Choosing the right apps to manage time and code

Posted: September 9th, 2008 | Author: Pierre Olivier Martel | Filed under: Freelance, Tools | View Comments The good thing about freelancing is the freedom you have to choose the best apps for the job. The last few days I’ve been looking for apps to manage my time and source code. Since I might develop from my desktop, from my laptop or from the client site, I restricted my choices to web applications.

Managing time

When you bill your clients by the hour and work on a irregular schedule, you need a good way to track time and know exactly how much you spend on each task. Also tracking the overhead internal work I do (client relation, marketing, training…) and for which I don’t get paid can afterward help me find the right hourly rate to charge my clients.

I had a few requirements in mind before starting evaluating time tracking applications :
  • Simple, simple simple… and fast!
  • Provides some kind of desktop widget (ideally a Google Desktop Gadget) to track time.
  • Manages multiple clients, multiple projects and allows for estimation tracking.
  • Provides a way to do reporting for the client in order for him to follow the advancement of the project.
I tried quite a few web applications that all match more or less what I wanted to achieve and three of them stand out of the pack :
  • Harvest : This is a complete time tracking solution that even lets you produces invoices and track expenses. I really liked the UI but couldn’t customize effectively the billing module (taxation in Québec is more complicated with two levels of taxation). Although it offers a handful of desktop widgets to track time, none of them fitted my needs (Windows using Google sidebar instead Vista sidebar or Yahoo! Widgets).
  • Toggl : This also looked like a promising solution. Toggl has pretty much all the features I was looking for but I didn’t like their pricing options. They only have two kinds of subscription plans: Free and Premium. The free subscription doesn’t include all the features I was looking and at 20$/month the premium subscription cost more than I was willing to pay for a time tracking tool.
  • Tick : This is the one I finally settled for. Real easy, intuitive and fast. I also tested the email customer support and I always got quick replies. Tick provides a desktop widget running on Adobe AIR and easy client/project/task customization. The only downside is that I wasn’t able to find an easy way to produce reports in HTML, PDF or email format to keep my clients updated on my work. But at 9$/month for the freelancer plan, this is a good bargain for what I need.
Managing code

Since I don’t have a server at home, installing a source control repository on my developer computer was out of the question. And installing a server at home doesn’t protect me against thieves or natural hazard. So I had to find a hosting service that provides hosting for Subversion. A quick google search helped me find quite a few.

Since I’m currently supporting only one project that needs source control, I wanted to start out with a free plan that I could later upgrade when the business catches up. Unfuddle and Code Spaces are two solutions that offered just what I was looking for with even more features like bug tracking, project management and wiki solutions.

Comparing their free plans, I settled for Unfuddle since it offers unlimited repositories and 200MB of free storage, which is more than I need right now. Registering a new account and setting my repository worked like a charm. My source code was checked-in in less than 15 minutes.

***

How about you other software freelancers out there. What apps are you using to manage time and code? Any other good alternatives to what I mentioned?
  • Joanne

    Hi Pierre,

    There is also the option of installing and running from a USB stick.

  • Joanne

    Hi Pierre, There is also the option of installing and running from a USB stick.

  • Pierre Olivier Martel

    Joane : Yes but what if you loose your USB stick? You need up-to-date backup of your data and backing up on a daily basis is not very convenient.

  • Pierre Olivier Martel

    Joane : Yes but what if you loose your USB stick? You need up-to-date backup of your data and backing up on a daily basis is not very convenient.

  • Joane

    True :)

  • Joane

    True :)

  • Mathieu Martin

    Hi PO,

    I currently use two distinct online tools to track my time.

    My empoyer has a Tempo account, in which I manually enter my time and generates pretty cool graphs. I’m pretty sure it supports billing, but I’m not the one doing the billing, so I’m not sure about that part :-) Also, I know for a fact that there’s a Dashboard widget for OSX and I’m almost certain there’s something equivalent for Windows. Personally I use the web page directly, which is relatively snappy and ajaxy.

    The second tool, which I’m most excited about is Rescuetime. It has a little client that runs in the background on your computer and the tool automatically tracks all apps you use and sites you visit. When you have a bit of data accumulated, you can spend a couple of minutes every day tagging the apps you’ve used and setting productivity scores for each app category. It doesn’t take as long as it sounds. Once your tagging begins to cover most of your usual apps/sites, you can get very cool graphs that help you understand where you spend most of your time, stuff like that. I know for a fact that it’s got clients for OSX, Windows and an unofficial one for Linux.

    It’s not, however, a tool that’ll help you bill time to clients per se. What it’ll give you is a great overview of what’s eating your time in any given day, very easily. It also gives you efficiency and productivity numbers, which are probably not very precise, but are still interesting bits of information.

    The free rescuetime account is what I’m using and it rocks :-)

  • Mathieu Martin

    Hi PO,I currently use two distinct online tools to track my time.My empoyer has a Tempo account, in which I manually enter my time and generates pretty cool graphs. I’m pretty sure it supports billing, but I’m not the one doing the billing, so I’m not sure about that part :-) Also, I know for a fact that there’s a Dashboard widget for OSX and I’m almost certain there’s something equivalent for Windows. Personally I use the web page directly, which is relatively snappy and ajaxy.The second tool, which I’m most excited about is Rescuetime. It has a little client that runs in the background on your computer and the tool automatically tracks all apps you use and sites you visit. When you have a bit of data accumulated, you can spend a couple of minutes every day tagging the apps you’ve used and setting productivity scores for each app category. It doesn’t take as long as it sounds. Once your tagging begins to cover most of your usual apps/sites, you can get very cool graphs that help you understand where you spend most of your time, stuff like that. I know for a fact that it’s got clients for OSX, Windows and an unofficial one for Linux.It’s not, however, a tool that’ll help you bill time to clients per se. What it’ll give you is a great overview of what’s eating your time in any given day, very easily. It also gives you efficiency and productivity numbers, which are probably not very precise, but are still interesting bits of information.The free rescuetime account is what I’m using and it rocks :-)

  • Pierre Olivier Martel

    Thanks for the links Mat. I took a closer look at Recuetime and it really seems like a nice idea. I like the fact that you set it all up once and it can then tell you how you spend your time. I’m going to give it a try when I have more time. Right now I’m trying to get as much work done on this Rails application that I’m showing to a friend on Sunday ;-)

  • Pierre Olivier Martel

    Thanks for the links Mat. I took a closer look at Recuetime and it really seems like a nice idea. I like the fact that you set it all up once and it can then tell you how you spend your time. I’m going to give it a try when I have more time. Right now I’m trying to get as much work done on this Rails application that I’m showing to a friend on Sunday ;-)

  • Anonymous

    I highly recommend that you try GIT with Gitosis or GitHub.

  • Anonymous

    I highly recommend that you try GIT with Gitosis or GitHub.

blog comments powered by Disqus