Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

Time Tracking & Invoicing


Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Billings 3I’ve been hand-making invoices in Photoshop for the last 10 years, without even knowing that there are other options!

I somehow stumbled upon Billings for mac, and Harvest, web-based time-tracking & invoicing software, both in the same weekend!

I don’t know how I was able to do things the old way. The new software these days is so easy & useful. You create your client, project & tasks…Then track the hours, either manually, or with easy to use tracking software. Your hours are organized by client, and you can see all kinds of great reports on how many hours you’ve worked, how many hours left on the budget and how much you’ve earned.

The best part about the software, is the automated invoice creation & delivery. You just pick a client & project you want to send an invoice for, and it generates a beautiful invoice then sends it along. You can look back on your old invoices, which are well-organized for accounting purposes.

While I prefer the interface and usability of Billings, I would rather have everything be web-based, so I can access and send out my invoices from anywhere.

Harvest Time Tracking

Billings costs a one-time $39, while Harvest cost $12 per month. I know the $12 a month looks a bit steep after seeing Billings one-time fee, but I guess you just pay for the mobility of the software. Harvest also has an iPhone App that allows you to access your account via your phone!

But Billings is just so beautiful, look at the following screenshot (click to zoom).

Billings Screenshot

You just need to decide on if you want to access your time-tracking software from anywhere, or if you want a super-beautiful mac version. Doesn’t really matter which choice you go with, either of these, or one of the many other choices, will help you save time & be more organized with your invoicing.

Flash Builder & CS4 Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheets


Sunday, October 4th, 2009

Cheaters!No, I didn’t create another cheat sheet for Flash shortcuts, however, some people still haven’t seen these, so I figured I’d post them up!

These PC & Mac versions of the shortcut lists made by Subdivision. Really worth checking out if you are not already a shortcut shaman.

Also, if you are using Flex Gumbo, aka Flash Builder, you should print up this shortcut sheet (made by eromdesign.com)!

Knowing all of the keyboard shortcuts will speed up your development time. The less you have to use the mouse, the less distracted from the actual programming you will be. Since I started contracting for Microsoft, I’ve had access to the MS Library, a huge collection of development-focused books & tools. Over the last few months, I have really taking in as much as I can & grabbing all of the non-language specific programming books, and they all say that knowing the keyboard shortcuts is one of the more important parts of rapid development.

I will be writing up an article on being a quick & efficient AS3 programmer soon, as well as guides to having clean, re-usable code. Look for those soon!