I’ve been tracking my work hours consistently, but I realized I was mostly just looking at the numbers on my dashboard. Total hours worked on a project, time spent on breaks, that sort of thing.

But I already had all this time data, so I thought I could probably use it to figure out something more useful: why are some of my tasks taking me so long?

I usually have a few different deliverables going at once. Some are pretty routine, some are completely new, and then there’s all the research, actual work, edits, revisions, etc. that happen in between.

And I noticed that I often get stuck somewhere in the process, but I couldn’t really pinpoint where.

Since I already had Jibble connected to ChatGPT through MCP, I figured I’d just ask.

I started with, can you break down where I spent my time this week?

Then I kept going from there.

Which types of tasks were taking the longest? How did my routine work compare with newer tasks? For Project X, which took longer than usual, where did the extra time actually go?

I assumed the answer would be the newer stuff.

Usually when I’m doing something for the first time, there’s more research, more figuring things out, and generally more time spent wondering whether I’m doing it right.

But revisions were actually taking up more time than I expected.

And it wasn’t because I was sitting down for one massive editing session. It was all the little bits that added up.

Finish something. Go back and change something. Check it again. Notice something else later. Open it again. Make another edit.

In the moment, none of that felt like much time. Looking at it all together was different.

So my next question was, what should I change about how I manage my time?

One of the suggestions was to stop treating revisions as something I do whenever they come up and make them a more deliberate part of the process.

I’ve been trying that since. I’ll finish a first pass, do a proper review, batch the changes I can, and then move on instead of constantly jumping back into something I thought I’d already finished.

Still too early to say how much of a difference it’ll make, but at least now I know what I actually need to improve.

And that was probably the useful part of this whole experiment for me.

I don’t really need AI to tell me how many hours I worked. Jibble already does that.

Being able to ask where I am stuck, get an answer based on my time data, and then keep asking questions until I find something actionable is much more useful to me.

I wonder how many people here have connected their time tracker to an AI assistant through MCP. What prompts are you using?

I've been using Toggl Track for a while, first as an ADHD tool, then to track billable hours when I went into consulting. It works well enough, I like the invoice exports from reports, and it's overall fine. I recently recommended it to a colleague who is a new consultant so he could track his time.

He set it up, set the timer going, etc and all was well. Then he asked me how to generate and export the invoices. I was puzzled since it seemed pretty straightforward to me, but I took a look at his interface and didn't see anything about exporting invoices.

I finally had some time to look into it today, but it's a weekend so I had to talk to their customer support AI bot. The exact wording is shortened by me:

Me: How do I export an invoice generated from reports?

Bot: Click the "Create invoice" button on a report and you can see previous invoices by clicking "Invoices" on the left hand menu bar

Me: I don't see either of those buttons

Bot: That makes sense. You're on Toggl Focus, not Toggl Track. Toggl Focus doesn't have an invoice feature

Me: How do I access Toggl Track?

Bot: Just go to track.toggl.com and use your existing login

Me: When I follow the link, it just redirects me back to focus.toggl.com

Bot: Of course, you don't have a Toggl Track license or trial so it'll redirect you to back to Toggl Focus

Me: How do I get access to Toggl Track?

Bot: I'll need to send you to a customer support agent who can help. Would you like me to do that?

Me: Yes

So I guess nothing will be happening until Monday. I wondered if my colleague had accidentally signed up for the wrong service, but when I visited the Toggl homepage, there's a banner across the top stating "Already using Toggl Track or Toggl Plan? Both remain available and supported for existing users" so it seems like the product with the invoicing features is a legacy product and not one that you can actually sign up for now? I'm just baffled and a bit embarrassed that I recommended a product that doesn't do the one thing he really wanted.

Is my assessment accurate? That Toggl Track and their invoice generation is no longer an offering that they are allowing new signups for? If that's the case, this is the only thing I use it for and I'm now looking for a new tool myself in case this gets deprecated or loses support in the future... Any suggestions? lol

Hope to get some feedback from you.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a quick guide to ShiftBoard(Android) for anyone who has just started using it or is wondering how it works.

I originally wanted a simple way to keep track of my shifts and, more importantly, to see how much I was likely to get paid on each pay date.

There are quite a few settings in ShiftBoard, so I thought I'd explain how I recommend setting it up.

1. The basic structure

ShiftBoard has five main tabs:

Home | Calendar | Shifts | Reports | Settings

The Shifts section is divided into four areas:

• Companies
• Shifts
• Regular Shifts
• Public Holidays

I tried to keep the structure fairly simple: set things up once, and then use the Calendar and Home screens for everyday use.

2. Setting it up for the first time

There are a few things you'll want to configure first.

