The Art of Business: Plan It. Bill It. Track It. Make Money.

CreativePro Staff

Ever since the advent of the Internet, software programs for creatives (other than Acrobat, Photoshop, and their ilk) have become the forgotten stepchildren of the industry.

But that doesn’t mean software developers haven’t been plugging away, and that includes development in the very non-sexy area of project tracking and billing. Programs like Studio Boss, TimeCache, TimeEqualsMoney, and iWork have been designed and redesigned to automate routine business tasks, such as billing in time increments, invoicing, task tracking, and reporting.

As their cost would indicate ($20 to $250 each), these programs are designed for small and medium businesses. Larger shops may find the need to bypass this category for more powerful solutions. Then again, with the improvements some of these programs have seen recently – such as Palm Pilot support — these titles may just be robust enough for larger concerns as well.

Most developers, by the way, provide limited-time downloadable demo versions — always the best way to determine if a program is right for you. All of these are for the Mactintosh — mostly for OS X. That said, here’s a roundup of the most popular programs out there for keeping track of your time and money.

Boss Your Bills Around
Studio Boss from Dennis Best Design is a project and client tracker created for freelance Mac creatives (OS X and OS 9). It uses the FileMaker Pro data engine to store, sort, and manage design, video, and photography projects, clients, activities, expenses, and invoices.

The $40 standard version of Studio Boss is a stand-alone application, while the $250 Studio Boss Pro runs natively in FileMaker Pro and includes unlocked FileMaker source files. This means users can creatively customize the program and put it on a network for multiple users in a studio environment, according to Dennis Best, a designer himself who fell into the software business when he couldn’t find a program that met his own needs as a studio owner (see Figure 1).

Users of the regular stand-alone version of Studio Boss can use a free open source Palm application (called "Hours") to track their time for easy import into Studio Boss. Both Studio Boss versions include:

• Palm OS support;
• Customize forms in Adobe Acrobat;
• Popup Lists to store clients and other information for quick entry;
• Robust and intuitive search tools to find projects and clients;
• The ability to attach files and folders to jobs;
• Storage for FTP, site passwords for each project;
• Store photos and video clips;
• Task tracking;
• Auto save;
• Automatic invoice calculation for single or multiple projects
• Ready-made forms (proofing checklist, project summary);
• New invoices and reports;
• Quickly view/export data in Excel;
• Import data from other sources.

“Studio Boss starts with a project and allows users to attach any number of activities, expenses, and so on. Projects are often complex, and users can track and bill for a detailed and unlimited set of related timed activities, expenses, fees, etc. This basic approach is what sets Studio Boss apart,” said Best.

Time is on Your Side
TimeCache 5.1 from Pandaware, like the others in this round up, lets you track time and expenses on billable projects via a daily log screen that works like an electronic timesheet. It’s available for OS X and "Classic OS Versions."

This $50 program’s Enter Payment function allows you to track billing activity and balances. You can enter your time manually or let TimeCache time you while you work in other OS X applications. TimeCache automatically multiplies your time by your billing rate and enters the sum in the billing area, where you can also track other expenses, as well (see Figure x).

Other features:

• Tracks time spent on projects in increments of one minute;
• Automatically times work and optionally logs your start and stop times;
• Assigns hourly rates to every activity as well as fixed rates to expense categories (e.g. mileage and photocopies);
• Automatically sums your time and charges on every project;
• Customizes data you record on each project;
• Prints daily reports and project reports;
• Exports data on projects to database, spreadsheet. or other applications for incorporating into your own billing system.

When you’re done entering time and expenses for the day, you post your entries to Job Sheets, where you can review charges and see how you’re doing against your project estimate.

TimeCache 5.1’s reporting capabilities let you view reports in a number of styles on-screen (Date Views, Date Range reports, single- and multi-Project reports, single- and multi-Project summaries). Once you’ve developed a style you like, you can save a report layout template. There’s not much additional customization available however, but you can also print reports and export report data for use in other applications.

The new 5.1 version also offers these new features:

• Workgroup Support
• A new interface for editing, importing and exporting the lists
• New report feature that lets you view reports on screen, and export report data to other applications in a range of formats
• Hot key time keeping from OS X applications.

Panda Software also sells TimeCache Data Merger, a $150 program for shops that need to bill for more than one person’s time (and expenses) on a project. Data Merger automatically consolidates exported TimeCache data from several users.

Never Too Much Time — or Money
The OS X-only software Time Equals Money 2.0 is from Andrew Stone of Stone Design Corp., developer of other creative OS X applications you may be familiar with. Stone’s Create is a Web- and print-layout application with illustration and effects tools. It’s surrounded by six other applications: GIFfun, PackUp&Go, SliceAndDice, PhotoToWeb, PStill, and TimeEqualsMoney.

As with each one of these modules, you can purchase TimeEqualsMoney separately for $49. TimeEqualsMoney is pitched to consultants of all stripes and Stone, oddly, promotes it heavily to attorneys. Nevertheless, the program meets the needs of creative professionals as well (see Figure 3).

The feature set lets you:

• Track time to the minute;
• Enter start, stop, and resume times with the stopwatch feature;
• Track expenses like mileage and other hard costs;
• Assign different rates for individual time entries;
• Track payment in “Equity” and stock shares as well as cash;
• Sort time and expense entries on any column;
• Instantly invoice unpaid time and expense entries;
• Generate reports by time period;
• Generate reports on multiple time cards;
• Export your data for use in databases and spreadsheets.

The new version improves interface design, but depending on how you bill, you may have to create a new file for every month, client, or project.

Pay Less Save More?
iWork by iggsoftware is the best deal of the bunch — at $20, you can’t beat the price — but it raises the question: Should you buy such an important piece of software based on price alone? If all your needs are very basic, iWork (Max OS X 10.2 and higher ) does the job. It includes:

• Integration with iCal;
• Integration with Address Book;
• Built in timer for tracking hourly work;
• An invoice that can be customized with your logo and look;
• Simple project manager;
• Customizable job events;
• Drag and Drop to Excel;
• Workday overview;
• Hot-key support in other applications.

While iWork has a slick interface and is easy to use, it offers only rudimentary reporting and customization and no Palm support. For the simplest tasks, however, it works as advertised.

Try Before You Buy
Since every graphic designer works a little bit differently, the best advice, worth repeating, is to spend some time with each program to find the one that feels right for you and offers enough room to grow. At these prices, any one of these programs will pay for itself in no time.

And don’t forget to add the cost of the program to your expense report!

Read more by Eric J. Adams.