Show HN: My side project – Laps – Client, Project and Time management | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My side project – Laps – Client, Project and Time management

app.getlaps.com

70 pointskristaps199049 comments

Nice work, UI feels good. Some thoughts: I think in this space integrations are key. For example, I would rather use my accounting software (Xero) to create invoices, so just being able to have an Xero integration that creates invoices in Xero would be more useful than Laps invoices, for me. Syncing contacts with Google apps would also be big. I feel like a lot of time tracking software (for example, Harvest) duplicates the functionality of accounting software / CMS.

Thanks for your comment, yes i am thinking to add some import / export / sync features, but currently I concentrate on finishing MVP - that means finish projects and add basic invoicing.

Kudos to you buddy on getting it out. There's some hard-work required just to overcome the resistance to getting up to this point. And it motivates me to get mine out quicker. Thanks :)

Thanks! Yes - it is much harder as it seems @ the start. :) Good luck with your project!

When creating an account, if you use a short password it says 'Field name should be between 8 and 200 characters'. I thought it was trying to tell me my first name should be between a certain length at first, but it's the password field.

Tried to create a project, entered project name and the expected income field, submitting closed the modal with no errors, but no project appeared.

Hi, yes i am aware or not so good UX on validation process. But tell me more about that project adding failure. Did the project show'd up when you did browser refresh?

I'm seeing the same thing. Doesn't appear after a refresh. The request actually gets a 500 and a response of {"message": "INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"}.

Request: http://i.imgur.com/DM10H46.png

Thanks! This helped a lot, haven't seen that while testing. The thing is that currently you have to create project for contact, if you don't have contact it won't create project. Will be fixed asap.

Typos:

"Never lose client! Easily add your client contact info, rates, links and group them by status." Never lose a client!

"Don't miss an update. Create free account!" Create a free account!

"We want to build best tool possible. Create free account!" We want to build the best tool possible. Create a free account!

Also, really love the design.

Big thanks for this, will update first thing @ morning! Glad you like design! :)

That background image (2000 x 3225px) makes the scrolling really laggy for me. Please remove it or make it smaller.

Thanks, will optimise it.

"Send frist version to client" is in one of the images as well

thanks! Will update!

Just one suggestion:

"Useful features coming soon"

this indicates that your service is not really useful at the moment :) I'd rephrase it to something that points towards your vision. Or just replace useful with: kickass, amazing, handy.

Do you see this as a competitor for toggl.com?

Yea thanks, will change it! You are not the first who is pointing that out. About toggl.com - it is a well established company. Only way how i can compete with them is build better things than they. Currently i don't even want to think about competing, i just want to build something that people use and are happy with it.

Nice colours, logo and name! You should have a look at Toggl. I just love how, in Toggl, you can start tracking something without creating a project first.

Hi, i am glad you like it - thanks! Yes i know toggl. Laps will have possibility to track time that is not assigned to specific task or project.

Nice work! Honestly the design is fantastic!

I guess you are able to do this in your spare time if you are really good at managing your spare time eh?

Hi! Glad you like it! :) Yes, but this initial stage took more than it should. The hardest part for me is not finding the time, but staying motivated for long time.

Nice work!

FYI: CTA button for creating an account under the "Useful features coming soon" section doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks! Fixing that asap.

Great work on releasing your app!

I was clicking through your site and the reset password page looks like the styling went wrong. It looks very different than the login and registration pages styling. Please see the image.

http://d.pr/i/17sOY

Oh, thanks for showing this, will be fixed asap.

Hi -

After signing up with Google, I get left on a page that says "Hmm..no contacts? Lets fix that! Start adding now!"

What is a contact? - is that me? Is the hourly rate something I have agreed to pay them? Is it what they have agreed to pay me? What if it's not hourly?

Some example there would be great.

Hi! This might help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ug2IwNcKD0 ! I did intro video on how i use Laps. I will record new video tomorrow where i explain how projects work.

Time tracking and to-do lists -- a good sign that nobody has really done it well is that people keep trying to recreate it. Or maybe it's just an easy subject for people to use as a project.

This looks nice, but for me nothing beats org-mode in Emacs.

Low hanging fruit.

Thanks for your comment! The main reason why i chose to build Laps as a time tracking and invoicing tool is that - i can do it. As everything is bootstrapped i decided to build something relatively simple but that works very well, and then extend it wit some complex features if the base is good rather than building something very complex and unclear from ground up.

I think it is an easy subject for non-imaginative minds.

Not talking about this specific project.

Unpopular opinion it seems, but I agree. Not that it is a bad thing. It would be fun to see statistics of how many people here have at some point in their (probably early) career built their own time tracking/project management app.

The UI/UX looks slick! What tech stack are you using in the main app for your front-end/backend? Who's your hosting provider?

Hi glad you like it!

React + Redux - frontend, Flask & MongoDB - backend, hosted @ digitalocean

UX looks very slick.

What sets this apart from the plethora of similar tools?

EDIT: Also crate should be create on the homepage ;)

Hi! Thanks! Will fix asap! Let me know if you find something else!

Looks nice but the parallax is really jerky for me (OS X Chrome).

Thanks! Will try to optimise it. If performance won't improve I will remove it.

Works great for me (OS X/Chrome). Very nice job all around.

Thanks for the info! On my mac works good too. But not looking cool if mouse has sroll wheel. Will chek how to optimise that.

What stack are you using for backend?

Hi! It is Flask (Python) and MongoDB

wow very impressive, how did you manage to do this in your spare time?

i just like what i am doing - designing all the time & i pay my friend to help with code. Thats the short story! :)

Creating a time management system sort of assumes that the creator is good at managing time to begin with! ;-)

Agreed, neat UI/UX!

>>While in beta Laps is FREE.

This suggests in the future you will be charging but as there is no indication of how much, I can't justify spending any time to see if I like something that might end up being too costly to integrate into my workflow.

I see this comment a lot on HN. It's a legitimate concern, but I'm curious about what someone can/should do to alleviate that fear for you. Pricing is....complicated...and for a side project that's still being developed, OP may not have had time to think about it yet. Would providing easy export options help? That way when pricing is announced if it's too high for you, you can easily jump ship?

Just curious, because I've had the same feedback a number of times on my side projects and I haven't figured out a good strategy to handle it yet.

I agree it's a tough one, especially on a side project. As time is my most limited resource I effectively want to say "hey looks cool, come back to me when it's out of beta and you might have a customer". If I could sign up to a one time email notification for that, it would suit me fine.

Alternatively have a think about pricing plans and display them as rates for beta users, guaranteed for the first 12 months or some such.

Exports are always useful, but I'm more concerned with the time spent integrating a system only to potentially have to find and learn a new one.

Of course, none of these are reasons not to post a Show HN!

UI looks nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com