Time Keeping. Keeping Time

Up until yesterday I was using myhours as my online time keeping solution. It is web based and free and so over the past 12 months is has become a huge part of my daily business admin.

myhours.com

As someone who is self employed, keeping track of the minutes that you spend working on a project is vital when it comes to invoicing a client. Those five minutes here and there matter and soon mount up. After all, no-one is working for free.

So, last week, when myhours inexplicably went down and starting throwing out 503 error pages I was a bit annoyed. I assumed it was a glitch, kept a careful eye on the clock myself and got on with the job in hand.

Yesterday, the site went down again. Hmm. Part way through 4 and something hours for a client. Great. Once is forgiven. Twice and this consumer will walk. I wanted to email them - don't you know your site is down? But I couldn't as their "mailto" is hidden on the home page that is broken.

I took to twitter. Other people seemed to be having issues. I tweeted in the hope that the solution (or a contact for myhours) would appear out of thin air. Nothing.

So I googled and I came across paymo.biz

Cleaner, sexier UI

Okay, it is prettier. And it is more modern in tone. And the free basic package seems to offer everything I need as a one man band. So I signed up. I've clocked up a little over 4 hours so far without a single issue.

And, more importantly for me? I got a response to my twitter myhours query from a gent in the states. I replied suggesting paymo as an alternative as he too was struggling with myhours. Within the hour paymo got in touch:

Real customer service

I haven't had chance to look into the reporting element of the software but I've added the clients I am working with this week and I'm tracking the time I am spending so I am happy. And I am a sucker for a company getting it right...