Three New-To-Me Web Apps
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve discovered some new work and money-related Web apps that have, for me, varying degrees of usefulness:
Harvest - “Simple time tracking, powerful reporting.” That’s pretty accurate. We don’t have to track our time for all of our clients, but it’s been informative to observe, on a granular level, where we’re expending our effort each week. They’ve got a nice looking widget for modern Mac users out there. I’ve suffered a fair bit of confusion about their data entry format (is it minutes or fractions of an hour?). I submitted a feature request and they say they’re working on clarifying it for simpletons like me. The pricing is quite reasonable.
Buxfer - “Track your money. Effortlessly.” They’ve got a nice looking site (take the tour). James told me about this one. I have mixed feelings about the name–it’s difficult to spell, but has stuck around in my head. I hoped this would be a cashflow management tool for small businesses, but it’s really targeted at individuals. The emphasis is on tracking which of your friends owes you money, and managing shared expenses. Maybe I just have frugal or extravagant friends, but I don’t perceive a need for this service. I do want a cashflow tracking tool for Capulet, though, to rescue us from the world of the Excel spreadsheet. And I want that tracking tool to integrate with Blinksale and Harvest. Is Buxfer free? I couldn’t tell.
WhosOff - “The online staff holiday planner.” It’s a free, ad-supported online tool for tracking when your staff are taking vacations. You won’t get much grain in that silo, but the price is right and it’s a good fit for small companies like Joe’s, where I learned about it. Better name than Buxfer, too. I’m guessing they’re a European startup, as they barely use the word ‘vacation’ on their site. If they want to attract North American searchers, they ought to amend that.
darren 