That kind of information helps people improve their time management skills, which can lead to appropriately taking on or rejecting new work. The reason you might still want to track time on a project with a flat rate is to ensure you're not spending too much time on it and thus rendering it less profitable.Īnother missing feature in OfficeTime that shows up in several online time-tracking apps is the ability to estimate how much time a task or project will take. Other apps, such as Harvest and Paydirt, provide ways for appropriately tracking project work and billing for it, whereas OfficeTime only works for billable hours. Let's say I charge a flat rate of $200 for a face-to-face consulting session, or $5,000 for a website build, regardless of the amount of time spent on the project. For example, OfficeTime's invoicing and project tools don't handle flat-rate projects. From that same status menu icon, you can also pause and resume time tracking, quickly start tracking time on a new task, and create a reminder.Īlthough OfficeTime includes invoicing and expensing tools, it doesn't cover all situations and conditions that sometimes arise for freelancers. In the Mac version, it also puts a display of the active timer in the status menu, so you can glance up and see how long you've been working on a task. Your timer will begin tracking time by the minute, which you can see in real time if you leave the window in view. When you're ready to get to work, you create a line item and press a play button on the far left side. You can assign projects to categories, too. Each project contains line items, and each line item can be assigned to a category, such as marketing, design, research, or whatever others you create. Line items are more or less the same thing as tasks, although here they can also be expenses. In OfficeTime, you have projects, line items, and categories. The syncing controls only appear in the iOS app, not the desktop apps. There is no option to sync between a Windows desktop app of OfficeTime and a Mac version of the app. If you choose to use both the desktop app and iOS app, you can sync your account among these devices, but only when they are connected to the same network (e.g., the same Wi-Fi). OfficeTime saves all your account data locally on your computer, or whatever storage repository you indicate during setup. OfficeTime is nimble enough to let you correct your missteps quickly as you go. Many professionals have this tacit knowledge at their fingertips, but sometimes it takes a little trial-and-error learning to correctly parse your work. To use OfficeTime (and really most time-tracking apps for that matter) effectively, you must spend a few minutes making sure you have a clear understanding of how your business projects are organized. As you set up the account, OfficeTime asks whether you want to start with some dummy data to help you get oriented, or if you want to jump into setting up your own work to track. To get OfficeTime, you download the Windows or Mac app, which comes with a free three-week trial period before you have to enter any credit card information.
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