As I mentioned before, the development of TimeTracker has reached a stable plateau with the release of TimeTracker 1.2 on October 7th. Currently, I do not plan to release any new features and wil only offer bugfixes if necessary.
Instead, work has begun on the next major version of TimeTracker. Basically, it will be a complete rewrite with a lot more new features. Because I’m only working on the application part-time I’m happy that I found someone to work with me on this project: Péter Fankhauser. Soon after the first release of TimeTracker was out he got in touch with me to share his toughts about a time tracking application. Besides the various feature suggestions he brings in his graphical design skills, a talent I clearly miss. The current logo of TimeTracker shows this without any doubt.
Currently, we are compiling a catalog of features we want to have in the new version. Additionally, prototypes of the new views are created and discussed. As always, we incorporate the critics and feature requests of our users to offer them a more useful application.
Over the course of the next weeks we will post details about the progress of the development on this site. In the meantime, if you have any feature requests or want to support us as a beta tester please post a comment.
Hello Jens!
Thank you for letting me help developing TimeTracker. I’m proud the be a part of this exciting project!
Stay tuned guys, some very good stuff is about the come!
I like the simplicity of the app, only downside is not being able to run 2 projects at once…
For version 2: grouping of projects would be nice, and a display on the icon to show active number of projects – like on the mail app.
good work
like fact that you can jumpt from one to another easily.For 2.0, what about export facility ? Pref Wifi sync rahter than email.
Good work !
Thank you Tomas and Johan for sharing your opinion, this helps us a lot! In what kind of situation would you like to track multiple projects at the same time?
I also like the easy way to switch projects, but I also have some feature requests for Version 2. (I currently use PrjPunch on my old Palm)
- statistics: time spend on projects per day/week/month
- projects display: show only times in perion day/week/month
- projects display: show total time for selected period day/week/month
I need to report hours by day on projects, therefore I need this kind of things…
And don’t forget to add some kind of about screen….
looks realy promising…
I second Daniel’s request for statistics day/week/month. I would also like to see the ability to add notes to a block of time. I want to be able to go back and identify what it was that I accomplished during that time.
Look forward to the improvements
Just downloaded nearly every time tracking software on iTunes. All of them have problems, but yours has the most promise because it’s so simple – please do not destroy the simplicity of just tapping once on an activity to both switch to it and start recording. No one else has that feature. Here are my suggestions for adding features without loosing the simplicity.
I’d love to have the ability to globally suppress seconds. Show all time in 1h 4m format (for 1 hour 4 minutes). The only exception should be the actual timer so the user has confidence that it’s actively recording. I know the red color should imply this but I always wait for the second counter to change at least one number before I look away. Record seconds internally, use them in calculating totals, but don’t show them. No one bills to the second thus it adds unnecessary complexity.
In the project’s detail view where days are shown please shorten the date from Sunday, November 8, 2008 to Sun, 11-8-08 and then put the total for that day in the right justified position e.g. 1h 4m for 1 hour 4 minutes. (The 000:00:00 format is hard to read and it’s not immediately clear talking about days:hours:minutes or hours:minutes:seconds. Simplify by being explicit.) While some people can probably just bill for the total time shown on your apps main page, many of us have to enter what we did each day. This is a step in the right direction.
What would be even better is to have a calendar view that starts with a monthly view with the current day highlighted. Pressing on a day will show all the projects that were time-tracked that day and their totals in minutes. The list would look like your main page only with less projects and show only totals in the 1h 4m format. I’d pay $50 for an app that was as simple as yours but simply told me what I did during a day.
If you want to really earn that $50 then allow people to select multiple days possibly by swiping their finger across the monthly calendar view. A “multiselect” button at the top of the calendar that turns on the ability to tap and highlight multiple days – even non-consecutive ones, or ones from different months – would work. Click “report” button to show the day(s) projects worked on and their totals would show the total time worked on all those days combined. While I’m supposed to enter my time in daily I often forget up and enter it all at the end of the week. That means Friday might have me working 52 hours but the system takes it, the client gets billed correctly, and it’s a lot easier for me. Other, less lazy people just need to enter totals for the week.
Please keep me informed and sign me up for beta programs – I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say. Thanks
One more request – mentioned by several other people. A project should record time perpetually – as long as I can identify hours worked on a particular day or date range then I can report correctly – but I actually want the total project time. Resetting isn’t desirable.
