Herb,
It's not just a matter of creating reports, it's also of where they are stored and how it will trigger a status change for members within LS. So, if users fall behind in hours then they are switched to non-working members, and switched back on manually. I guess this can also be done as a separate web app that queries the same database. I don't know what that means for data integrity but I'll leave that to the consultants. I just wonder how much work it would be and whether it can be built as a module to piggyback on the customer stuff in LS.
I think you're sitting on the classic boundary problem: where do accounts end and ops processes starts (AKA whose budget/problem is this to solve). My personal opinion is that I would consider this an input to accounts, but not accounts per se. I have a similar problem in that one of the business I work with has a reasonable base of contractors for which a daily timesheet entry just won't work (not to mention the fact that I would hesitate to give a 3rd party ANY access to my accounts). So we'll probably have our offshore dev team code a standalone web system where we can set up a contractor for self-entry and authorities who can approve the timesheet, after which the data gets batched into LSMB via some form of API. What they would need is the API, obviously, but the rest is not really something I'd ask the LSMB guys to help with - I much rather have them continue just the way they are right now with debugging inherited code and build a new framework.
/// P ///