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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?

#71

Post by yshavit »

INTPenis wrote: post #68
yshavit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if shameless plugs are allowed here (sorry if not!), but I have an open source project for Mac that's aimed at exactly this problem. Every ~10 minutes (configurable), it pops up an unobtrusive prompt to ask you what you're working on right now. It then has some basic reporting and aggregating functionality. It's not specifically targeted for consulting / invoicing (I made it because I often ended my day…

For my specific work flow I was actually thinking of scraping all my git repos to see my activity. Because I'm always working in a git repo, or mostly. I actually already did try using some sort of recursive git status/log viewer that I can't remember the name of now. Didn't keep it up but I think a program that scrapes my git repos, and perhaps aggregates with other activity logs, would be the best fit.

Ah, gotcha — my app won't help with that, then, sorry! :-)

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

#72

Post by t312227 »

idk ... multiple possibilites come to my mind:

* spreadsheet

if you are able to add (small) numbers all by yourself

* pen & paper

* a text-file

and some ideas - i never used this, but i think it has to be simple

* CSV

* JSON

with a small script to calculate the SUMs/generate the result - eg. awk, perl, python, javascript, php ... whatever floats your boat scriptlanguage-wise ;))

or - lets start some rants ;)

* XML

with an XSLT-transformation ;))

just my 0.02€

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

#73

Post by ushercakes »

I recommend Bonsai, not just as a time tracker, but as a full fledged suite for freelancing.

In this thread, I'm seeing a lot of cheaper/discount alternatives, but an imperative piece of timesheets is trust. When you send the timesheet to the client, they should trust the results, and IMO the bigger brands are just better at providing that level of trust.

In comparison to quickbooks and the other huge names, Bonsai is super cheap, lightweight, and pretty much easier to use. Could not recommend it enough.

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

#77

Post by skriptmonkey »

I have used TimeTrap (https://github.com/samg/timetrap) for years. I have it installed on a dev/utility server I have hosted in the cloud. I use JuiceSSH on my android phone to run quick check in and check out scripts. While I'm at my workstation I have a terminal open that is SSHed into my VM. One of the panels in tmux is using a watch command to monitor my time. Purely just a time tracking function so I can't generate invoices or anything like that.

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

#80

Post by cpach »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #11

I like Watson https://github.com/TailorDev/Watson and it used to have a web backend (crick) but that seems to be abandoned.

+1 for Watson. Very good and efficient UI (CLI). Easy to extend with shell aliases (or shell scripts).
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