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Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host m

Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing will come after I get the dashboard more fleshed out, more export options and better security.

jefflombardjr 9y ago
I don't know if I speak for other users, but rather than focusing on invoicing, why not tie into Quickbooks? Or similar services. i.e. There's already invoicing software. If the integration between the timesheets is the only differentiator, why rewrite the invoicing part?
- overshard 9y ago
  I do plan on supporting things like Quickbooks via the export system and creating an actual workflow around that past just an "export" button and then "import". For my own use case I would like to have one location to enter time then select a range, hit "invoice" and be able to send that to a client with a very simple credit card payment system.
- rukuu001 9y ago
  This app fits a use case I had a few years ago. I was travelling and doing odd jobs (WordPress tweaks and the like) and needed something I could use to track time and generate an invoice. QuickBooks & Xero et al were waaay more than I needed or wanted to pay for. I ended up using the free tier of Toggl, doing a CSV export and generating a butt-ugly invoice from Excel. If this tool were available, I'd have used it.
  - overshard 9y ago
    What you're describing is the exact point of this project!
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    I've been doing exactly what you described but using a separate service to generate and track invoices (Cushion). Invoicing in Bonsai is also free and pretty nice, especially if using other parts of their service. I'm also currently exploring the invoice integration in Wave. Both of these are free.
- d0100 9y ago
  Because Quickbooks is paid? I'd prefer not to have to pay a big amount of money when I can get a simple invoice system for free. Also, I didn't find where to generate an invoice.
- nodesocket 9y ago
  Agree I don't need invoicing, already use Simple Invocies (https://simpleinvoices.io https://simpleinvoices.io) which integrates with Stripe. Focus on the time tracking, reporting, etc.
- nikoftime 9y ago
  If you're interested, I built www.minute7.com which is a time (and expense) tracker that does integrate directly with Intuit's QuickBooks (we're even near the top of their app store listing on apps.intuit.com as the only major player without major funding and a huge sales team :)
- fooey 9y ago
  Shameless plug time. I'm a Front End Web Developer at a startup offering a time tracking app with QuickBooks integration. QuickBooks is a premium feature, but we have a 30 day free trial so you can give it a spin. Our focus is on construction companies, who love our offline support, but it works great for time keeping for anyone and everyone here dogfoods the app every day. We recently had a big investment come in from CAT: http://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/innovation/caterpillar-ventures/news/caterpillarventuresinvestsinbusybusy.html http://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/innovation/caterpillar... Check us out at https://busybusy.com https://busybusy.com Available for Android, iOS and Web Welcome to the niche, I've only been here for a year and I've been amazed at just how deep and complex a time tracking application really is.
ianstormtaylor 9y ago
Just wanted to say that for a project started on Friday, (or really any project), the readme is really well done!
Sir_Substance 9y ago
Hey, I've just deployed it to my little self-hosted stack, I look forward to taking it for a spin this week. Initial thoughts are that it's easy to deploy, but you need to be more explicit in the doc about what people need to do to create the admin account. People who aren't at least passingly familiar with django will get lost at this step. The minimalism is great, and the UX seems pretty smooth. I intuitively expected a timesheet selection dropdown on the home and entries pages, but once I made a timesheet and added some tasks to it, I could see why those dropdowns weren't actually needed. It'd be nice to package all the js files and have the option to serve them from my server, rather than hotload them from the internet every time. It's both more private and kinder on the hosters.
- overshard 9y ago
  I'm adding additional documentation for creating an initial user now! I agree with the packaging all JS files comment, for a truly self-hosted solution one should have this option and I plan on doing this for 1.0. Since we use django-compressor it will compress everything down to a single JS file too. Right now for the alpha phase I'm rapidly adding and removing JS libraries so I didn't want to bother with this.
  - Sir_Substance 9y ago
    That makes total sense, I look forward to 1.0!
hashkb 9y ago
Is this backed by Timetrap? I couldn't tell from the readme but hope it is.
mandeepj 9y ago
> I started this Friday night Great speed. Congrats on shipping
stefek99 9y ago
Nice. https://github.com/overshard/timestrap/commit/d2217d772bd9017dee6082382ff9c8a4045c8906 https://github.com/overshard/timestrap/commit/d2217d772bd901... Friday night start, Monday morning internet fame. Magic happens, programming skills give superpowers.
stult 9y ago
I work with a lot of time tracking data in my job (calculating the R&D tax credit). I like this tool a lot. It's simple, responsive, fast, and covers nearly all the relevant data points without any obfuscating clutter. There are a couple items we look for that might be worth including in the CSV exports, depending on what kind of scale you want to plan for. Specifically: 1. Project name, 2. Project ID or number, 3. Employee name, 4. Employee ID or number, 5. Employee email, 6. Supervisor name, 7. Supervisor employee ID or number, 8. Supervisor email, 9. Task or activity code, and 10. Task or activity description. It's important for us to be able to line up time tracking data to W2 data from a payroll system, which is frequently hosted separately with different data standards. So employee numbers (not SSNs obviously) really help when dealing with larger companies where a significant number of employee names may change (e.g. due to marriage) or may be formatted with slight variations (e.g. nicknames instead of full legal), or where the odds of a name collision are high. We also like to see departments, cost centers, legal entities, locations, lines of business, etc. where applicable, but we can usually layer those on from other data sources if we can join on a unique identifier, whether it's at the project, task, or employee level. If I can get that data in a single CSV export for all employees at a company, I'm like 70% done with the calculation. And while this sounds like an odd use case, pretty much any profitable company doing software development in the US should be claiming the credit (and actually in pretty much any developed country, because most have a credit that was modeled on the US's). Even smaller shops with only a handful of employees usually see substantial benefit. Having the data formatted like this up front reduces the costs of doing an R&D credit study and dramatically reduces the odds of an adverse adjustment in exam or audit. Especially when the employees have been diligent about recording their time and the associated activity/project/task data. It's also worth noting that this is one area of the tax code that does not seem likely to be affected by tax reform as both the Ryan and Trump plans propose to leave the credit as it is. Edit: oh and I forgot because this doesn't relate to my work, but having an option for charge codes is nice. So something like [client ID].[project ID]. It will improve interoperability with third-party invoicing tools.
- overshard 9y ago
  I'll definitely keep this in mind while improving the export part of Timestrap. All of this would be easy to add via a couple extra fields on the admin panel.

