iBiz 4 | Mac Os X Time/Project Tracking Application – Great For Getting Paid

Overview

When running your own business or doing contract work, sometimes it becomes a feat to track all of your time accurately to invoice for all the hours you put in and deserve to be paid for. A great solution is iBiz for Mac OS X from IGG Software. This is the most effective tool I have found and used for ensuring I am not selling myself short on time. As well, if a client has questions about the hours worked, you have a complete log of tasks and time to easily present. This is also a good tool to gauge the general time it takes to do certain tasks so you can ensure you are not under charging if you are invoicing for projects as a whole rather than by the hour.

Clients

iBiz utilizes the mac address book to create/store/maintain contacts. You can create client groups, or individuals to track respective projects. You can add clients under a group in situations that you will be working with different departments, or people from the same company.

Projects

You can assign projects to specific people. Projects will track total hours, total billable cost of project, status of the project and more. If I am building a basic website for a client I typically charge as a project whole. This provides a great reference to determine whether I need to increase the general project rate or not.

Tasks

Each project must have a task created in order to track time and revenue. That task is archived by date and tracks the job event, time, rate, $ amount, and notes. This allows you to track different oriented tasks as most clients do not want to pay the higher rate of development when your only doing some data entry at that time. You can create and save “job events” to select from to assign to tasks which will already pre populate the hourly rate or item as a whole, taxes, and markup percents.

Rates & Taxes

As mentioned, you can store pre formatted job events and tax assignments. For each job event you create for future use there are several options to apply. You can assign a type of timed, flat rate, quantity, payment, mileage, and group. You can select if the job event is taxable and assign tax percents, whether there is a markup associated and the percentage, and notes about the specific job event stored for future reference.

Billing/Invoicing

You can easily generate invoices to send to your clients as well from a general template, or a custom one that the application allows you to create. When you select to generate an invoice for a company/client, you select the template you want to use. In doing so you are provided with a detailed invoice listing the projects and tasks completed to verify the invoice total. You have the option to email, print, or export as a PDF. Once you save the invoice, it will then store the information under the billing tab and will show an outstanding balance for the client. As well all the tasks that were included will be marked as invoiced and if all tasks in a project are marked then it will automatically note the project status as “closed”.

Personally I use WHMCS to invoice clients since I can accept credit card transactions and it ties into my my servers for website hosting. In this case I will print the invoice or save the pdf for the client in iBiz and then write on it the invoice number i generated from WHMCS for reference and not relying on the iBiz system as an accurate account of my billing but more a general estimate.

Quick Timer

iBiz also provides a floating window that allows you to easily and quickly create tasks under clients and start and stop your billable time on them. This is also helpful to remind you that you are on the clock should you need to step away from the desk. With regard to that matter, in the preferences you can also set an alert to occur if a certain amount of time passes without movement. It will display the time on the project that the alert occured and will ask you if you want to remove the task encase you had walked away without stopping the timer.

Reports

iBiz comes with some standard reporting features to evaluate certain items and allows for you to select a date range.  You can generate a summary, earnings and time per client pie charts and the same for projects and job events either per selected clients or all clients. There is also the capability to create your own reporting templates to generate and utilize.

To-Do’s

You can also set To-Do items for clients so that you can reference for the projects being worked on. You can assign a title, a due date if there is one, and a status. As well you have the ability to add them to your iCal.

Reminders

This feature will remind you when invoices are overdue and when To-Do’s are scheduled to be completed.

iBiz Server

iBiz also offers another version which is called iBiz Server. This allows you to store clients and information in a central location between multiple computers or people. Typically a lot of people have a desktop at the office or home, and a lap top for work on the road or away from the desk. This solution lets you keep all your data in sync between systems. As well if you have employees or internal contractors that you use, there is the ability added to assign projects and tasks to specific users. iBiz server runs as a regular application on a computer in a network and detects users on the system.

Closing

iBiz has been very useful in tracking my time effectively and I recommend it. Though there are some online solutions available, I enjoy the accuracy and ability to track my time even when an internet connection is not available. You can try the demo for 10 days before it switches into a mode that will auto quit the application after 5 minutes. Give it a try!

Try iBiz

Have you used iBiz before? What did you think?
Leave a comment and let me know your opinion.