Time Tracking App: On The Job

October 19, 2006
9:15 am

For keeping track of my work, I use several tools. I use BaseCamp for project management, todos and goal tracking. I use Blinksale for invoices. And for time tracking, I use a text file and a clock. Ugh. It’s inefficient, ugly, and annoying.

I’ve found my solution: On The Job, a dead-simple app for Mac OS X.

On The Job -- Time tracking with style

The interface is as simple as could be, and it even has a few tricks up its sleeve. I decided to try one of them out last night. In the middle of a job, with the timer running, I got up, and made a sandwich. When I got back and moved the mouse, this message popped up.

You've been idle for 5 minutes and 4 seconds, would you like to subtract this time from the currently running timer?

Honest person that I am, I clicked ‘Subtract.’ Compare that to opening a text file and logging in stop and start times.

Geeky bonus (1): the invoices can be exported as XML, for parsing and custom display.

Geeky bonus (2) (for me): the developer uses WordPress

8 Responses to “Time Tracking App: On The Job”

  1. Joey Brooks | October 19th, 2006 at 10:45 am:

    Nice catch. I’ll most definitely have to check it out. I do the same with my logging (text files and a clock), it’s nasty.

  2. filosofo | October 20th, 2006 at 5:37 pm:

    I’ve been using the open-source Gnome Time Tracker, as I do most of my work on a Linux box. It supposedly has a similar idle feature, but it doesn’t seem to work under KDE.

  3. Viper007Bond | October 20th, 2006 at 8:28 pm:

    I’m old school. I use a pen and my notebook which I use to keep track of random crap.

    I’d love something like that for Windows though… :/

  4. The Robinson House » Practical Technology for Practical People by James E. Robinson, III linked on October 21st, 2006 at 12:05 pm
  5. Stephan Spencer | November 22nd, 2006 at 8:42 pm:

    Hi Mark,

    Looks like a great app. I’ll have to try it out. I was just lamenting how hard it is for me to track my time since I’m such a chronic task switcher.

    By the way, you’ll never guess how I found your blog… I was pouring over the PHP code in ultimate-tag-warrior-core.php and saw Christine’s shout out to you and the link to your site!

    Stephan

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