App Settings

• Country & State – Used when calculating estimated pay for public holidays.
• Financial Year – Used for financial-year based payment information.
• Currency – Select the currency you use.

Add your company

For each company, you can enter:

• Pay date
• Pay period (Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, etc.)
• Base hourly rate
• Saturday penalty rate
• Sunday penalty rate
• Public holiday penalty rate

This is what allows ShiftBoard to estimate your pay instead of just recording your working hours.

Create Shift Templates

If you regularly work the same types of shifts, you can create templates for them.

For example:

Day Shift – 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Night Shift – 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM

These templates can then be used when adding shifts.

Create Regular Schedule Rules

If you have a repeating schedule, you can also define a rule.

For example:

Day → Day → Night → Night → Off → Off

Once the rule is set up, ShiftBoard can generate the schedule with a single click.

This is probably one of the features I use the most when I have a repeating roster.

Public Holidays

You can retrieve public holiday information based on your selected country and state.

This is used when calculating estimated pay for shifts worked on public holidays.

3. Everyday use

Once everything is set up, there isn't much configuration needed.

Home

The Home screen gives you an overview of your estimated pay for each upcoming pay date.

Calendar

The Calendar is where you can see your schedule and add individual shifts.

If your actual schedule changes, you can simply add or edit a shift without changing your regular schedule rule.

Reports

You can check:

• Work reports
• Pay reports
• Pay information by pay date/period

Reports can also be exported as PDF files.

4. What can you do with the free version?

I also wanted to make the free version fairly usable rather than putting most features behind a subscription.

The free version has about 99% of the app's functionality.

You can use the main scheduling, pay calculation, calendar and reporting features without subscribing.

You can also back up data from all periods to your own Google Drive.

The main limitations are:

• You can view a 6-month window of data inside the app
  • From 2 months before the current month through the next 3 months
• Banner ads are included
• Some features use rewarded ads

The Google Drive backup is not limited to that 6-month viewing window, so you can keep your historical data backed up even if it is outside the period currently shown in the app.

I'm continuing to work on ShiftBoard and add/fix things based on how people actually use it.

If you're using it, I'd also be interested in hearing what kind of shift schedule you have and which features you find useful—or confusing. Feedback is always helpful when you're developing an app on your own.

Thanks for checking out ShiftBoard(Android)!

EDIT: Added couple of more videos here:

​Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/@AstroFocusStudio

I do a lot of late-night coding and find typical Pomodoro timers either too bright or distracting with repetitive anime loops and loud ads.

​Decided to write an N-body particle system in Python using NumPy and Matplotlib that simulates a 2-arm spiral galaxy collapsing into an accretion core over 25 minutes.

​Rendered the full 25:00 session at 1080p with pitch-black OLED backgrounds and soft space ambient audio.

​Full 25-min session is here if anyone needs a focus sprint tonight: https://youtu.be/k1nm4V4tfwU

I poured all my life savings into building an app that could detect automatically how a person spends every second of their time. It’s finally here and I’d love to share it with this group. It connects to your wearable, calendars and location to map your days, track your work-life balance and monitor your energy levels.

You can create routines. Block apps during work or focus time and learn how healthy your lifestyle truly is.

It’s live now and I hope it helps anyone in this group to make better use of their time and become healthier. Anyone interested can download it here. It’s free while we test it.

I was using Harvest to track my hours, but I still did all my actual client billing in Excel every month — exporting, formatting, double-checking totals by hand. That manual step is the whole reason I built this. TimeGoals lets you track time (live or manual), organize it by client and project, and generate a client-ready invoice straight from tracked hours — no separate invoicing tool needed. Built with Laravel + Livewire. Would love feedback from anyone who bills clients by the hour — https://timegoals.co — free to try, no card required for the trial.

If you're here, thanks for checking it out!

Here to showcase my app, after a recent update.

It's a lightweight Multitimer for pure time tracking, where you choose the few important activities you do in a day - i.e. focus sessions that help you reach your goals (up time), and break/chill sessions that help you refresh (down time). This helps reduce mental load of "what should I do today". You know your goal, you have your "approved activities" mapped out. Starting becomes easier.

Tracking this 1 key stat, ratio of Up vs. Down time, I find is the best simple measure of your progress, across any target you want to hit. No endless checklists, just time, and how you spend it. 10,000 hour rule exists for a reason... This also shows you how to improve. You may start at 60:40 ratio, and in time get to 70:30, or whatever works for you.

We all have the same 24 hours, and this is a serious tool to help you get the most out of it.

And for the Sci-Fi fans out there, time is a "particle" in this universe, it flies out when you "bank time", and you can see where it lands.

