I really like this. Hadn't seen it before.<p>But it appears to be missing what I would regard as being a key piece of functionality: Expenses.<p>We tend to bill time and expenses. Indeed the standard contract we operate under is T&M, time and materials.<p>Materials being travel, accommodation, and stuff like that as well as material in more real terms.<p>Your time UI looks great, but we already have a really ugly time UI that we'll be sticking with. Why? Because the system that stores the expenses is more critical than the system that stores time.<p>We can accept a margin of error and a overhead on submission of time reports, but for invoicing and billing we cannot accept such things when it comes to expenses. One of these things goes into the company filings, one does not.<p>I would love to be able to utilise your time UI, but to do so necessitates some way of extending it to also track expenses.<p>Expenses relate to time because they occur in a moment of time and are nearly always directly attributable to what you were working on at that time.<p>i.e. a taxi for a meeting with client X. Verisign Code Certificate for a piece of code for client Y. Hotel whilst visiting client Z.<p>So it makes sense to record your expense when you incur it... or to enter your expenses at the end of the month (when you get your credit card statement) and then for the date to imply the client.<p>Perhaps you should be looking at partnering on this front? Maybe pick out someone like Buxfer and see if they're keen to work towards owning the books for small and medium companies?<p>Doing this stuff would allow you to also build profitability reports. If you know 3 people work for client X, that you invoiced amount A and that your expenses are amount B... then you know how profitable 3 people are for the time allocated. Important stuff for freelancers and those offering services where time tracking and invoicing matters.<p>Just some ideas. Very much like what I see.
Tried out the app, but like all time tracking apps out there it fails to meet my extremely simple needs. Here is what a time tracking app should do to be fun to use (I would build one myself if I didn't sign a non-compete):<p>1) Don't require me to have clients, project, or tasks. Just allow freeform entry. If I don't want to assign time to a project, but just a client I should be able to.<p>2) Let me mark hours as billed! I don't want to have a project list that looks like, "Project 1a, Project 1b, Project 1c). It makes reporting messy.<p>3) Don't have New Project, New Client, etc. screens. Just create them when I enter it into the form.<p>4) Must have a good time tracker that I can start, close, and come back to later to submit.<p>Doesn't seem that hard to me. Freckle is the one that come closest, and their UI is subpar and they don't allow you to mark hours as billed.
Question for the thread -<p><pre><code> What are your thoughts on already having a product that people will pay for (and charging appropriately, direct selling to b2b markets) verses giving it away for free and monetize later?
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Would this tactic impair because it confuses the value proposition, or benefit by spreading the business virally.<p>For example: <a href="https://www.yammer.com/about/pricing" rel="nofollow">https://www.yammer.com/about/pricing</a>
What was not mentioned in the blog post (but in the comments) is that Mite has been there since December 2006 and the service starts as free (no freemium, no premium, just plain simple free).<p>I'd like to know if a company can pull this out by starting out immediately as "premium" with 30-days trial period, no kick-start no nothing.
Thanks guys, those are interesting numbers. I'm surprised how little you charge for your app though. Have you considered increasing the price or offering more expensive options?