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Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

tiempoapp.com

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Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#61

Post by andrewfong »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #57
eswat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, which is a shame for good apps like FreshBooks and probably Tiempo that handle the other heavy lifting like invoicing but don’t play nice with a day/week workflow.

What are the differences that you see between a day/week workflow and an hourly one?

As someone who used to bill in six minute increments, I can tell you that the smaller your billing increment is, the more life sucks.

Tracking by the hour (or less) introduces a whole new level of mental overhead. Most people are pretty good at recalling the major items they worked on in a day -- and if they can't, they can usually reconstruct what happened by examining e-mail history, commit logs, work product, etc. It's a lot harder to recall how many hours you spent on something though. Based on personal experience at least, if I'm not actively using a timer or using some kind of software that records what I'm doing in real time, my personal recollection tends to be way off. Even when I am using a timer, I often run into issues like forgetting to turn off the timer when I take a gym or coffee break.

There's also all sorts of performance anxiety when it comes to hourly tracking. Not all hours are equal. I'm personally way more productive in the morning than I am right after lunch. But as far as invoicing goes, an hour's an hour. So I can either feel guilty about billing two hours for something that should have taken only one or I can write an hour off, which introduces even more overhead. With daily or weekly billing, a lot of that gets smoothed out.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#62

Post by thenduks »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #60
thenduks wrote: post #54

Looks very nice. I've been using timelyapp.com and this seems to cover my use-case similarly but free - yay! A couple points of feedback: - As a person who lives anywhere but the US, the date format is all wrong and will constantly be a source of annoyance. The datepicker helps, but the csv outputs dates like 07/08/14... I have no idea what date that is. How about ISO standards? 2014/07/08 is completely unambiguous t…

> How about ISO standards? 2014/07/08 is completely unambiguous to everyone. Agreed; however, ISO 8601 is actually YYYY-MM-DD, not YYYY/MM/DD. So, 2014-07-08.

Ha good catch! Honestly slashes or dashes would be fine with me though :)

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#63

Post by tadmilbourn »

andrewfong wrote: post #61
tadmilbourn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the differences that you see between a day/week workflow and an hourly one?

As someone who used to bill in six minute increments, I can tell you that the smaller your billing increment is, the more life sucks. Tracking by the hour (or less) introduces a whole new level of mental overhead. Most people are pretty good at recalling the major items they worked on in a day -- and if they can't, they can usually reconstruct what happened by examining e-mail history, commit logs, work product, etc.…

Thanks for the context... did you have agreements with your client where you billed them by the day or week? If so, did you still have to "itemize" your day and provide some record of what you did? Did you ever work for multiple clients over the course of a single day?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, just trying to better understand the use case and think of potential solutions.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#64

Post by bronson »

pw wrote: post #38

This looks like a fine product and kudos to its creators, but I hate that products like this encourage bad practices for freelancers/consultants. Basically, if you're charging in way that requires software to track how much clients owe you, you're doing it wrong. Take the advice of tptacek and patio11 and charge by the day or the week, not the hour.

It sounds like you live in an ideal world. I often help different clients in the same day. Website bugfix in the morning, bring up bluetooth in the afternoon. It's hard to say ahead of time how long either task will take.

Am I supposed to look over my commits at the end of the week and guess a weekly amount for each client? That sounds awful for everybody.

Sometimes you can bill weekly, sometimes you need more granularity. (I use hours.)

And, no, I'm not doing it wrong.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#65

Post by bronson »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #25
tijs wrote: post #20

Is it normal in the US to pay supplier invoices through credit card payments? Nobody would pay 3,9% on amounts of more than a few hundred dollars right? A normal project invoice for say a web studio would usually be well over 10k which means you're regularly paying more than $400 to get a single invoice processed? Am i missing something or do people actually do this? Not trying to be snarky, truly curious.

Great points. We've actually talked to folks whose total fees were about 6% after all was said and done. It's crazy, but it does happen. In your example, what I'd ask is if the web studio would be willing to pay $400 to get that $10k weeks earlier than they otherwise would have. That might be a good cash flow outcome for them. All that being said, you're exactly right, the fee structure makes transactions of a certai…

I tried your service until I discovered you want 4% per invoice. That's 4% of my income. For comparison, California taxes (effective) were 5.8% of my income.

Please mention this up front!

When you add a calendar overview and a more sane pay structure, I'm happy to look again. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#66

Post by bdunn »

eswat wrote: post #50
pw wrote: post #38

This looks like a fine product and kudos to its creators, but I hate that products like this encourage bad practices for freelancers/consultants. Basically, if you're charging in way that requires software to track how much clients owe you, you're doing it wrong. Take the advice of tptacek and patio11 and charge by the day or the week, not the hour.

Yeah, which is a shame for good apps like FreshBooks and probably Tiempo that handle the other heavy lifting like invoicing but don’t play nice with a day/week workflow.

It actually really shocks me that a lot of invoicing tools that support time tracking still only allow for $rate * $hours invoice creation. I invoice weekly, and end up needing to piece together invoices by hand.

(I run a product, Planscope, which supports daily/weekly billing for budget tracking, but we don't have invoicing... yet.)

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#67

Post by gk1 »

tadmilbourn wrote: post #57
eswat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, which is a shame for good apps like FreshBooks and probably Tiempo that handle the other heavy lifting like invoicing but don’t play nice with a day/week workflow.

What are the differences that you see between a day/week workflow and an hourly one?

I've been using weekly and monthly rates for close to a year (ever since I started consulting), and it's been wonderful. Neither I nor my clients ever have to worry about carefully watching the hours. There are no arguments about billable vs. non-billable hours, no time wasted on making and approving hourly estimates, etc. As a result, everyone can focus on the main objective, and be happy. I highly recommend trying this.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#68

Post by stanmancan »

bronson wrote: post #64
pw wrote: post #38

This looks like a fine product and kudos to its creators, but I hate that products like this encourage bad practices for freelancers/consultants. Basically, if you're charging in way that requires software to track how much clients owe you, you're doing it wrong. Take the advice of tptacek and patio11 and charge by the day or the week, not the hour.

It sounds like you live in an ideal world. I often help different clients in the same day. Website bugfix in the morning, bring up bluetooth in the afternoon. It's hard to say ahead of time how long either task will take. Am I supposed to look over my commits at the end of the week and guess a weekly amount for each client? That sounds awful for everybody. Sometimes you can bill weekly, sometimes you need more granul…

I believe part of the idea is not to take on jobs that are an hour here or there, but to take on work that requires full days or weeks. Your daily/weekly wouldn't change from customer to customer.

Re: Show HN: Tiempo – The fastest way to track time and get paid

#70

Post by vellum »

alpeb wrote: post #49
pw wrote: post #38

This looks like a fine product and kudos to its creators, but I hate that products like this encourage bad practices for freelancers/consultants. Basically, if you're charging in way that requires software to track how much clients owe you, you're doing it wrong. Take the advice of tptacek and patio11 and charge by the day or the week, not the hour.

Got any links to that advice? In my experience I prefer hourly billing, mostly because of the kind of clients I handle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4101802

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4101355

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714930

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203

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