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Show HN: Making time tracking for freelancers not suck - Paydirt

14 points by nfm 15y ago

nfm 15y ago
We've been working on Paydirt for about four months while juggling our regular consulting work. It's been in open beta since it was even close to MVP and we had useful feedback from the users so far. Now we'd love the feedback of the HN community. Thanks!
aashay 15y ago
A comparison chart of features against competition (both web and non) like Billings, Harvest, Ballpark, and other services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_sof...) would be useful.
- nfm 15y ago
  Thanks for the feedback :) We're very light in the marketing part of the site at the moment. Would you rather see a feature comparison or a short product demonstration video?
  - antihero 15y ago
    I'd kind of need a reason to switch over from Freshbooks, which works pretty well at the moment.
    - nfm 15y ago
      Our goal is to be simpler to use, to focus on time tracking using a timer (rather than logging time after the fact), and to have an aesthetically pleasing application. We've got some ideas up our sleeve for mobile and desktop innovation, but thought we'd build the web side first as (we hope) it's useful as a standalone product. What do you love most about Freshbooks?
      - esschul 15y ago
        Harvestapp has a timer and manually doing it. What would be a cool feature, is if you could use the gps as the timetracker. You were at the location 10 hours, how many do you want to bill etc. Just an idea :) Simplicity is nice, but lots of your competitors have that already. What sets you aside?
        nfm 15y ago
        GPS location tracking is one of the features we have in mind! Great to hear someone else is keen for it. Something else that we haven't seen is better browser integration - some kind of bookmarklet that gives you a timer whatever site you're on in your browser. This would be good for web developers and other users that spend a lot of time working in the browser. What do you think of that idea?
aaroneous 15y ago
Looks nice, although there's nothing compelling enough to switch from my current (Billings). If you're looking for feedback, you should allow invoices to be emailed from within the app. This workflow would drive me mad: download pdf -> new email -> type address & subject -> attach pdf -> send.
- nfm 15y ago
  Thanks for your thoughts. We've held off emailing invoices through the app so far as we want to come up with a very good interface for it. Something that doesn't require lots of customization and mail merge handling, but is flexible as well. But it's great to hear there's demand for this feature!
tomjen3 15y ago
This does seem interesting, but there is no tour available and no way to play around with it without signing up.
- nfm 15y ago
  Feedback noted! We've made the signup process as easy as possible (name, email and password only, no email confirmation) but it's definitely more of a barrier to entry than we'd like. We're keen to make a product video soon, and maybe pre-populate new accounts with some sample data too.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Thing is that I am not your ideal target market for this, but if I had to sign up to evaluate every potential webapp, I would get far too much email.
taitems 15y ago
Did @Koodoz do your logo as per this dribbble shot? http://dribbble.com/shots/148611-Paydirt-4 http://dribbble.com/shots/148611-Paydirt-4 He's a pretty cool guy.
- nfm 15y ago
  Yep, Marc did our logo for us. We love it!
- doctororange 15y ago
  Thanks Koodoz. They did a great job and wrote a little about it here: http://www.koodoz.com.au/portfolio/logos-branding/paydirt/ http://www.koodoz.com.au/portfolio/logos-branding/paydirt/
revorad 15y ago
Have bigger screenshots (more than 1) of your app, instead of selling me the macbook and iphone :-D
- nfm 15y ago
  Great idea :) We'll get onto it
nfm 15y ago
Some interesting stats from this post so far. We've had 945 visits to the home page, 69 to the signup page, and 13 accounts created. Quantitative data to back up a number of comments about our marketing site being lightweight!
pwim 15y ago
We've been using Harvest for years for this. What is your advantage over them?
- doctororange 15y ago
  Currently, in terms of features, Harvest are obviously way ahead. Our goal is to improve on the time tracking process, which is what we feel is lacking for serious multi tasking freelancers. At the moment this means a sweet interface, and in the future, predictive tracking based on your work/location/history. It was a struggle to launch this base product knowing that there is currently no 'killer feature', but we're hoping that getting feedback early will help us nail it.
EwanToo 15y ago
You've got a nice design, and the functionality might be about right for someone with limited requirements, but I think your price seems a bit high. For example, FreeAgent Central provides all you do and much more for $20 per month http://www.freeagentcentral.com/pricing http://www.freeagentcentral.com/pricing If you want to just provide a very simple and easy time tracking system with limited invoicing that's great for people with limited needs, but I don't think you've quite hit the right price. Also, you don't mention multi-currency, is this limited to just US $, with no support of sales taxes (either manually or automatically calculated), etc?
- doctororange 15y ago
  It's funny how when you're working on something every day you can miss such gaping oversights. Yes - foreign currencies (including Bitcoin) are supported, and you can create multiple customized taxes which are automatically calculated and totaled for the invoice - but there's no indication of that on the home page. An important point. Regarding price, you may well be right. I'd be lying if I said we weren't testing the waters on price, so it's good to hear some explicit thoughts on the matter. Which is tougher: pricing higher now for the future features or starting low and having to raise prices (which nobody likes) later? Thanks for your input.
fbuilesv 15y ago
Just a recommendation: You should tell me why I'd want to your application instead of something like Freckle (http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com, what I'm currently using). Freckle's design is gorgeous, the workflow and UX is retarded good (including the popup tracker) and multiple project handling is awesome. It's also cheaper. I think a small section with text including an answer to "Why is this better than X?" goes a long way to increment the signup rate.
timedoctor 15y ago
Tried to sign up and got this: THERE'S BEEN A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX – (500 ERROR)
- nfm 15y ago
  Thanks for letting us know. On first inspection this looks like an irregular response from Gmail's SMTP servers that our app didn't catch. I'll get this fixed ASAP :) In the meantime, if you'd like to try to sign up again it will almost certainly work. I think you just lucked out.

