I’ve mostly just been using spreadsheets and building formulas/macros to calculate revenue, etc. It works and doesn’t have tons of features most apps do.
Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#22ManicTime [0] passively records your computer and phone activity in minute detail.
This makes it great for consultants, i.e. people working for multiple clients every day. You can focus on making your clients happy, and at the end of the day (or week, or month), still accurately assign time spent on each project.
ManicTime:
- Takes a screenshot every X seconds,
- Records window titles, document paths, urls,
- Records phone call metadata, phone location, foreground phone app (Android only).
ManicTime works best on Windows and with Android, although an OS X client exists.
Pricing: 67 USD for a one year license (so: no subscription that holds your data hostage). ManicTime is not free, but knowing what you did and when (down to the minute) gives it a quick ROI.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#23Back when I did hourly reporting I used http://timingapp.com/ . It tracks what applications and windows are open and then you connect those to tasks/projects/etc later, which was a must for me since I always forgot both to do time reporting and what I had been working on.
Maybe of interest for others: It's Mac only and paid (OP didn't specify preferences, so might be fine)
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#24> Or is there a list of them somewhere? awesome-selfhosted lists 4 self-hosted systems: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#tim... (ActivityWatch, Kimai, TimeTagger, Traggo)
Can vote for Kimai!
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#25I wrote a small ruby cli tool, which I use since over 5 years for all my freelance and consulting jobs:
https://github.com/pstaender/punched
To let it sync with other computers I let it store the files in nextcoloud (they are only plain text files). There is just basic functionality, but you can also set different hour rates per project and let it show the total sum of hours for a project.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#26timewarrior.org
Not associated, but a big fan. Console based, so easily scriptable. Use it not for consulting but time tracking between projects.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#27I always use a text file, one per client: date, number of hours that day, and a description of what I did. I round up to the nearest quarter hour.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#28I have been very happy with Daily Time Tracking, dailytimetracking.com (Mac)
What is great about is that it just polls you every n minutes (based on your preferences), and then you just: Press the 'V' button (if you are working on the same as before – our Shift+Ctrl+S) OR Write in the new task that you are working on OR Select an earlier task from a dropdown menu. Time is then automatically added to the task chosen. Then you can just see the total of time spent on each task or export the data to CSV, JSON etc.
Not affiliated in any way, but has been working great for me.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#29My own nonota: https://github.com/matheusd/nonota
CLI TUI, just a list of tasks, track time across them or manually add the time. Backing is a yaml file, so you can adjust if needed.
Runs anywhere you can use Go to compile to.
Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
#30I went back and forth between a couple of them -- Kimai2 and InvoiceNinja, back when Ninja was still on v4. Ultimately, every time tracking system does things a little differently, and after switching back and forth again, I've settled back on InvoiceNinja v5 ( https://invoiceninja.com/ ). If all you need is time tracking, Kimai2 and several others will do the job just fine. But I've found in my line of work that it'…
Ninja is not self-hosted is it?
It definitely is! They have hosted options but the project is fully open source and they have thorough self-hosting instructions.