Aelgo click-archive-gets-4-squeaks-from-macworld

A few months back, we were quite heartened to learn that Manhour was mentioned by both Web Worker Daily and Nettuts+. Both sites brought in quite a fair bit of traffic but it spiked recently.

Sales for our little boxy app, Click Archive, suddenly increased, and lo’ and behold! It was a Macworld Review! Click Archive is now considered part of Macworld’s GemFest 2009 series. Jumping around with glee we were and that was not due to the mice scurrying around in our spartan dev-shack in the woods.

In all seriousness, it’s been a long and interesting journey till now, and it is gratifying to see a small tip of the hat in our direction. We appreciate all comments and feedback from you guys, and we’ll work towards making our apps as slick and snappy as we can, without foregoing on function. Have a great summer everyone!

New to Manhour 1.3 is the ability to attach task descriptions to specific time blocks! No more having to remember what you did for that specific time period.

Tasks are added through the new Current Task Field in the Main Window or the Log Editor, and can be entered while the timer is on or after recording is done. Your tasks are also remembered so there’s no need for repeated entries if you perform the same task for different projects.

This new update was spurred on by customers who have requested this particular feature, and we’re always looking to improve Manhour, so if you have any suggestions or feedback feel free to contact us!

As software developers, we’ve noticed we’re frequently taking archival ’snapshots’ of files and folders. These snapshots aren’t backups, per se, so we don’t rely on Time Machine for archival purposes… each archive is simply the frozen ’state’ of a file or folder, at a particular moment in time.

Now, there are ways to take these snapshots with existing tools already built into OS X- you could simply right-click in the Finder and select ‘Compress…’, in which case you get a .zip archive. Or you could use Disk Utilities to create a double-clickable Disk Image (.dmg).

Either option works fine if you’re infrequently making simple archives… but what if archival is something you do regularly… perhaps as often as several times a day? And wouldn’t it be nice if you could secure your archives with encryption, and maybe add timestamped notes to them (and to a history log of every note you’ve made)? How about timestamping the archive filenames themselves, so you can see at a glance when an archive was made, and order your archives chronologically by filename?

Enter Click Archive: the tool that makes streamlined archival as easy as a single mouse click. You add files or folders you want to archive regularly to Click Archive’s Palette, and it remembers them… and displays them as widget-like Panels through which you can easily configure and perform archival.

Instead of selecting encryption options and entering passwords every time you make an archive, enter your security options just once, and let Click Archive apply them for you automatically.

Want to add notes to archives? Just select the ‘Add Notes’ checkbox and Click Archive will prompt you for your notes during archival- all as a seamless part of the process. Click Archive makes frequent, secure, and organized archival astonishingly easy and quick.

With version 1.2 Manhour gains several useful project-management features, with a new project status label so users can view and sort by project status. Changing project status  is easy- just click on the status label and a pop-up menu lets you choose the new status.

The major feature in this release is client tracking. Manhour integrates well with your Mac’s system Address Book, so you don’t duplicate contact information… and making selecting, viewing, and editing client contact info a snap. Try it for yourself, we think you’ll be pleased with Manhour’s seamless client contact management.

Now that Manhour keeps track of quite a few different pieces of information, this version allows you to choose what project details you want to view within the project list- a new preference option lets you show/hide individual project  detail columns. Also, the new Info Drawer displays client info & project start/completion dates, sliding in and out of view at a button press.

New in version 1.1 is a Log Editor, so you can edit recorded time retroactively- did some work away from your Mac? Just use the Log Editor to add a new time block for the work done. Did you leave Manhour running while doing something not work-related? Subtract away the time you don’t want to bill for.

The Log Editor isn’t just about editing though- it completely replaces the old Log Viewer, giving much greater flexibility in how you view your recorded and billable time, rates and fees. View individual time blocks, or compile everything into daily totals. Sort and order tabular log records as you like- the Log Editor takes note of your presentation configuration and uses it when generating well-formatted reports, for printing or saving to PDF and plain text. Need to export your logs for invoicing or accounting purposes? Manhour’s Log Editor can also save in CVS format- a widely-supported, portable plain text format understood by most spreadsheets and many other applications.

Version 1.0 already supported a very flexible rate structure and automated, rules-based rate selection. We’re psyched about Manhour 1.1’s new log editing functionality… we think it brings Manhour that much closer to being the most flexible time-tracking / time-billing app on the Mac, at any price.