When comments get filed away...

Here's a scenario:  Your boss comes by your desk at 5 pm Friday afternoon. "What problems did we have with Client X last year?  I really need to know that for my Monday meeting." There goes your fishing trip this weekend. 
You scratch your head and think about your records, project timesheets stored in boxes under your desk. You start thinking about the fact that a secondary use of paper timesheets is to record notes and comments on projects and activities. But you did not keep many notes this way.  "Why didn't I record notes on my timesheet?" you're thinking. Well, here's the answer.  Due to limited space on your paper timesheets, your comments have been related only to timesheet adjustments, not to flag major issues. "Why's that?" you wonder. Well first, there is not enough room. Second, paper timesheets are usually filed away and are not easily searchable. Thus proving the principle:  if you can't do it easily you don't do it. In this case, you did not enter important comments about your client projects on your timesheets, because it was difficult to do.
But there's another reason you did not do it? Really, another reason? Yes, another reason! You knew the comments would be nearly impossible to search at a later date, so you did not bother to record anything important on the timesheet. "Oh I get it!," you now realize, "why bother recording notes if you or another colleague cannot find them easily." You won't have time to search through fifty weekly timesheets for last year to get an answer about that client account for your boss's Monday meeting. But now you will make time and cancel your fishing trip. 

Can Comments be Found Easily? 
An automated timesheet system can track detailed comments and employees can search by keyword for those comments. In the past, Pacific Timesheet has allowed workers to record up to 4,000 characters of comments or notes per time entry. But now, managers can search those comments on the Timesheet dashboard. Imagine running a keyword query for comments related to issues such as "damaged equipment," "wrong price" or "project late." Managers can easily pull up all time entries with these keywords in their comments and zero in on when, where and how things happened. Client service businesses can easily answer client questions or check a client's claim. Workers can be trained to note problems using certain internal keywords and phrases so they can be tracked over time. Without any special setup or custom field configuration, extensive notes and comments with time entries can accomplish all of this and more.

It might be a small feature. But then again, it could answer some very big questions that might otherwise be impossible to answer. Unless you don't want to go fishing.