jefflombardjr 9y ago

I don't know if I speak for other users, but rather than focusing on invoicing, why not tie into Quickbooks? Or similar services. i.e. There's already invoicing software. If the integration between the timesheets is the only differentiator, why rewrite the invoicing part?

overshard 9y ago
I do plan on supporting things like Quickbooks via the export system and creating an actual workflow around that past just an "export" button and then "import". For my own use case I would like to have one location to enter time then select a range, hit "invoice" and be able to send that to a client with a very simple credit card payment system.
rukuu001 9y ago
This app fits a use case I had a few years ago. I was travelling and doing odd jobs (WordPress tweaks and the like) and needed something I could use to track time and generate an invoice. QuickBooks & Xero et al were waaay more than I needed or wanted to pay for. I ended up using the free tier of Toggl, doing a CSV export and generating a butt-ugly invoice from Excel. If this tool were available, I'd have used it.
- overshard 9y ago
  What you're describing is the exact point of this project!
- tedmiston 9y ago
  I've been doing exactly what you described but using a separate service to generate and track invoices (Cushion). Invoicing in Bonsai is also free and pretty nice, especially if using other parts of their service. I'm also currently exploring the invoice integration in Wave. Both of these are free.
d0100 9y ago
Because Quickbooks is paid? I'd prefer not to have to pay a big amount of money when I can get a simple invoice system for free. Also, I didn't find where to generate an invoice.
nodesocket 9y ago
Agree I don't need invoicing, already use Simple Invocies (https://simpleinvoices.io https://simpleinvoices.io) which integrates with Stripe. Focus on the time tracking, reporting, etc.
nikoftime 9y ago
If you're interested, I built www.minute7.com which is a time (and expense) tracker that does integrate directly with Intuit's QuickBooks (we're even near the top of their app store listing on apps.intuit.com as the only major player without major funding and a huge sales team :)
fooey 9y ago
Shameless plug time. I'm a Front End Web Developer at a startup offering a time tracking app with QuickBooks integration. QuickBooks is a premium feature, but we have a 30 day free trial so you can give it a spin. Our focus is on construction companies, who love our offline support, but it works great for time keeping for anyone and everyone here dogfoods the app every day. We recently had a big investment come in from CAT: http://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/innovation/caterpillar-ventures/news/caterpillarventuresinvestsinbusybusy.html http://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/innovation/caterpillar... Check us out at https://busybusy.com https://busybusy.com Available for Android, iOS and Web Welcome to the niche, I've only been here for a year and I've been amazed at just how deep and complex a time tracking application really is.

ianstormtaylor 9y ago

Just wanted to say that for a project started on Friday, (or really any project), the readme is really well done!

