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.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Hi Darren – Thanks for mentioning whosoff.com and just thought we’d let you know that the site is about to be updated in the coming weeks to include the term ‘vacation’ aswell.We initially tested in the UK and we will soon be aiming for the North American searches.
You are right – in a way we are only a European start up as Whosoff.com – and with over 1500 companies to date signed up, many with staff numbers over 100, our silo seems to be filling quite nicely! Please keep pouring or screwing (archimedes)- depending on how you fill your silo!
Harvest is a certain a great app, very robust and full featured. But I thought your readers might want to know about our new app (http://www.LessAccounting.com) It will integrate with basecamp, tickspot, harvest, freshbooks and blinksale (incase you need a robust invoice).
We are in beta testing it right now, it has some interesting features.
http://www.lessaccounting.com
Core Functionality —–
Expense Tracking (with Mileage Log)
Simple Sales Lead Management
Proposal Creation and Sending
Invoicing and Payment Tracking
I am one of the Buxfer founders. Thanks for the post on Buxfer. Just wanted to clarify that:
a) Buxfer is FREE.
b) Buxfer can be used for managing personal expenses as well. Even though we currently target it at individuals as a unified way to manage their personal and shared expenses, it can be used to manage the cash-flow of small businesses as well. I urge you to try out Buxfer. Of course, do let me know if you feel Buxfer lacks some important features.
Amit: Thanks for that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about these start-up business Web 2.0 apps it’s this: they’re not very flexible. That’s a blessing and a curse, in that they’re simple and when they match your needs (as in the case of Blinksale), they work great. However, I’ve tried before to make App X fulfull Need Y, and it all ends in tears.
check out http://1timetracking.com for time tracking. Email reminders, project and employee project analysis.
Hi Darren,
Got here through researching my own needs for a web app, & thought I’d mention Outright.com, which I just found out about, for small business cashflow monitoring. It’s free for now, too.