I had the opportunity to play with an online time tracking application called Logware. The application, targeted at small businesses, is a hosted solution (for $9.99 a month) that can be used to track time spent on projects and then generate invoices that can be sent via e-mail. The front-end is all Flash, the back-end is ColdFusion MX, it is extremely simple to setup and use, and over 500 customers use the system already. Extensive help is provided, even Flash based screen captures and video help. The only noticeably missing feature is the creation of printable invoices, but my understanding is that, with Blackstone on the horizon, the developers opted to wait for that release instead of doing it the hard way (a smart decision indeed). If you are a smaller development shop (or provide any billable services) this one is worth a look at.
Online Time Tracking And Invoicing Application
11 responses to “Online Time Tracking And Invoicing Application”
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Disappointing that they ask for the last 4 digits of your social.
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I used 0000.
More dissapointing was the lack of a demo account or trial period. I would have loved to look at the interface, but you have to supply your credit card details.
But maybe that’s by design?! 😉 -
I don’t see what’s the problem with that. When you get your receipt from the store that you’ve shopped and you paid with your credit card, you’ll sometimes see the last four digits of your credit card number printed on it.
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I used a fake ss# as well … they do ask a lot of personal info … i wonder if a test cc# will work with to get into the demo …
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The issue with the last four of your social is that it is a very common security question. Knowing the last four of your social and your name can get someone pretty deep into your personal affairs and much deeper than a credit card number.
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I use billing orchard. More intuitive, great support and has some incredible features.
My clients really think its cool that they have their own billing admin… and I am able to use my paypal or authorize.net accounts to get paid.
And they have a free trial… with no SS#
http://www.billingorchard.com/default.cfm?pid=2bd46a89 -
Not a lot of info on their web site. Does anyone know if the app provides a means of exporting (or importing, depending on how you look at it) the data into QB? I have built a similar app, but got stuck at this point. QB makes it difficult at best to do this.
Ray -
Thanks for blogging the app Ben. We received a great deal of feedback during user acceptance testing about the ‘secret questions’. The problem we were trying to solve was ‘What if the user forgot their username and password? What other absolute data about the individual could we collect and ask the user later to look up their account? We decided that by asking questions whose answers do not change due to opinion, politics, age and other relative variables in life, we would have to ask some odd and possible personal questions. We know that not everyone has an SSN, we simply want a permanent 4 digit number the user would not forget. We sure don’t want to ask for a PIN number. Asking for the numbers in a users address could yield too many numbers (or none) so we decide on the last four of the SSN. We know that some are entering 0000, that’s fine. At least it, in combination with the other answers will still uniquely identify your account. Know that all the secret answers are encrypted in the DB same as the CC numbers, so we have no idea what these values are.
Exporting to qbXML is in the process. You will be able to ‘import’ the invoice from an attachment on an email in the very near future. We will be providing an XML version and a PDF/Flash paper version of the bill too. Projects within each Client is currently in the works. Adding time via a PDA is also in the works. We are very interesting in feedback. Much time has been spent on the videos in the help section. Watch them and many questions will be answered.
-ben (Logware.us) -
BTW, Junk CC numbers are acceptable in the My Accounts page. The user will be reminded to update the number with a valid one after an unsuccessful charge. All accounts are given a free 15 day trial. If you decide you don’t want to use the system, just ignore any email reminders and your account will be deleted after 3 tries to charge the card. If you would like an extension on your account, please contact us and we would be willing to help those in need (schools, non-profits, etc)
-Ben (Logware.us) -
They also pitch the idea that a project manager is able to link everyone on the project by entering one account number. That would be useful, but I can’t find anywhere in the account set-up that allows me to do that.
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Hello, i work for Paymo, a new web based time tracking product, that we belive it’s pretty inovative. We offer free accounts for life for small organizations and freelancers.
If you would like to try it out, just go to http://www.paymo.biz and sign up for an account.
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