14 points by nfm 15y ago

nfm 15y ago

We've been working on Paydirt for about four months while juggling our regular consulting work. It's been in open beta since it was even close to MVP and we had useful feedback from the users so far. Now we'd love the feedback of the HN community. Thanks!

aashay 15y ago

A comparison chart of features against competition (both web and non) like Billings, Harvest, Ballpark, and other services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_sof...) would be useful.

nfm 15y ago
Thanks for the feedback :) We're very light in the marketing part of the site at the moment. Would you rather see a feature comparison or a short product demonstration video?
- antihero 15y ago
  I'd kind of need a reason to switch over from Freshbooks, which works pretty well at the moment.
  - nfm 15y ago
    Our goal is to be simpler to use, to focus on time tracking using a timer (rather than logging time after the fact), and to have an aesthetically pleasing application. We've got some ideas up our sleeve for mobile and desktop innovation, but thought we'd build the web side first as (we hope) it's useful as a standalone product. What do you love most about Freshbooks?
    - esschul 15y ago
      Harvestapp has a timer and manually doing it. What would be a cool feature, is if you could use the gps as the timetracker. You were at the location 10 hours, how many do you want to bill etc. Just an idea :) Simplicity is nice, but lots of your competitors have that already. What sets you aside?
      - nfm 15y ago
        GPS location tracking is one of the features we have in mind! Great to hear someone else is keen for it. Something else that we haven't seen is better browser integration - some kind of bookmarklet that gives you a timer whatever site you're on in your browser. This would be good for web developers and other users that spend a lot of time working in the browser. What do you think of that idea?

aaroneous 15y ago

Looks nice, although there's nothing compelling enough to switch from my current (Billings). If you're looking for feedback, you should allow invoices to be emailed from within the app. This workflow would drive me mad: download pdf -> new email -> type address & subject -> attach pdf -> send.

nfm 15y ago
Thanks for your thoughts. We've held off emailing invoices through the app so far as we want to come up with a very good interface for it. Something that doesn't require lots of customization and mail merge handling, but is flexible as well. But it's great to hear there's demand for this feature!

tomjen3 15y ago

This does seem interesting, but there is no tour available and no way to play around with it without signing up.

nfm 15y ago
Feedback noted! We've made the signup process as easy as possible (name, email and password only, no email confirmation) but it's definitely more of a barrier to entry than we'd like. We're keen to make a product video soon, and maybe pre-populate new accounts with some sample data too.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Thing is that I am not your ideal target market for this, but if I had to sign up to evaluate every potential webapp, I would get far too much email.

taitems 15y ago

Did @Koodoz do your logo as per this dribbble shot? http://dribbble.com/shots/148611-Paydirt-4 http://dribbble.com/shots/148611-Paydirt-4 He's a pretty cool guy.

nfm 15y ago
Yep, Marc did our logo for us. We love it!
doctororange 15y ago
Thanks Koodoz. They did a great job and wrote a little about it here: http://www.koodoz.com.au/portfolio/logos-branding/paydirt/ http://www.koodoz.com.au/portfolio/logos-branding/paydirt/

revorad 15y ago

Have bigger screenshots (more than 1) of your app, instead of selling me the macbook and iphone :-D

nfm 15y ago
Great idea :) We'll get onto it

nfm 15y ago

Some interesting stats from this post so far. We've had 945 visits to the home page, 69 to the signup page, and 13 accounts created. Quantitative data to back up a number of comments about our marketing site being lightweight!

pwim 15y ago

We've been using Harvest for years for this. What is your advantage over them?

doctororange 15y ago
Currently, in terms of features, Harvest are obviously way ahead. Our goal is to improve on the time tracking process, which is what we feel is lacking for serious multi tasking freelancers. At the moment this means a sweet interface, and in the future, predictive tracking based on your work/location/history. It was a struggle to launch this base product knowing that there is currently no 'killer feature', but we're hoping that getting feedback early will help us nail it.

EwanToo 15y ago

You've got a nice design, and the functionality might be about right for someone with limited requirements, but I think your price seems a bit high. For example, FreeAgent Central provides all you do and much more for $20 per month http://www.freeagentcentral.com/pricing http://www.freeagentcentral.com/pricing If you want to just provide a very simple and easy time tracking system with limited invoicing that's great for people with limited needs, but I don't think you've quite hit the right price. Also, you don't mention multi-currency, is this limited to just US $, with no support of sales taxes (either manually or automatically calculated), etc?

doctororange 15y ago
It's funny how when you're working on something every day you can miss such gaping oversights. Yes - foreign currencies (including Bitcoin) are supported, and you can create multiple customized taxes which are automatically calculated and totaled for the invoice - but there's no indication of that on the home page. An important point. Regarding price, you may well be right. I'd be lying if I said we weren't testing the waters on price, so it's good to hear some explicit thoughts on the matter. Which is tougher: pricing higher now for the future features or starting low and having to raise prices (which nobody likes) later? Thanks for your input.

fbuilesv 15y ago

Just a recommendation: You should tell me why I'd want to your application instead of something like Freckle (http://letsfreckle.com http://letsfreckle.com, what I'm currently using). Freckle's design is gorgeous, the workflow and UX is retarded good (including the popup tracker) and multiple project handling is awesome. It's also cheaper. I think a small section with text including an answer to "Why is this better than X?" goes a long way to increment the signup rate.

timedoctor 15y ago

Tried to sign up and got this: THERE'S BEEN A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX – (500 ERROR)

nfm 15y ago
Thanks for letting us know. On first inspection this looks like an irregular response from Gmail's SMTP servers that our app didn't catch. I'll get this fixed ASAP :) In the meantime, if you'd like to try to sign up again it will almost certainly work. I think you just lucked out.