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Five apps to help you stay organized
Time is one of our most valuable assets and it's a shame to waste it looking for things that are misplaced and forgetting things because the details of your life are out of order. This week's Five Apps will help you gain control of life and get yourself organized once and for all. Completion ($2.99) Completion is a task manager that's quick and simple to use. It doesn't overwhelm you with complexity which makes its easy to get your tasks organized and stay committed for the long term. The workflow is simple. You add tasks and assign them to a project like work, personal or household. Each task lets you specify a date, set a priority, add a note, and assign it to a group. You can then use the group, due date and priority information to sort each list of tasks. When you have completed a task, you can delete it forever or mark it as complete which archives it for later retrieval. It has an attractive, colorful interface that makes Completion a pleasure to use. Pocket Informant ($12.99; $14.99 for HD iPad version) Pocket Informant is a contact, task and calendaring application for the iPhone and iPad. It's a productivity app on steroids that supports multiple calendars and syncs to a variety of services including Toodledo and Google calendar. The best part of Pocket Informant is its long list of customizations and settings. If you can see it on the screen, you can likely change its appearance and configure it to your preference. It's meant for the power user who doesn't mind spending a few hours tweaking it to his or her liking. Once you get it set up, you'll have 75% of your life at your fingertips. Bill Minder for iPhone ($1.99) BillMinder for iPhone lets you organize your bills by recording payment, amount and due date information. The app has a calendar and a list view that'll let you see which bills are past due and which are due in the future. If you need some help remembering when each blll is due, you can setup reminders that will alert a set number of days in advance. You can also sync bills between your iOS devices and back your data up to the cloud for retrieval if your phone is lost or stolen. Payment from within the app is made easy by its integration with DebtMinder (also made by the developers behind BillMinder) and Pocket Money. Billings Touch (Free to try; $15 to unlock via in-app purchase) Billings Touch is an invoicing and billing app for the freelancer. It'll let you organize your clients, track the amount of time you spend working on a project and manage invoices. Developed by Marketcircle, Billings Touch works alone as an iPhone app or as a companion to the desktop Billings for Mac app. We took a look at Billings Touch when it first came out. We liked it back then and still like it now. It's not perfect -- you can't use a custom invoice on the iPhone, but it remains one of the best apps for freelancers who want to keep track of their precious incoming cash flow. Pocket Money ($4.99 for iPhone and iPad) Pocket Money is a financial app that'll help you organize your money. It uses a standard register interface and lets you add accounts like your checking, savings, credit card, and cash. It has all the information you need to record a transaction like category, date, amount, and note. Best of all, it lets you easily sync information between two iOS devices. You can also export transactions to your desktop finance app via Qif files. It's an excellent app for your basic financial needs.
Marketcircle announces Billings Pro, needs beta testers
Marketcircle, the Canadian software firm that brought you Daylite, Daylite Touch, Billings, and Billings Touch has just announced the next generation of their time-tracking and billing solution. Billings Pro takes advantage of many of the features built into other Marketcircle products and takes Billings to a new level as a multi-user application. The new application will include a server piece (like Daylite), a way to use the application offline and then sync to the server (once again built upon Daylite), over-the-air sync (as with Daylite Touch), and Marketcircle's expertise in desktop and mobile user interfaces. The application is still in development, and beta testing won't begin for a few months yet. If you're an existing Billings user and would like to receive consideration as a possible beta tester, fill out this online form and you may hear from Marketcircle in a few months. At this time, no ship date or price has been determined for Billings Pro.
Billings Touch hits the App Store
We mentioned its imminent arrival a few days back, and now it's here: Billings Touch [iTunes link] hit the App Store last night (Free, $15 in-app upgrade for full functionality). It's packed with time and expense tracking features, client management, invoicing, and other necessities of the freelancer/small businessperson. It's packaged to go, too. Billings Touch syncs with the desktop version of Billings over WiFi, but one of the coolest things about it is that it's a standalone app. Without any help from its older sibling, it can handle everything a professional on-the-go would need to get paid. Track your mileage and your expenses, add clients ... then track your time (timers run even when the app is closed), add fixed-price slips, put it all together and send a professional-looking invoice right from your phone. Mark your payments received and Billings Touch will do some bookkeeping for you, and keep you posted about who's overdue and what's coming up. Billings Touch also implements the "Blueprints" functionality from the desktop version, allowing you to create presets for your work slips. Include the title of the task, the rate, etc. and making new slips can be just a quick tap of the finger, ready to start timing. That's especially important on the iPhone because time spent typing out task names on your little keyboard is rarely billable. I do wish I could add a receipt photo to my expense slips, and WebDAV sync would be killer, but this app really doesn't leave me wanting. I've beta tested it for a while now, and I can happily say that it's an amazing companion to Billings, and a complete package on its own. My opinion after trying just about everything on the market: Billings and Billings Touch make an unbeatable pair, and this is the time-tracking app to use if you want a complete, professional solution from client contact and estimate to invoice and statements. Billings Touch is a free download on the App Store, and it comes with a good amount of functionality. However, syncing and invoicing require an in-app purchase of $15US, but it's a pretty cool way to let you try out the app before you make a purchase. Billings on the desktop remains priced at a competitive $39.99US. Have a peek at the gallery for an overview of the interface and some of Billing Touch's capabilities. %Gallery-81668%