I’d also like to track non-project activities that are perpetual. My company requires that I account for all my time, not just the billable hours. The non-billable hours inherently go to categories such as “administrative” or “company wide meetings” or “training” or “wasting time on e-mail”. No one needs the total time for these categories forever. I just need to keep whatever amount of time I haven’t yet put into our corporate time tracking software. Once it’s input I just want to reset the time. Of course I can do this by deleting the “project” today but if you’d just add a “zero time” function I’d be ecstatic. Please don’t get fancy with trying to track non-project time in some special way – I love the simplicity of your interface as is.
Due to a recent accident I’ve got a small but urgent request for the next reachable release:
Please: add a safety check before deleting all data with an accidental touch/swipe!
When copying my times from Timetracker to my companies tool, having the iPhone between myself and the keyboard of my PC, I passed the iPhone too close with my hand – just across the “Clear”/”Löschen” button in the upper right corner. As a result, all my data from last week for the particular project disappeared to Nirvana instantly. No chance to prevent it, no chance to recover.
@David: Thank you very much for your detailed suggestions how TimeTracker can be improved. We will look at these and see how they might be incorporated in the next version.
@Dorit: We’ll think about fixing your issue in a free bug fix release for TimeTracker 1.2.
I too like the simplicity of the app. However I have one problem: About 90% of the times when I try to tap the little round > symbol to the right of a project’s time count (the button that brings up the detailed time-ranges spent on the project), I dont’t quite get the button, so it starts counting again. It would be great if you could limit the area to start/stop the counting to the left of the time display, and hitting anywhere on the actual timer or the round “>” button to its right should bring up the detailed time-ranges view.
Oh yeah, and I would like to second the wish for an export function, both as some kind of CSV or XML data, and in some kind of printable format, like PDF.
I also agree with Nate that it would be great to be able to add a note to each block of time spent on a project.
I also hope, that it will be possible to import the data from the current version when upgrading to 2.0?
@Julian: Thank you very much for sharing your opinions and suggestions for improvements. We will definitely improve the way the application can be used, especially accessing the history. We are also planning to provide a way for exporting the recorded data. However, currently there are no plans for providing a way to import data from the old version into the new one. Perhaps we might need to think about this topic. Stay tuned to get more details about the new features.
Hey guys, thanks a lot for such a great app, it really worth it. I love its simplicity.
The feature I’d like to see in the next version is project grouping, and statistics as others mentioned before… And a good looking icon as well
Btw, I can help you out with French translation… Contact me on Mabedan@gmail.com
Can’t wait for 2.0
I want to add another voice to the chorus of please don’t destroy the simplicity and ease of use for this app!!!
This is the only iPhone app that is really useful for keeping track of time with the intention of improving time management rather than billing and invoices etc. All those other apps are quite frankly useless. I great budgeting and invoicing software on my desktop, I don’t need my phone to do that. Just need an app to quickly and painlessly without thought track where my time is going AND when I forget to start or stop a timer allow me to quickly and easily correct the record even if it’s the NEXT DAY. The only thing really missing is to correct across dates AND allow one export or graph and summarize the data to assess how I am spending my time. It’s easy to take the project hours of something that is billable time and enter into a invoice on my desktop. I don’t need you try to invent something complicated to do that. Please, Please, do not try to make this a swiss army knife. KEEP IT SIMPLE. Just add some way to analalyze the data collected.
Thanks.
This was the review I wrote in the iTunes App store:
I love this application. I have tried others and this one keeps it simple. The 4 stars is for ease of use. This app has never crashed on me. Two main things would make it a 5 star app. The first is the ability to not just adjust the time of an entry but also adjust the day! Sometimes I have forgotten to make an entry and the next day there is no way for me to correct that omission by adding a new entry for that date. Second is someway for exporting the data or plotting it to be able to create summation reports for myself at least to see how I am spending my time. At present there is no way to plot trends in time usage to give feedback making this app usefulness limited. You just the total which is not of much use except in specific cases. Also on a minor note, it’s too easy to delete a project, I haven’t done that yet but too often the delete button pops up when I am trying to scroll or move my finger across to start the timer or to move to edit a project. Given the Edit button at the top already gives you an easy way to delete a project if desired it seems unnecessary to have a gesture for deletion enabled on the main screen. Also, too often when I am trying to hit the blue arrow button on the right to edit it triggers the timer creating extra time entries (one time I created over 5 entries just trying to get into edit). Easy to remove them, but a real time waster. Please make the timer and the blue arrow button more separated to prevent this hassle. Thanks.
also I agree. I don’t need to see seconds displayed.
and waiting hopefully for version 2 !
Excellent program. I like to be a beta tester. I am looking for a simple time tracker with which i can make timesheets (time spend on projects per day/week/month/year). Furthermore rounding to 5/10/15 minutes or even hours would be nice.
Let me know if i can be a beta tester?