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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?

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand where you're coming from. Archiving all that work history was pretty useful since so many projects involved repeating the same process but on new data. It was important to make sure that everything happened in the same order and the notes added to the screenshots as I worked or at the end of each day helped me avoid lost time and prevented repeating mistakes made the first time through. I was reluctant t…

I didn’t mean to imply that your clients had red flags. What I meant is that the only reason I would want that level of precision is if I was covering my ass legally, and I wouldn’t want a contract where I needed that level of granularity. It is better to charge by the day anyway. If you’re needed even an hour on a day, they get the daily rate. An interruption in your day for even an hour has context shifting and suc…

I agree with most of your points here. I added unnecessary complexity to the problem of tracking time and getting paid. I decided to bill for every documented minute. There was no requirement from the clients. Totally my decision.

Looking back, if I had to do it again I would bill a day rate and/or set a monthly minimum billable rate to compensate for the constant availability. The job did introduce lots of stress at times and interfered with a normal life. The only saving thing here is that I set my own rate, controlled my own hours to a large extent, and tried to capture payment for every bit of time spent working with them. I also had the opportunity to work with the latest generation hardware, debug the latest software to run it, and troubleshoot problems in real time when it was deployed and time critical to understand failure modes and quantify success. The job had its benefits outside of the money.

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

#96
Timetagger. It's the only one that got time tracking right for me. The others I've tried require filling tedious forms and are bloated with other unnecessary features like invoice generation. It also has a resume button for stopped tasks which is a godsent.

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

#97
post #13

I 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'…

Is there a reason you need time tracking and invoice generation to be connected? In my case I need a monthly invoice that just needs the total hours worked for that month. It's always 8 hours times number of days worked.
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