FreelanceStation 2021.7 has been released. This is the last minor version release this year. The main change is that tasks added to a project can now be duration-less, which makes them easier to work with for most workflows. To make them duration-less, simply don’t set any duration. There’s another minor change, mostly aesthetic. The app icon background is now lighter, without the strong bottom shade. A free trial of FreelanceStation can be downloaded from its main page.

This release adds File Links, a feature where you can link files to a project from within FreelanceStation for easy access while working. How this works is very simple. You drag your files to your project or you add them from the File Links inspector in the sidebar. This makes centralising your work on FreelanceStation convenient. Then to open a file you can select it in the inspector and click the Open button, or double click on the list of File Links.

This release fixes a couple subtle bugs, but most importantly, it adds time rounding and coalescing. With rounding enabled, when you create a new invoice or estimate, each labour item taken from a task will have its duration rounded according to the selected rounding rule (configured from Preferences). With coalescing enabled, after a task is stopped, the adjacent time entries are merged into one if the time distance between them is less than the configured cut-off.

This release improves compatibility with macOS Big Sur & Apple Silicon, fixes some minor issues and adds more decimals to percentage related fields. It also features a new icon designed to better fit in Big Sur and a future iOS release:  This release adopts some of the new Big Sur looks, such as full height sidebar with the new system symbols (available only when running on Big Sur). The toolbar icons are unchanged for now and will be replaced with symbols in a future release, as well as using a custom accent color for the sidebar items.

FreelanceStation is a Mac time tracker. It was created to be only available for Macs and there was no question about it. But the introduction of macOS Big Sur was a huge indicator that all Apple platforms are going to be integrated and unified. All apps available in iOS for iPhone or iPad would eventually be made available for Mac, and ideally many Mac apps would also be available under iOS, where it makes sense.

After years of developing custom tools and scripts, mostly for Windows and the Web, one thing became clear to me: I didn’t want to develop for the mess that the web is and has always been, with no clear indicator that’s ever going to improve. I also didn’t want to be labeled as a “devops” or “full stack developer”, as if being a humble developer was a thing of the past.

FreelanceStation 1.5 is now published to the Mac App Store. This release fixes some serious bugs, improves the UI and makes invoicing more flexible. It also introduces a Payments window to show and also remove recorded payments, and a client accounts inspector panel for the Clients view, which allows you to edit the accounts balances and recompute the amounts. The Release Notes provide an itemised list of changes and fixes.

I just released FreelanceStation version 1.4. This new version includes integration with Apple Reminders and a Time Log. The integration with Reminders requires enabling the feature in Preferences and setting a default reminder list: When you create a new invoice, a reminder will be automatically created with an alarm set to the due date. You can opt-out of the reminder by clicking the Toggle Reminder button right next to the Cancel button in the invoice editor.

Explaining FreelanceStation’s Approach to Time Tracking and Its Workflow In the world of time tracking software there is a huge assortment of options, both in the web side and in the desktop side. These applications can be further categorized as either manual or automated tracking, with invoicing support or not. The manual time trackers require the user to manually start and stop the timer, while the automated trackers do that for you by detecting when you start working on some configured file or application or depending on the rules you have previously set for your workflow.

FreelanceStation 1.3 is now available for update in the App Store. This release includes changes some users asked for, as the past release. What’s new in this release: - New: Add time to any task manually. - New: An onboarding window will appear when first running the application to help new users setup FreelanceStation. - New: Invoices can now be deleted. - New: Idle detection. Automatically stops the timer after a configured threshold, and resumes when activity is detected.

There are a myriad of both automatic and manual time tracking products for the Mac. The reason for each category to exist is because some users prefer an automated workflow (even if it's not optimal), while others like a more controlled way to tell the software how and when to log hours. FreelanceStation is in the latter category. Being a manual time tracking application, you control when and how much time you log.

This release includes changes that some users asked for. It is working in macOS Catalina so far up to the latest beta. What's New in This Version: - New: Export project tasks to Apple Calendar as new events. - New: Document numbers now can have a custom prefix. - New: You can set a starting number for documents when you create a new activity. - New: Task progress can now be shown as a circular progress in the dock icon.

I have just released FreelanceStation 1.0 to the Mac App Store. I expected the review process to have me waiting for longer that it did, so kudos to Apple for improving it. I think it was roughly 18 hours since I submitted the app. I was also expecting to fail the review, for some odd reason, but I didn’t. I’ll take a couple days off and then resume developing the app.