With the introduction of Project Tracker, OpenAir.com Inc. expands its professional services automation (PSA) offerings to include an integrated tool for tracking the productivity of contracted workers. Project Tracker ties together the time-and-expense tracking, proposal-writing, and client-billing applications that OpenAir.com hosts for its clients.

In conjunction with the release of Project Tracker, OpenAir.com has also released a version of its hosted software that works with Wireless Access Protocol-enabled personal digital assistants and cell phones. In the past, users could employ PDA devices to record time and expense information and later transfer it to a computer that could access the OpenAir.com Web site. Now OpenAir.com customers will be able to directly transmit information via a WAP-enabled PDA.

PSA applications are generally used to help professional services companies or IT departments with contracted workers determine the amount of time their employees are allocating to individual projects and how their clients should be billed or their workers paid. "Customers prefer to be charged a fixed fee for the work we do," says Chris Sanders, VP of technology for Ventanex Ltd., an E-commerce application developer and OpenAir.com customer. "Customers are not real excited about being charged on a time-and-materials basis because they're basically giving the developer a blank check." By tracking how much time must be devoted to comparable projects, Sanders believes he's better able to offer his customers a fair price.

Project Tracker is priced at $9.95 per month for each employee profile a customer creates. WAP-enabled compatibility will be available to OpenAir.com customers at no additional charge for the next month. After that time, users will be changed an as-yet-undetermined monthly fee to access OpenAir.com applications via WAP-enabled wireless devices.