Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#31

Post by dalke » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 9:48 AM UTC

djf1 wrote: post #24

nwenzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough to beat pen & paper as an easy to use UI.

Pen and paper requires manual subtraction: time finished - time started. An easier UI would be a button to press at start and at finish; the subtraction being done automatically.

The UI needs to be more complicated than that. I've forgotten to note the finish time, and have needed to update things after the fact. Suppose, for example, that I've forgotten to exclude lunch from the timing system. With a pen&paper system I can mark "(lunch, 45 minutes)" after the fact. There are plenty of computer-based systems which can do the same, but their UIs are more complicated than the one you just outlined.

Also, with pen&paper billing is usually quantized to 10 or 15 minute intervals, which makes it easier to do the arithmetic.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#32

Post by kguppta » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 9:48 AM UTC

Simple Google spreadsheet with formulas to automatically sum up hours and dollar spent, as well as subtract what remains in my projects.

As well, quick drop down to select what is being worked on by whom.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#33

Post by mike1978 » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 9:50 AM UTC

I use SpikeTime.

The website is only in german, but the tool can be used in english. I don't get why they don't translate the website ... but well the tool is really cool.

http://www.spiketime.de/

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#34

Post by jetro223 » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 10:04 AM UTC

mike1978 wrote: post #33

I use SpikeTime. The website is only in german, but the tool can be used in english. I don't get why they don't translate the website ... but well the tool is really cool. http://www.spiketime.de/

Hi, Axel one of the developers of SpikeTime here. The english website is available at http://www.spiketime.net

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#35

Post by bobx11 » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 12:42 PM UTC

We use Salesforce, Freshbooks, pivotal tracker, and toggl:

1. Sales tracks opportunities and estimates hours with engineers

2. Sales creates a project in Freshbooks via integration from Salesforce when the deal is close enough to track hours

3. Freshbooks creates a pivotal epic and label with the Freshbooks project id - we estimate with a custom scale of hours (/me dodges thrown rocks)

4. When a dev starts a pivotal story it is automatically synced to toggl so they can track hours against it

5. The toggl and Freshbooks data is all syncd to Salesforce for roll up reporting and estimate vs actual reporting and our ops person pulls out all data from there to create invoices (some projects have weird parameters, so just using Freshbooks hours into invoice doesn't work for us)

Toggl is nice because it is user friendly and fast so you don't feel like logging time slows you down.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#36

Post by collyw » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 12:51 PM UTC

Out of interest from someone in a permanent role, what do you bill for exactly when freelancing?

If I am using familiar language tools, I would say I code around 4 times faster than with a new library. Do you take that into account and adjust accordingly? Reading documentation? Then there is all the administrative stuff - such as working out the hours, - do you include that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#37

Post by godDLL » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 12:53 PM UTC

I use a BASH script, that I whipped up myself. It's in a constant state of flux though.

https://gist.github.com/godDLL/8342287

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#38

Post by PolemicThoughts » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #36

Out of interest from someone in a permanent role, what do you bill for exactly when freelancing? If I am using familiar language tools, I would say I code around 4 times faster than with a new library. Do you take that into account and adjust accordingly? Reading documentation? Then there is all the administrative stuff - such as working out the hours, - do you include that?

I switched from a permanent role to freelancing last November, so I'm relatively new to this, but I'd be glad to explain what I do.

I make my skill set clear to my clients. "I can do this, but I'm not familiar with XYZ, so it will take longer than usual." I bill for reading documentation-- just because I'm not writing code, doesn't mean I'm not working. I made my skills clear, and they still decided that they want me to do it, so reading documentation comes with the territory.

I also try to provide an estimate with granularity of half a day (4 hours).

I don't bill for the time spent generating invoices, as that seems hopelessly recursive. I keep notes of what times I worked during the week with a granularity of 10 minutes. All of my invoices include timestamp ranges and a note consisting of 1 to 3 sentences describing what I was doing during that period.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#39

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #36

Out of interest from someone in a permanent role, what do you bill for exactly when freelancing? If I am using familiar language tools, I would say I code around 4 times faster than with a new library. Do you take that into account and adjust accordingly? Reading documentation? Then there is all the administrative stuff - such as working out the hours, - do you include that?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours?

#40

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 28, 2014, 1:58 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #36

Out of interest from someone in a permanent role, what do you bill for exactly when freelancing? If I am using familiar language tools, I would say I code around 4 times faster than with a new library. Do you take that into account and adjust accordingly? Reading documentation? Then there is all the administrative stuff - such as working out the hours, - do you include that?

[deleted]