Review: OfficeTime 1.9 time tracking and billing app shows promise
OfficeTime is a basic yet useful time tracking and invoicing application that allows you to gather time spent on a project using your Mac or an iOS device. Once collected you can easily sync data between devices and then invoice your customers. The app also offers customizable reporting tools and allows you to export your billing data so you can import it into other applications.
Like most programs of this type, to get off on the right foot OfficeTime requires a bit of basic setup before you can put the app to work. With OfficeTime this is a matter of creating categories and projects and setting hourly rates. OfficeTime uses Projects as a way to group your work and Categories to store hourly rate information. When you set up a new project you give it a name and an ID, link it to a specific client, choose a default category, and then start timing your project. You also have the option to have a record of your timed sessions appear in Apple’s Calendar app.
Track and Tell: OfficeTime makes quick work of tracking your time and expenses and makes invoicing easy
OfficeTime offers a number of options for switching between projects and stopping or starting timing sessions. A small button bar with a play button appears at the top of OfficeTime’s main window. A menu on the right-hand side of this bar displays your current project and can be used to quickly add, edit, or switch between existing projects. If you haven’t started a session for the day on a project, pressing the spacebar automatically creates a new timing session and starts timing. In addition, you have the option of adding a Menu Extra to your Mac’s menu bar, which also makes it easy for you to start, stop, or pause timers and switch between projects.
OfficeTime ships with a small set of predefined categories, enough to give an idea of how to use them, and you can edit or add categories as you see fit. Categories are used to define the type of work you are doing for each timed session and each category can have a unique hourly rate. So if you charge less for time spent on the telephone than you do for time spent at a job site, you can create separate categories for each of those events and then quickly adjust the amount you bill your customers by changing its category. Categories for each timing session can be changed at any time and the dollar amount will be updated to reflect the rate of the newly selected category.
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