Ask HN: Do you use a time tracker for client work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you use a time tracker for client work?

4 pointsjwblackwell14 comments

Typically I use Toggl as a simple time tracker but to be honest I find it quite frustrating and even counter productive at times. I've been considering just working blocks at a time and then estimating any distraction time and removing before billing.

Do you use a time tracker? Anyone just "guestimate" billing hours?

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At work we use an awful time sheet package called BigTime...

I am a little bad a filling it in and recently came up with a tool to help. I work as a product designer and all of our documents have a project document number 'xxx-0000' for project code and document number. I have a little tool that runs in the background and checks what file handles the font most window has open. It checks the file name for a project code and records a log file showing what time I'm working on what project. I then have a little tool that draws a calendar like view showing what projects I have been working on. It makes it allot easer to retrospectively fill in 'real' time sheets.

I use Freshbooks to manage time tracking as well as invoicing, and client/project management. I don't use the timer, I just make a mental note of the time I start working on a task and then fill in time spent when I finish.

When I first started freelancing I would occasionally forget the start time, so I'd make an estimate that I knew would actually be less time than I really spent. By doing this I'd earn a bit less than I should have, so it's kind of punishing myself for forgetting. Now I never forget my start time :)

Toggl and Freshbooks here. I personally love Toggl - some of my favorite features are its "you've been idle" notification that lets you drop, keep, or move the idle time to a new entry, the extended entry autocompletion (autocompletes all fields from typing into the description), and how easy it is to continue. The cloud solution helps a lot - I have a setup where I can just hit super-shift-e to log out of Ubuntu and close all programs and simply walk away without losing anything.

My one issue with Toggl is that it only syncs a specific task with Freshbooks once. This can be a pain at times if you need to go back and change some previous entries. Overall, however, it works pretty well.

What have your issues with Toggl been?

It's not so much my issues with Toggl. I actually think it's a very good little app.

I've just found it very annoying working on multiple projects at once and constantly stopping and starting the timer due to distractions, phone calls from different clients etc. It's very easy to forget to stop or start it and then I have to go back and manually edit all the time which is guess work anyway.

Working on reducing distractions and allocating blocks of time better would probably help but I've gone back to just using a simple spreadsheet now and rounding up hours throughout the day. It just feels less pressured and it's something less to worry about.

We recently switched to Harvest at my company. So far we are absolutely loving it. We base hourly employees pay on their time tracked so most people keep up with it pretty well.

We typically bill by the project vs. by the hour but we find that accurate time tracking helps us keep a gauge on where we are with our budget. We also use that data for future project estimating.

http://www.getharvest.com/ is the link for anyone not familiar with the service.

I solved that by using Paymo Plus (a tool from Paymo). Although I set up projects and everything in the online account, I use Paymo Plus on my PC to automatically record everything I do in a day. It records everything, browser, PDF editor, text editor, IM, etc. At the end of the day I just link the time entries and voila, I'm ready to bill the client :)

I use it because I'm not a big fan of starting and stopping for each task.

I understand why you feel so, since I had tried varieties of time tracking tools and I also understand the time and money spent on buying and using such tools.

We tried several tools, but the one that helps us track time and bill clients is Replicon's - http://www.replicon.com/time-bill tools.

I have tried a bunch of these time tracking apps, but I always just go back to tracking my time in a simple sheet in Excel saved to my Dropbox. It Just Works.

Everyone I know just "guesstimates" their time to the nearest hour or half hour. Except for lawyers, who bill in 6 minute increments.

I use Worksnaps. It has a very accurate and verifiable time tracking, hourly based invoicing and payments are not guess work anymore. It is also integrated with leading project management and invoicing services such as Basecamp, Freshbooks, Harvest etc. Very effective and easy to use.

I use a Dayminder calendar for hourly work. It sits on the desk next to my computer. Before invoicing, I enter the info into a spreadsheet.

I find that more complex processes are distracting.

I use OnSite Time Tracker.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onsite-time-tracker/id470803...

We bill weekly, so we don't need a time tracker and everything is simple. No need of guessing hours, or removing distraction time. The clients are happy, and we are happy.

on Mac 'On the Job' works pretty nicely, export pdf Invoices etc...

vim proj.log

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