One of the items I’m struggling with is the billable time module. If possible to discuss this further, I’d like to contribute a couple of feature requests that for both those that use the desktop version, and those that are paying you monthly for your services could benefit from:
Department/Category categorization within the entry. The ability to tag the time is great, but, at least for my work at this time, clients are asking that we submit invoices per-project and classify each billable entry within that (e.g. if I worked for Well’s Fargo Bank, I’d label it as Well’s Fargo Bank (WFB), and then use categories for Development (DV); Meetings (MTG); Analysis (ALS); etc.) This would also allow to build roll-up reports based on project and category, which is clearer for clients to understand then the detailed invoices that are created currently. If possible, and you are willing to do so, the categories would be best if they could be per-client, as each client would most likely want them specific to them for their accounting purposes, etc.
Export capabilities - If we could get a simple start/end date for the data, or if there would be a way to click on an Export per-invoice, where all the data from the first point could be within that export, that would be top notch.
This is already possible. Add custom fields to billable time. Make them of the list type and set to show as columns. Then, every billable time entry will allow you to specify category, sub-category, or whatever else you want. This information will show in the Billable Time tab listing. You can search for whatever content you want, then export to create the special reports your customers ask for in a spreadsheet.
All billable time entries are per customer. The easiest way to get this information may be by clicking on the Uninvoiced balance in the Customers tab for the customer in question.
You can actually just drag over a display after sorting by date and copy the data within the range you want to paste into a spreadsheet.
The last entry… I have approximately 400 entries per week. By the end of the year, it’s going to be somewhat fun to deal with 4,800+ entries to do the export
The fields thing, etc. Thanks for that. I hadn’t thought about custom fields. I’ll give it a go and see how it works. The export will do the same, I presume?
So did an experiment, and yes, you can add custom fields, but they do not (at first glance) come out as part of the export file, which is what I need at the end for my clients… This is why I asked about some sort of custom development/feature enhancement for this.
Is there an API I can use on the desktop ed. of the product, and I can build a custom report extraction utility for my needs?
Yes, they do. If you are not getting them in an export, you either did not set them up to show as columns or you have nothing entered in them. (Columns are suppressed if no record includes content.)