Show HN: Freelancy – an easy way to track your time and earned money

by nDmitry • 12 years ago

38 46 12 years ago

Nice implementation, quick to get up and running through the Chrome app store.

One thing I couldn't work how to do was add a new project. Kept showing "No project" for me and I could see now way of adding new projects?

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Thanks, there is a button ‘+ Add’ and hotkey Cmd/Ctrl + N for adding new projects or clients. Also you can switch between sections (tracker, analytics, projects, etc) by hotkeys Cmd/Ctrl + 1/2/3/4.

deweller• 12 years ago

Quick typo report:

Profile is misspelled in: "go to Profie > More Options"

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Fixed. I would appreciate any feedback on texts, BTW)

KhalPanda• 12 years ago

Hey, since you asked, a couple of things that I noticed:

- "Is trial fully functional?" -> "Is the trial fully functional?"

- "it's only $5/month with 14 days trial period." -> "it's only $5/month with a 14 day trial period."

- "install the app on unlimited number of devices." -> "install the app on an unlimited number of devices."

Those are just a few minor ones - it may be worth proof-reading the rest of your copy more thoroughly, given that I noticed those in <30 seconds.

Good luck!

roryhughes• 12 years ago

Not at all against paid software, but if I were the freelance programmer, I would write one for myself :)

golergka• 12 years ago

It's 5$ per month — how many years will it take to break even?

vojant• 12 years ago

It's the same as CMS/Todos/PM/Crm software, most of small companies create their own... and after wasted year on broken, non tested software they look for something commercial. $5 is a good price for simple software.

mgkimsal• 12 years ago

If you're a freelance designer, you likely wouldn't be able to.

drdaeman• 12 years ago

Why write your own (if you meant "from scratch") when there are bunch of FLOSS software projects that either already suffice user needs or beg for contributions? ;)

aidanf• 12 years ago

If you were a freelance programmer, you would be much better off taking the time you would spend building a time-tracker from scratch and instead spend it on billable client work at a much higher rate than $5 per month.

wingerlang2• 12 years ago

I do not know, from the webpage, how this works. This sentence:

"Are you tired of counting the time you have actually worked? Let Freelancy do it for you."

Leads me to believe it is automatic tracking, is that the case? It does not look like that.

I am currently using an fully automatic time tracker which I am extremely happy with. I will note that the one I use does not include any form of money etc. But it does give you an HH:MM breakdown of each days work, based on project.

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

No, it's not automatic. You just start a task, work on it and stop it when you're done. How an automatic solution that you use actually works? Does it track usage time for all apps?

wingerlang2• 12 years ago

Alright. After reading it again I guess I see how I misunderstood that.

I use wakatime.com, it has got plugins for Sublime/Xcode/many-more/etc that tracks time.

bdunn• 12 years ago

As someone who has a product in this space, some thoughts/ideas:

* Not everyone bills hourly. Include daily and weekly rates.

* It took me a while to figure out how to add a project when wanting to create a time log. Maybe have a "Quick Add" option in the projects dropdown?

* Include currency support. I've found that a lot more companies than I expected price in multiple currencies.

* The "Add Manual" time function could be a little more prominent. Not everyone will want to use a timer.

Best of luck!

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Thank you, will think on each point.

jamesmoss• 12 years ago

What's with the choice of Paypal over something nicer for customers like Stripe or Braintree?

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

As far as I know, PayPal is only solution for global payouts. Stripe makes steps to internationalization, but country list is still small.

g4k2• 12 years ago

The UI is great.

Is there a way to export the data with all details?

Additionally, it would be great to have the option to store the data in your own data store (e.g. remoteStorage).

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Right now you can export only hours and money in CSV, though I'm planning to add more detailed reports and exports.

I don't really get you on your own data store—the app syncs with remote CouchDB, do you mean the ability to specify your own remote URL to sync?

g4k2• 12 years ago

Exporting the details likely seems to be required for many users as customers/clients might want to see the details.

With regards to data storage: the idea is to connect a remote data store like tent.io oder remotestorage.io

Killah9112• 12 years ago

Some screenshots, workflow would be nice to have before I sign up. I sort of get what it does, but not quite. I do however appreciate the brevity of the site. Not much BS, straight and to the point.

I was tempted to try it out just to see what it was. I'm not sure if the lack of product info will encourage more people to try your product. But ultimately you'll have to figure out how it affects conversions

As my comment may already suggest, I did not try the product. I wasn't sure about how much of a pain it would be to set up just to try it and then realize it's not something I'm looking for. Hope the feedback helps!

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Looks like I definitely should think about a screencast! :)

Killah9112• 12 years ago

That would definitely be very nice. Again, I can't emphasize how much I like the minimalist approach to your page. A quick little screencast video would be a clear call to action. Best of luck, looks like a well thought out product!

potomak• 12 years ago

I need to track my work time to get a measure of how much should I bill my clients and to get statistics about the work I do while "freelancing", but I really don't like time trackers.

I tried to use Freckle but I always forgot to start the timer or to stop it.

So one day I had the idea to mix the concept of the Pomodoro Technique time management with usual time trackers and Tomatoes[1] born.

