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.

This release fixes two long-standing bugs: You can now close windows by pressing ⌘W. Previously it wasn’t possibly to create a client when it had a contact of type organization assigned to it.  You can download a 30 days free trial orpurchase from the App Store.

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.

This is a bug fix release with mostly cosmetic changes but also, and more importantly, a change to improve the energy usage of the timer.

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.