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Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#41
post #6

Any spreadsheet :) The advantage being that you can always stick a random formula in for whatever you want to find out right now and you didnt need before. It wont generate your invoices But Î find that a minor problem. How many customers do you invoice per month anyway?

I just add a second sheet that is basically a copy & paste invoice. By the 2nd or 3rd invoice it hardly took me more than a minute.

Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#43
I've been using manictime for awhile. You can host a server if you need to, but for solo use it works standalone just fine.

At the end of the day I have a candybar of time with titles of open window titles. Over the years I have added a lot of auto-tag rules and I just need to fill in a few gaps. It can do screenshots but I have that turned off since the window titles are sufficient for me.

The time I spent writing this will be tagged as "admin - not productive"

Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#44
post #7

org-mode in Emacs. On a headline representing a task or event, `C-c C-x C-i` to clock-in, `C-c C-x C-o` to clock-out. The agenda view includes what you've clocked in to during each day, and from it, `R` can give you a clock report for the timeframe that the agenda view is showing.

I also use org to clock my hours. The clocktable makes it even better to aggregate/report your hours. You can look at a 1-month block separated by week (I report my hours weekly) with the granularity you want. A very versatile tool!

https://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html

Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#46

I've been using manictime for awhile. You can host a server if you need to, but for solo use it works standalone just fine. At the end of the day I have a candybar of time with titles of open window titles. Over the years I have added a lot of auto-tag rules and I just need to fill in a few gaps. It can do screenshots but I have that turned off since the window titles are sufficient for me. The time I spent writing t…

I was a longtime user of TimeSnapper, but stopped tracking time entirely for a while. I've recently started with ManicTime and am very happy with the UI and features. It takes very little time to track, even when you don't auto-tag.

Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#47
post #6

Any spreadsheet :) The advantage being that you can always stick a random formula in for whatever you want to find out right now and you didnt need before. It wont generate your invoices But Î find that a minor problem. How many customers do you invoice per month anyway?

I once integrated IFTTT with google sheets to automatically add a line to a spreadsheet when I entered and exited work. And then made some more pages in the sheet in order to have it all neat and orderly for timekeeping. A huge advantage was that I could correct small mistakes whenever I wanted, so it didn't matter much if the integration itself was a bit spotty.

Re: Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?

#48
post #6

Any spreadsheet :) The advantage being that you can always stick a random formula in for whatever you want to find out right now and you didnt need before. It wont generate your invoices But Î find that a minor problem. How many customers do you invoice per month anyway?

With a few intermediate sheets and FILTER, UNIQUE, SUMIFS, and VLOOKUP, you can have it generate invoices too.
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