Sir_Substance 9y ago

Hey, I've just deployed it to my little self-hosted stack, I look forward to taking it for a spin this week. Initial thoughts are that it's easy to deploy, but you need to be more explicit in the doc about what people need to do to create the admin account. People who aren't at least passingly familiar with django will get lost at this step. The minimalism is great, and the UX seems pretty smooth. I intuitively expected a timesheet selection dropdown on the home and entries pages, but once I made a timesheet and added some tasks to it, I could see why those dropdowns weren't actually needed. It'd be nice to package all the js files and have the option to serve them from my server, rather than hotload them from the internet every time. It's both more private and kinder on the hosters.

overshard 9y ago
I'm adding additional documentation for creating an initial user now! I agree with the packaging all JS files comment, for a truly self-hosted solution one should have this option and I plan on doing this for 1.0. Since we use django-compressor it will compress everything down to a single JS file too. Right now for the alpha phase I'm rapidly adding and removing JS libraries so I didn't want to bother with this.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  That makes total sense, I look forward to 1.0!

hashkb 9y ago

Is this backed by Timetrap? I couldn't tell from the readme but hope it is.

mandeepj 9y ago

> I started this Friday night Great speed. Congrats on shipping

stefek99 9y ago

Nice. https://github.com/overshard/timestrap/commit/d2217d772bd9017dee6082382ff9c8a4045c8906 https://github.com/overshard/timestrap/commit/d2217d772bd901... Friday night start, Monday morning internet fame. Magic happens, programming skills give superpowers.

stult 9y ago

I work with a lot of time tracking data in my job (calculating the R&D tax credit). I like this tool a lot. It's simple, responsive, fast, and covers nearly all the relevant data points without any obfuscating clutter. There are a couple items we look for that might be worth including in the CSV exports, depending on what kind of scale you want to plan for. Specifically: 1. Project name, 2. Project ID or number, 3. Employee name, 4. Employee ID or number, 5. Employee email, 6. Supervisor name, 7. Supervisor employee ID or number, 8. Supervisor email, 9. Task or activity code, and 10. Task or activity description. It's important for us to be able to line up time tracking data to W2 data from a payroll system, which is frequently hosted separately with different data standards. So employee numbers (not SSNs obviously) really help when dealing with larger companies where a significant number of employee names may change (e.g. due to marriage) or may be formatted with slight variations (e.g. nicknames instead of full legal), or where the odds of a name collision are high. We also like to see departments, cost centers, legal entities, locations, lines of business, etc. where applicable, but we can usually layer those on from other data sources if we can join on a unique identifier, whether it's at the project, task, or employee level. If I can get that data in a single CSV export for all employees at a company, I'm like 70% done with the calculation. And while this sounds like an odd use case, pretty much any profitable company doing software development in the US should be claiming the credit (and actually in pretty much any developed country, because most have a credit that was modeled on the US's). Even smaller shops with only a handful of employees usually see substantial benefit. Having the data formatted like this up front reduces the costs of doing an R&D credit study and dramatically reduces the odds of an adverse adjustment in exam or audit. Especially when the employees have been diligent about recording their time and the associated activity/project/task data. It's also worth noting that this is one area of the tax code that does not seem likely to be affected by tax reform as both the Ryan and Trump plans propose to leave the credit as it is. Edit: oh and I forgot because this doesn't relate to my work, but having an option for charge codes is nice. So something like [client ID].[project ID]. It will improve interoperability with third-party invoicing tools.

overshard 9y ago
I'll definitely keep this in mind while improving the export part of Timestrap. All of this would be easy to add via a couple extra fields on the admin panel.