Following up once again on using your iPhone to enter your time, New Orleans attorney Al Robert -- who runs the great Louisiana law blawg Naked Ownership -- reminded me that there is yet another part of the ecosystem that you should consider if you want to use your iPhone to enter time: online services with web-based or standalone apps. Al uses an online service called Harvest to track his time and invoice his clients. He does all of the setup on his computer, and then he can use the iPhone to enter time using a web app that includes a start/stop timer and uses simple drop-down menus. The web app can also be used to enter expenses and associate the expenses with clients and matters when you are on the road.
Of course, you need to have some sort of Internet access to use a web app. I'm currently acutely aware that this is not always available. I am serving jury duty this month in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, which means that on Tuesdays and Thursdays in February, I have to spend almost a full day in the basement of the courthouse where AT&T 3G and Edge service is nonexistent and a weak WiFi signal is just barely available if you find a seat in the corner of the room and only then if you are lucky. Perhaps some sort of voodoo ritual would help. But back on topic ... if you do have Internet access, the nice thing about a web app is that when you enter your time on your iPhone, it is simultaneously entered with the online service. No need to export data from your iPhone to your computer.
There are many other online services that track time, and some of them offer a standalone iPhone app that acts as a front end and interfaces directly with the website. The advantage of these, of course, is that whether or not you have Internet access, you can still use the app on your iPhone. Also, because these iPhone apps are closely integrated with the online service, you don't have to worry about exporting your data to an e-mail and then importing to a different time entry system. You still need to sync, but at least you know that no data reformatting is necessary. In my original post on time tracking apps I mentioned one of these: Bill4Time Mobile by Broadway Billing Systems. FreshBooks is a similar online service that also offers an iPhone app. You can use the app to track time for projects and tasks and write notes for each time entry. The FreshBooks app automatically stores pending submissions when you are offline and then syncs with you once again have an Internet connection.
I've been getting a lot of feedback from iPhone J.D. readers on these different options for using your iPhone to track your time, which leads me to believe that there are quite a few of you out there using these, or at least thinking about using them. As I mentioned in my original post, right now, I am not using one, but the next time I find myself on the road, I may consider doing so. I still can't decide which is my favorite.
