8 Comments to “Timr Public Beta: Time Tracking App With Server Sync”

1. 

   Posted by: adlerlaw

   May 28, 2009 at 7:23 am EST

   I’m a lawyer in a 2 person firm and I’ve been using openair.com since I started practicing. One drawback to it, since I’m not on BES, I cannot get the openair mobile client on my BB. So, I was eager to try timR because it offered an OTA download of tier BB app. However, that is all I like about the product so far.

   Here is my list of reasons NOT to use TIMR:

   1. Cannot create “clients,” only tasks
   2. Cannot set price, e.g. billing rate
   3. user interface not intuitive
   4. Cannot set a fixed time (e.g. 15 minutes), must use the timer
   5. Biggest drawback- once one has created a set of time entries (not bills, b/c remember, you cannot set price) the only option is to export the data as a CSV value set which is basically a disorganized excel spreadsheet. So, once a user has the CSV data, it must be copy and pasted into ANOTHER billing program from which invoices can be generated. One is better off simply creating one’s own excel spread sheet in the first place. In other words, the application does not save one any times. It just creates more work

   • 

     Posted by: Wolfgang

     May 29, 2009 at 9:35 am EST

     I’m a member of the timr team. I’ll try to explain the statements of adlerlaw:

     ad 1. In timr you are not limited by any fix structure. For example you could create clients on the top level, project on the second level, tasks on the third level, sub-tasks on the fourth, … Recording is only allowed on the leaves of your task tree. You could take a look at the help text for further explanation.

     ad 2. You are right, we are working on it. This feature will be available soon.

     ad 3. timr nearly behaves like a standard desktop application and not like an old-fashioned web application. Operations are easily done by drag’n'drop or context menues. This keeps the application clear and tidy.

     ad 4. You can create records without using the timer by clicking on “Add project time” which proposes you a task with a duration of 30 minutes.

     ad 5. timr is a time tracking solution, not a billing system. You can track your times very simple whenever and wherever you are handling multiple users on many tasks. I think this would be quite complicated with an excel spreadsheet
     You can easily get different sums and totals by using the integrated reporting feature. But we are also thinking about interfaces to billing systems.

     If you have any further questions feel free to contact us via the integrated feedback button or our website: http://timr.com/contact

     Best regards,
     your timr team!
2. 

   Posted by: Yves

   June 2, 2009 at 5:47 am EST

   I’m an IT professional and searched for something like the timr application for a long time now. I also tried to develop a similar application but failed.

   I testet the application for the last 5 days. Makes a really stable and good impression on me. For me its the perfect time-managment application and the price model is really fair.
3. 

   Posted by: Amy Stewart

   July 3, 2009 at 1:34 pm EST

   I just downloaded Timr today and I’m liking the possibilities so far. We have a 2-person design firm and are trying to find a web-based solution that works better than Google Docs spreasheet for tracking our timesheets. We do all our billing through Quickbooks, so all I care about is the ability to track time, then import it into Quickbooks.

   My assessment so far between Google spreadsheets and Timr:

   PLUS OF GOOGLE DOCS
   - free
   - collaborative
   - Can add any fields you want

   MINUS OF GOOGLE DOCS
   - Google Docs can be a bit quirky. I’ve lost data more than once.
   - seems to consume a lot of processor on both mac and win
   - doesn’t automatically log start/end times. All is manual.
   - not updatable from Blackberry (that’s a dealbreaker, ladies)

   PLUSES OF TIMR
   - works great with Blackberry, and runs on server, so that even if your blackberry is off or loses power, it will continue to keep your timer going
   - easy to log off and log on time
   - has a web module so that both of us can see the same data and collaborate

   MINUSES OF TIMR
   - monthly fee
   - can’t add a custom field (I’d like to assign a job number to each task)

   I think that if Timr is easy to use, and makes it more painless for me to log my tasks, then it’ll be worth the monthly fee.

   • 

     Posted by: Mario

     July 3, 2009 at 2:07 pm EST

     Hi Amy,

     I’m member of the timr team.

     Thanks a million for your feedback!

     As we posted in our blog at http://timr.com/lang/en/archives/493, we are always looking forward to feedback from our users, timr lives and we can always implement things that makes your work easier!

     We were already thinking about adding something like a job number to our tasks. Now we know that our customers also need something like this. Stay tuned to see the job number in one of our next updates!

     In the meantime, let me explain how we use the system at the moment. We add the job number to our tasks by the following approach:
     Task Description=”12345-TaskName”

     In our case, the number is always the commission number, so if we have no commission number but still have to start with the task, we add “xxxxx-TaskName”, in this case we always know we have to urge our client for the commission.

     At the beginning, this was intended to be a workaround but then, since no one of our customers demanded a feature like the job number, we felt quite well with our approach.

     • 

       Posted by: Amy Stewart

       July 3, 2009 at 2:19 pm EST

       Thanks, Mario! I’ve just reviewed Timr with my partner and we came up with the same solution of putting the job number in the description field. I think that solution will be satisfactory for now, although the ability to add a custom field would probably still be useful.

       Another suggestion: is there a way to separate out start time/start date and end time/end date? Right now, start time gets lumped in with start date. When you open it in Excel, it comes in the same field, making it more problematic to import into Quickbooks. having each item in its own field would be better.

       • 

         Posted by: Mario

         July 4, 2009 at 5:47 am EST

         Quickbooks integration is very for us so we will analyse how we can improve the import or which other integrations we could offer. Thanks for your note!
4. 

   Posted by: Amy Stewart

   July 3, 2009 at 1:41 pm EST

   Another thing I like about Timr, as opposed to doing timesheets manually with Google Docs:

   - You can enter all the tasks that need to be worked on ahead of time. That is a lot less of a pain than entering and re-entering the same tasks in Google Docs each time you start and stop. Since we work on 10-15 projects a day, starting and stopping and jumping back and forth, Timr makes it much easier to log.