse -- instead of having all the job codes availabe, project managers have to assign various codes to me. Which means, if I spend an hour assisting someone working on Project Y, I can't bill to Project Y, which means it looks like my Usability is actually less than what I'm actually doing, which provides me with an incentive to not assist the person on Project Y.

Like that made any sense.

-Faux "This time is technically called 'Non-Billable / Research / Self-Improvement'" Pas