
Show HN: Freework – Time tracking for freelancers - BenBach
https://go.freework.com/sWhY/EJD4VSTxeK
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shortj
I’ve been working on and off for a few years to solve the time tracking
problem for myself. I do a lot of things in a given day, and tracking
granularly is quite hard. I’ve found I would rather just work, track it all
somehow, then just bill / aggregate at the end of the week.

I’ve tried rescuetime and all sorts of solutions. One of the most interesting
lately is [https://timelyapp.com/memory-ai](https://timelyapp.com/memory-ai).

That all said, I recently stumbled on a really elegant solution in
[http://arbtt.nomeata.de/#what](http://arbtt.nomeata.de/#what). Automatic Rule
Based Time Tracking. Based on what apps are open, and the title of the windows
(which can expose your file paths, url, etc) I can tag times. The great part
is that it’s a store everything, classify later. So I can switch
classification of times if I need to slice and dice a different way for a
different report. All automatic. Need to add a new project? Git clone into my
tracked directory and it just starts tracking a new project based on the
directory name. Pretty slick.

~~~
SeriousM
Something similar for Windows is
[https://www.manictime.com/](https://www.manictime.com/) . It tracks all
activities and you can classify them later. It's core is free and there are
paid features like take Screenshots. But tbh, the free version is more than
enough.

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joelhaasnoot
Why is this fundamentally different then the thousands of other solutions?
Just about every IT consulting firm seems to have written their own variant of
time tracking. It's not exactly rocket science now is it?

~~~
DougWebb
I kind of think it _is_ rocket science, since so many people have tried to
write their own variant of it. We don't really do that for version control,
IDEs, compilers, email clients, browsers, or the myriad other tools software
developers use daily. Sure, some of us do, but most of us don't. But I think
we've all taken a stab at time-tracking and task-tracking, even if that just
means we're writing things on post-it notes or in a journal. I don't think
we've discovered an approach that suits most developers and teams yet.

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petecooper
Rightly or not, I looked for the pricing nav bar item and couldn't find it. Is
this a monthly/annual pay-for service?

There are many instances of "free" on the site, but no explicit "this product
is [free|pay-for]" statement anywhere that I could see.

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brudgers
The onboarding process seems indirect. It involves visiting the website. Using
a phone. And then, I don't know what. But those complications are not a reason
for optimism.

I say this because that's as much feedback on the project as I can offer.
Since I am _not_ likely to be user or customer, I checked it out only to
provide you with feedback in the spirit of "Show HN". The more your "Show HN"
shows the easier it is for people to provide feedback.

My intuition is that the more your "Show HN" shows, the more likely potential
users/customers are to _consider_ your project. I could be wrong. Requiring a
text message to see more is an _unexpected_ requirement when it comes to apps.

Good luck.

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eb0la
Not just for freelancers: consulting companies also use time tracking /
billing tools.

Maybe part of your user base are consultants that hate their
redmine/salesforce/erp time tracking tool and will gladly pay a small price to
avoid having to log in and track whatever daily.