Tomatoes is a open source web-based time tracker that helps you track your time while optimizing your time and keeping you productive using the Pomodoro Technique. It really helped me a lot.

[1] http://tomato.es

timmyg• 12 years ago

can you create and send invoices to clients through this?

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Not yet. How would you like this invoices to look?

focusaurus• 12 years ago

The invoices that http://invoiceable.co generates work well for me. But that tool doesn't handle the actual time tracking, just the invoices.

SEMW• 12 years ago

Looks nice, but I actually moved which time-tracker I use only a week ago, to Toggl[1]. Might be missing something, but at a glance I can't see anything obvious this does better to justify $5 a month (I'm on Toggl's free tier, which afaics does everything I need). User interface looks almost identical.

[1] https://www.toggl.com/tour/web

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

The difference is Freelancy has native versions for OS X, Windows and Linux. Many people still prefer desktop apps to web services, because they give them the feeling ‘it's my own’ and works in any internet conditions, also it could be more convenient to work with a desktop app rather than with a tab in a browser.

chrismorgan2• 12 years ago

Toggl has native desktop apps also.

jrnkntl• 12 years ago

Toggl also has native apps - https://www.toggl.com/tour/desktop

chrismorgan2• 12 years ago

I’ve been using Toggl for the past month and a bit (that being the tool that the agency that I’m working with at present use). I have found it surprisingly unpleasant.

When I started, they were just switching from their old site to their new site; in view of this, some issues are to be grudgingly accepted as not unexpected (though I will boldly say that it is not acceptable, and I would not consider it acceptable in a product of my own), and poor support@ response times are in consequence unsurprising also.

I was unable to log in for almost a week as their sign up with Google functionality was broken—when I tried to sign up, it complained that I had been invited. When it was finally fixed up, it still didn’t work, for it let me create an account but then not to log in. I got fed up with that and so gained access via “forgot password”. This worked as a temporary workaround. I got my first response back from their support email address after I had resolved it all myself, about a week after the enquiry.

Just about every time I log out, my session is dropped, and I need to log in again. If I tell it to “remember me” and then click on “sign in with Google”, then after going through oAuth, it tries to sign up instead, and complains that I already have an account.

Keyboard accessibility is dodgy; if you get to any form of entering times afterwards, don’t even bother trying to use the keyboard for navigation. It doesn’t understand most date formats either, and is excessively frustrating about its handling of times, showing no intelligence in AM/PM guessing whatsoever.

Bulk editing is very buggy—it normally makes a mess of the day that a task was done on, shifting it to the day before or the day after—and it doesn’t let you work with more than one day’s results at a time, which makes it not very much of a bulk edit. Certain other things in bulk editing are broken also.

My boss said to me last week that he was strongly considering replacing Toggl altogether, because it’s just keeping on getting worse, rather than better. (The general opinion around me seems to be that, despite there being certain improvements in the new one, the old one was distinctly better and less buggy.)

alt219• 12 years ago

One thing I find myself wanting Toggl to do is allow for entering a second activity while the app is tracking my current activity. As it stands right now, at least with the iOS app, if I want to enter older activities while a timer is running, first I need stop my current activity, enter the second activity, then restart the first activity.

marknutter• 12 years ago

Time tracking and invoicing has to be one of the most over-served application spaces.

brianbreslin2• 12 years ago

My gut feeling here is that you will have nearly zero price discrimination between $5 and say $9 a month, and could make yourself 80% more money. If you can show a justification for how this saves me money or helps me make more $ then $9 is worth it.

chrismeller• 12 years ago

FWIW, every idiot pricing things at $9.99 has turned $9 into the same as $10 in my internal price-justification equation. At that level I've hit the point where I need to be able to justify it to myself and it causes me to waver.

$5 is less than the coffee I bought (and <$100 a year) and easy for me to immediately pull the trigger on.

Especially with the prolificity of well-established competitors I would keep the price lower, at least until the product is more established.

latortuga• 12 years ago

This advice is pure insanity. Never anchor your price against a latte - also never let internet commenters influence you to anchor your price against a latte. Someone discriminating between $5 and $10 for a time tracking application that allows you to bill real customers for real money is emphatically not your target customer.

$10 a month for almost any kind of freelance job is a drop in the bucket. Raise your prices.

lnanek2• 12 years ago

Would prefer if they had a comparison chart for why I should use them vs. the dozen other solutions in this space. Currently using Harvest App, for example.

Fogest• 12 years ago

Are there any free solutions out there for simple time tracking?

Even just good applications for logging worked hours. Currently I just use a spreadsheet to log when I get to work, and when I leave.

leepowers• 12 years ago

Looks like a beautiful app. Unfortunately I wouldn't use it. The killer feature for me is not just time tracking, but automatic invoice creation. Being able to track time and then generate an invoice with the click of a button. I use Cashboard, which has this feature, and costs about $9/month. I see Freelancy has export to CSV - but it's simply isn't worth my time to write a program to convert a CSV dump to a printable invoice to save $4/month.

spacesword• 12 years ago

What is the OSX app built on? Is it the Node Webkit wrapper?

nDmitry12• 12 years ago

Yes, it is.

Show HN: Freelancy – an easy way to track your time and earned money

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