Billings, by marketcircle, is time tracking and invoicing software for the Mac. Billings has a simple and clean user interface that makes time tracking easy, and it allows for complete control over design of estimates and invoices.
Clients and Projects
Billings easily organizes your work by client and project. Clients can be imported, or automatically added by creating a “Billings” group in the Mac Address Book. This is a nice workflow addition if you already use Address Book to organize your contacts… simply add new clients to the Billings group and they will show up in the software. Within the client view, any number of projects can be added. Key dates (such as start date and due date) can be added, and custom fields can be created to record data such as project type, flat-rate or anything you wish to associate with each of your jobs. Each project can also be given a status, which I find to be a nice feature as it allows you to hide “completed” projects to keep the interface clean.
Time Tracking
Within projects, time is tracked based on “slips,” which are equivalent to individual tasks. Slips can contain a good amount of detailed information, though most of it is optional. One of the most powerful options is categories… custom categories can be set up, and slips tagged as categories, allowing you to generate reports to see where your time is spent. A slip can also be marked as “billable” or “my eyes only,” which is helpful for flat-rate or personal projects that are not billed by the hour. Each slip can also have a specific hourly rate, due date, taxes, markups, discounts and comments. While you may find yourself quickly creating slips without details, it is nice to have the options. Once a slip is created, it is added to the timers window, allowing you to start and stop the clock with ease. Billings will even alert you when you have been idle for a while, and give you the option to keep or remove the time tracked while not working. Estimate slips can be created as well for quoting projects.
Invoices
Billings ease-of-use really comes into play when sending invoices. Simply select any number of completed slips and click “send invoice.” From the invoice window, you can choose a design, set dates and terms, and add comments for your clients. The excellent delivery options allow you to automatically save a copy (in a folder of your choice), attach a PDF to an email (based on the client’s contact details) or print. Preview the invoice and click “create invoice” to proceed. Billings provides several invoice designs that can be easily customized with a logo and contact information, or you can create a custom design and save it for each invoice. Estimates can be sent in a similar manner, based on estimate slips. Recurring invoices can also be scheduled.
Reports
The reports section of Billings includes many options crucial to running your business, such as “unpaid invoices,” “unbilled clients,” and “payments recorded.” Reports can be easily generated by selecting an option and a date range. You can get reports on clients, invoices, payments, project details and time slip activity, such as time spent by category or by project. If Billings doesn’t come with the perfect report for you, there’s even a tool to build your own. While this takes some tinkering and research beyond the otherwise simple Billings experience, the basic structure exists to customize any type of report.