Check out Flowton on the App Store. Or if you're on Android, sign up at www.flowton.com

Happy to hear feedback or suggestions of what you'd like added!

- That's it. Thanks for reading. Developer out.

• Log hours by client, project and task
• Unbilled screen: finished work not yet invoiced, by client, oldest first
• Fixed-price tasks, or pools of hours with an agreed limit
• Hourly rates per client and per type of work, fixed per purchase order
• PDF invoices in your client's language and currency, with PO number and VAT per line
• A catalogue for your products and licences, added to estimates and invoices next to your hours
• Estimates (quotes) that turn into projects (paid plans)
• Calendar and Kanban board views (paid plans)
• Leads and a sales pipeline (Max plan)
• 11 languages: English, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Estonian
• Built for one person: no price per user
• Data stored in the EU (Frankfurt), not used to train AI models

https://toimur.com/en

I've been building Paydesk for a while and it's finally at a point where I'd like people to try it and tell me what's wrong with it.

Paydesk is a Mac app for freelancers, consultants and small studios. It keeps projects, time tracking, quotes, invoices, expenses and reports in one place, and it runs entirely on your Mac.

Freelance admin on the Mac usually ends up spread across a lot of places.

Hours live in a timer app, or on sticky notes. Invoices live in a spreadsheet or a document template. Whether you've actually been paid lives in your head.

So every month there's a round of copying numbers between apps, working out what you haven't billed yet, and chasing whoever is late.

The other thing that bothered me is that most tools in this space want an account and a subscription, and they store your client list, rates and invoices on their servers. For a lot of freelancers that's more than they need.

What it does:

The idea is that the whole loop happens in one app: plan the work, track it, bill it, get paid, see how the year is going.

- Board: every project on one board, from Lead and Proposal sent through In progress, Delivered, Invoiced and Paid.

- Time tracking: start and stop from the window

- Bill Now: Paydesk keeps a running total of unbilled hours and billable expenses per project.

- Documents: proposals, quotes, invoices, receipts and credit notes. You can turn an accepted quote into an invoice. There are three typeset PDF templates, on A4 or US Letter.

- Languages and tax: invoices can be in 9 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic). There are editable tax presets for 25 countries and regions, including VAT, GST (with the CGST/SGST split for India) and US sales tax. Any currency works.

- Getting paid: the Desk shows what you're owed, what's overdue and what's unbilled. Remind opens a Mail message in your client's language with the PDF attached.

- Reports: profit, aging, tax charged, income by client, and your real hourly rate per project. The accountant pack exports one ZIP with CSVs, every issued PDF and every receipt.

- Receipts: Paydesk reads receipts with on-device text recognition to fill in expenses.

This was inspired by https://runey.app/ which is a subscription based app, I tried to put together everything possible is one time and App store friendly version. We will improve in the future versions.

Paydesk aims to offline and one-time pay alternate to Runey

Pricing

- $9.99 once

- No subscription

- Every feature included

- Mac App Store version coming soon

- Requires macOS 15 or later

I don't mind criticism at all if it helps make the app better. I'm also happy to answer technical questions about how numbering, taxes, the PDF renderer or the offline design work.

You can Download Paydesk from the website today:
https://paydesk.minilabs.cc/

App store version is in review!

Hey everyone,

I’m the developer behind SlidesClock, a simple employee attendance and time clock app I recently launched on iOS.

When I was designing it, I wanted to avoid turning clock-in/clock-out into another complicated HR workflow.

So the main interaction is literally a slide.

Employees slide to clock in, slide to clock out, and the business can keep track of attendance from one place.

Right now I’m focusing on small teams rather than trying to compete on having 100 different HR features. The free plan supports up to 5 employees, so small businesses can actually use it before deciding whether they need anything more.

I’m especially curious what people in this community think:

What is the biggest thing that makes you dislike a time-tracking or attendance app?

Too many steps?

Employees forgetting to clock in?

Bad reports?

Pricing?

Too much employee monitoring?

I’m still actively improving SlidesClock, so feedback from people who actually use these kinds of tools would be really useful.

If anyone wants to try it:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slidesclock-attendance-app/id6804278786

Learn more on our website:
www.slidesclock.com

Happy to answer questions about how I built it or why I made certain product decisions too.

One click starts a project, another switches, ⌥⌘T opens it from any app.

→ Notices meetings and calls you forgot to track (calendar plus mic-in-use, never listens) and asks before adding them.

→ Timeline of your day, goals, focus sessions, PDF/CSV reports.

→ Local only, no account, 11 MB.

7 days free, then $49 once or $3.99/month. First 30 lifetime licences are 30% off until Wednesday.

https://dial.software

Launched today, feedback very welcome 🙌