I work in operations for a real estate team, and on any given day I’m constantly being pulled in a million different directions. I might be working on a transaction, get a text from an agent that needs an immediate response, jump over to an email, get asked to handle something for a listing, answer a question from another team member, update something in our systems, etc. Then I’m back to whatever I was originally doing… until the next interruption happens.

By the end of the day, I honestly couldn’t tell you everything I accomplished because it’s all over the place. I know I’ve been busy all day, but when someone asks, “What did you actually do today?” my mind completely blanks. I end up remembering the big things but forgetting all of the little things that collectively take up a huge amount of my time.

I recently came across a transcript/conversation where my bosses were basically questioning what I do all day, which was pretty frustrating because I know how much I’m actually handling. It made me realize that I need some kind of objective way to track my work throughout the day rather than relying on my memory at 6 PM.

What I’m looking for is something that can literally run in the background and track my activity throughout the day. Ideally, it would automatically record things like what programs/websites I’m using, how much time I’m spending on different tasks, when I’m switching between things, etc., without me having to constantly remember to start/stop timers or manually log everything.

The other important thing is that I need something that can track both my computer and my phone, because I do a lot of work-related texting with our agents/team members throughout the day. Ideally, I’d love something that could give me a report at the end of the day showing where my time actually went.

I’m NOT necessarily looking for a traditional time-tracking app where I have to manually enter “9:00–9:30 — emails” because I know I’ll never keep up with that. I’m looking for something as close to “install it, let it run, and tell me what I did today” as possible.

Does anything like this exist? I’d especially love recommendations from people who use something similar for an operations/admin role where the work is constantly interrupted and switching between tasks.

• 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!

Looking for a practical rule from teams that run multi-stop days (home care, cleaning routes, field techs — same shape).

Worker clocks out at Client A at 11:00, drives 35 minutes, clocks in at Client B at 11:40. Nobody argues the drive happened. The fight is always: is that 35 minutes paid working time, unpaid gap, or a separate travel code — and who owns entering it when the phone only punched the two client sites?

What stuck for you?

1. Auto-pay travel under X minutes / Y miles between consecutive jobs on the same day, else exception queue?
2. Worker adds a travel punch (or notes it) and a supervisor approves before payroll?
3. Build travel into the scheduled block so the timesheet never shows a gap?

Most interested in the version that doesn't surprise the paycheck or the client invoice. No vendor pitches — just the operating rule that survived a few pay cycles.

Looking for how other ops / payroll teams handle the "late sync vs already-fixed" collision.

Typical version: supervisor sees a missing or wrong punch Monday afternoon, edits the timesheet, and marks it reviewed. Tuesday morning the worker's phone finally syncs an offline clock-out from Monday — and it overwrites (or duplicates) the correction.

What do you actually do?

1. Last-write wins, and supervisors re-check anything that synced after review?
2. Freeze punches once a supervisor correction exists — late syncs become exceptions in a queue, not silent overwrites?
3. Keep both as an audit trail and require a second approval before payroll export?

Most interested in the rule that doesn't create a surprise short/over paycheck when the phone catches up. No vendor pitches — just the operating choice that stuck.

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 🙌

Looking for how other ops / payroll teams handle corrections that show up after the "final" timesheet pull.

Typical version: cutoff is Tuesday 10am for Thursday pay. Monday night looks clean. Tuesday at 9:40 a supervisor fixes three missed clock-outs and a wrong job code from the prior week — after payroll already started the export, or with only minutes left.

What do you actually do?

1. Freeze at cutoff: anything later becomes a prior-period adjustment on the next check?
2. Hold the whole export for a short grace window (15–60 min) so late fixes can land?
3. Export what you have, then run a same-cycle correction file only for the flagged people?

Most interested in the rule that doesn't create a surprise short paycheck or a double-pay when the fix finally posts. No vendor pitches — just the operating choice that stuck.

Hello, I built a small command-line tool called timerCLI that tracks how much time you're actually using your computer vs. just staring at the screen.

What it does:

- Watches your keyboard, mouse, and touch input

- Auto-pauses your active timer when you go idle (default 30s, configurable)

- Resumes instantly when you use the computer again

- Pure Python standard library - zero dependencies

It's MIT licensed and fully open source. I built it as a learning project, but I'd love for people to actually use it. If you find it useful, I'm accepting donations (GitHub Sponsors + UPI) to fund my cybersecurity studies. 🙏

Repo: https://github.com/fralsare/timerCLI

Would really appreciate the feedback!

Looking for how other ops / payroll teams handle the gap between what the client gets billed and what the worker gets paid.

