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Comment by jabroni_salad | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody use these to bill clients? My problem with these dealios is they can usually tell you what applications you have open but not why you had them open.

The auto tracker will tell me I spend a lot of time in notepad++ and mobaxterm but wont relate it to the case that prompted me to do that, so starting a free running timer is the only way to get a billable number.

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I understand the challenge. Taim addresses this by allowing you to categorize your activities and sessions manually, in addition to automatic tracking. You can relate your time spent in apps like Notepad++ and Mobaxterm to specific projects or clients. This way, you get a clear, billable number that’s tied to the actual work you did. Thanks for your feedback, and I hope Taim can solve this problem for you.

Lots of people use the same set of tools for all their projects, so the application doesn't really help allocate to projects or clients.

Instead of going off the active app, doesn't it make more sense to categorize based on the open document, or the folder tree that the document is in?

sounds like something you could implement easily in emacs, having full access to whatever is in the buffer

Well this is an indication of the fundamental issue with tools of this sort that attempt to automate data collection .. if it's not 99% automatic and 99% correct then you're not actually saving me any time vs. manual time tracking. You're actually making things harder by adding another layer to the software stack that must be reviewed for correctness and painstakingly fixed because it doesn't get things right.

Until tools know what I'm doing and what I'm thinking I prefer a one-touch manual approach that I know is right because I entered it. This allows me to adjust for that other project's phonecall while I may have been moving my mouse in a spreadsheet. Or the time watering the plants while I was solving an architectural problem. Or the fact I didn't record 5 minutes yesterday so am rounding up 5 minutes today. Etc..

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