Keeping track
I've been setting up all of the infrastructure for my new business and needed a decent time and expense tracking system. I've got a small shop (me) and minimal expenses, so I wanted something very simple where I can record my time and expenses. My first instinct was to go for something like QuickBooks or Microsoft Small Business Accounting, but that is really overkill for what I need. Next, I looked around on-line for something that looked decent and there were some good solutions out there (QuickBooks Online looked pretty decent), but, again, they were overkill for where I am right now.
So, I kept searching around on the web for something cheap and simple to track my expenses and came up with Timesheet Xpress. They have a free edition (with some limited features) that I'm using now to kick the tires, but so far, I really like what I see. It has a simple approach to entering the time you spend on projects and the expenses you incurr. It took me probably an hour to get used to the way it works and then I entered in all of my recent time and expenses. I'm going to use it for at least the next month and if it continues to go well, I'll pony up for the full version (USD $71).
Comments
Earlier in the year I 1099'd for a small (~25 person) consulting firm. They had ft employees and temp hired guns like me. They used web-based Quickarrow to report T&E. It had some quirks and the ability to enter information offline was clunky and required a downloaded program, which was a drag, because for these gigs you'd like to enter your info on the plane. But it's worth looking at for multi-employee multi-project stuff.
Posted by: Tom | September 7, 2006 03:38 PM