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    #1

    Time-Tracking Software for billable hours?

    Hello all,

    I recently left my job as an in-house attorney, and have started my own practice. Initially I was using Ktimetracker to track how much time I spent on individual client matters so that I could do billable hours. I really liked the interface, it was intuitive and easy to group items etc.

    But, I started noticing that, even though I frequently saved my work (or tried to), if I shut down the program or the computer and came back later, some of the data and history would be missing. For example, I created about 9 different tasks, and logged over two hours working on a contract, but when I re-opened Ktimetracker the next day there were only four tasks and 45 minutes or so time logged on the contract! I did some research and found a bug report similar to what I described. Obviously, this is not acceptable if I want to use this program to keep track of billable hours.

    So, can anyone recommend another program to use, hopefully with a similar interface? Most of what I find in the package manager when I search for "time tracker" are programs to track how much time is being used by a certain process or program.

    Thanks in advance for any help/advice, I really appreciate everyone on here and how helpful you all have always been.

    Jason
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    #2
    jpc2769, boy I'm not qualified to give a proper answer, but having been a self-employed (business) consultant at one time, noticing you have a one-man show on the road, why not KISS and simply use spreadsheets to track this stuff? I'm not sure the best way, but there would be many flexible choices. One sheet per client, tracking different billables, perhaps. Easy to do back-ups (simply use a regular "copy" to a HDD or flash drive(s)). Perhaps, even, print them out now and then, the old-fashioned hard-copy way.
    An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski
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      #3
      btw, not sure if you have spreadsheet experience. You'd use Libre Office, say. And if you've never learned it or have forgotten it, it would only take maybe 1-3 hours to learn what you'd need: basically, addition, multiplication (rate times hours, sort of thing), and division (e.g., ratio analysis). You wouldn't need all the other fancy math or data structure capabilities.
      An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski
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        #4
        Thanks. I am using Libreoffice Calc to do billing and accounting, but as far as I know there is no stopwatch or other feature there to keep track of time spent while I am working. Right now I have to use the stopwatch feature on my smartphone which is less than ideal. With Ktimetracker I was able to click "start" then begin working, when I finished it would let me know how long (to the minute) I had been working. Nice because I tend to space out when writing documents. The great thing was, I could create a bunch of sub-tasks under a heading for each client, then I would have a record of how long I worked on each item and how long total I had worked for that client.

        Jason
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          #5
          "... but as far as I know there is no stopwatch or other feature there to keep track of time spent while I am working..."

          Ah, yes. I mean, No! I missed that part of the requirements.
          An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski
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            #6
            I cant look now, but Im pretty sure you can do time stamps in Libre Office. You could make a start time stamp and a stop time stamp and then write an equation to find the time spent. If you cant do time stamps, you could just type in the time. This way, even if your computer turns off, the start time is recorded.
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              #7
              I checked on the availability of free open source billing software. Here are a couple examples:
              http://www.temsonline.com/
              and
              http://www.kimai.org/

              Not every app which claims to be free is free. They lie about being free by offering a "free trial period" but they want to charge you a license fee and you don't have access to the code. If they'll lie about that then there not much else that they won't lie about, including the capabilities of their software.

              There are others that a google search will reveal, but watch out for the "free" scam. If they don't offer the source along with the binary, they usually are NOT free:
              https://www.google.com/#q=free+open+...icing+software
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                #8
                Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                I checked on the availability of free open source billing software. Here are a couple examples:
                http://www.temsonline.com/
                and
                http://www.kimai.org/

                Not every app which claims to be free is free. They lie about being free by offering a "free trial period" but they want to charge you a license fee and you don't have access to the code. If they'll lie about that then there not much else that they won't lie about, including the capabilities of their software.

                There are others that a google search will reveal, but watch out for the "free" scam. If they don't offer the source along with the binary, they usually are NOT free:
                https://www.google.com/#q=free+open+...icing+software
                Thanks so much for this! Kimai looks like it might be the ticket; the other one says something about running on an "apache server" and I have not idea what that is.

                I also found GnoTime, it's a Gnome app but seems to work well. I'll play with them both a bit and let you know what works best.

                Again, thanks to all for the help I really appreciate it.

                Jason
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                  #9
                  Originally posted by jpc2769 View Post
                  Thanks so much for this! Kimai looks like it might be the ticket; the other one says something about running on an "apache server" and I have not idea what that is.

                  I also found GnoTime, it's a Gnome app but seems to work well. I'll play with them both a bit and let you know what works best.

                  Again, thanks to all for the help I really appreciate it.

                  Jason
                  You can turn your own laptop into an Apache server by installing the "apache2" http server on it. That allows you to use your web browser to browse your own apache webserver installation on your own laptop as if it were an internet server on line somewhere. There are lots on line websites that document how to do it. Here is Ubuntu's: https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/server...b-servers.html
                  "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                  – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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