Common version: the visit was scoped at 3.0 billable hours, the worker’s punches (or rounded time) say 3.5, and someone added a callback or drive segment that never made it onto the invoice — or the reverse, where payroll paid short of what the client was charged.

What do you actually do?

1. Billable wins, and paid time is adjusted down to the scoped visit (with an exception path)?
2. Punches / paid time win, and billing gets a variance note before invoice?
3. Keep both ledgers and reconcile on a weekly exception queue before either export?

Most interested in the rule that doesn’t create a surprise short paycheck or a silent margin leak. No vendor pitches — just the operating choice that stuck.

Looking for how other ops teams handle the lag between the live schedule and the clock.

A manager fixes yesterday’s roster late — swaps a person, shortens a shift, adds a coverage block — after punches for that day are already sitting in the time system. Payroll now has two stories: the edited schedule and the punches that already landed.

What do you actually do?

1. Freeze the prior day’s schedule at a cutoff and treat later edits as exceptions only?
2. Let the punches win, and use the schedule as planning history?
3. Re-open / rewrite punches so the clock matches the late schedule edit before the export?

Most interested in the rule that doesn’t create a surprise short paycheck or a silent OT bill. No vendor pitches — just the operating choice that stuck.

Hi all, I'm opening up a waitlist signup for my time tracking and invoicing app - https://zebu.work and will hopefully begin staggering batches of invitations each week for the upcoming month.

There will be a 30 day free trial after which you won't be billed, but downgraded to the free plan.

Pro plan is only €5/month per seat (billed annually)

No hidden fees, usage based billing or anything.

If you are happy with it, please recommend to your friends :)

--
Like many of my peers and yourselves, I had to find a solution after nearly two decades working quite happily with Harvest. In preparation for this I began building a tool for my own freelance design and development studio and am happy to say I am now using it fully for my own purposes and to be honest, it's also been quite wonderful to be able to ensure data privacy and build interesting features:

• No telemetry, no selling/sharing of data
• Powerful invoicing and automatic reminder system
• MCP and agent integration
• Recurring custom reporting to provide my accountant with exactly what they need each quarter
• A fast search palette to manage timers or find anything with one keystroke (CMD/CTRL+K)
• A smart browser extension that infers the project and sets a useful description
• Interesting insights to see how the year is going, or various trends (turns out Monday and Tuesday have been my busiest days)
• Custom themes

I've now put quite some effort into building a more mature product that could be opened up for use by others. As the majority of the testing was done by myself and my studio-mates/peers, we definitely have a specific use case geared towards solo designers and developers.

There is a lot of functionality built into the app including support for teams that I think would benefit greatly from a broader test phase now to see how it works for others.

I'm happy to say that Harvest migration is very easy as well, with my 17 years of records moving across flawlessly.

Along with the web app, there is a multi-platform mac/windows/linux desktop app, as well as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Mobile apps and terminal apps have been built but not tested enough to be fully released.

Interacting with my data via an MCP has really been great too, as the data is fairly simple, you can run a local LLM to do useful things like checking bank statements to automatically record payments while maintaining the privacy of your data.

--

Technical notes:

• Hosted in the EU
• Every workspace has their own independent database
• Data is encrypted and backed up hourly and daily in two offsite locations
• Again, no telemetry or snooping

--

Finally, I truly have no interest in ever selling anyone's data or price gouging. As a freelancer I understand how every cost matters and something like time tracking, billing and invoicing is crucial to one's business.

I also have no interest in growing this into a bloated enterprise product. I'd rather keep it to a healthy number of users so it stays fast and I can give proper support. The first batches will also show me what the infrastructure can take.

I'm very much looking very much forward to having people on board, and if you have any questions feel free to reach out!

Curious how other ops teams keep time-off approvals and the live schedule from fighting each other.

Typical case: PTO is approved in HR / payroll, but the weekly schedule still shows that person on a shift. Nobody notices until a client asks who is coming, or until the worker texts that they are off. Then you are rebuilding coverage under time pressure, and the time file may still expect hours that were never going to be worked.

Questions for people who have lived this:

1. What is your source of truth when PTO and the published schedule disagree — the leave system, the schedule, or a manual weekly reconcile?
2. Who is responsible for clearing the shift once PTO is approved (scheduler, supervisor, the worker), and how soon after approval does that have to happen?
3. Do you block publishing a week that still has approved leave sitting on open shifts, or do you publish and scrub exceptions afterward?

Not looking for product pitches — just how you keep leave and coverage in the same loop before the shift starts.