Fanurio 2.2 Released

We’ve just finished uploading a new version. Version 2.2 is a free upgrade for all our users. You can upgrade your copy by clicking Help > Check for Updates in the menu. For a complete list of changes, please read the release notes.

There are two reasons we released this version. The first and most important reason is that it makes the backup process more reliable. The second reason is that it’s been almost three months since our last release and we want to keep publishing new versions regularly.

A more reliable backup process

The data you enter daily in Fanurio is probably your most important asset. Protecting it and making sure it is not lost or corrupted is very important to us. That’s why this version has several new features that make the backup process more reliable. Let’s see what each one of them does.

Previous versions were able to make automatic backups when the application was closed but that was optional. The current version does this every time the application is closed. It also makes backup copies every six hours to make sure your data is saved frequently. This is helpful if you don’t shut down your computer for long periods of time.

This version also makes sure backup copies can be saved to the backup folder. If you are using an USB stick to save them and it’s not plugged in, Fanurio will warn you and ask you to specify a different location. Another check is whether backup copies are corrupted or not. Every time Fanurio starts, it checks the latest backup copy for corruption.

An additional security measure is the audit file that contains the latest database operations. The audit file can be at most 6MB in size and that should be enough to record the data entered during the last week. The audit file can be used to recover data just in case there is no backup copy and the database is corrupted. We don’t imagine how both these things could happen and that’s why I say this is an additional measure.

Finally, we fixed the bug that was causing “Database Error” messages to appear from time to time on Windows. If Fanurio was running in the background when the computer was shut down or the user logged out, the operating system didn’t give it enough time to close the database and it remained in an inconsistent state. The fix ensures that the database is closed correctly.

New features and improvements

The most important feature of this version is by far the support for global hotkeys which only works on Windows and Linux. This means that you can now control Fanurio’s timer even when its window is not visible. It’s a lot more practical for people who like using keyboard shortcuts than using the tray icon menu or the mini timer.

If you don’t like using keyboard shortcuts, we’ve also improved the mini timer. There’s now a toolbar icon that switches the view to the mini timer. We’ve also fixed the annoying bug that resized the mini timer window to the whole screen. The rest of the improvements and fixes are documented in the release notes.

Although this version doesn’t bring many new features, I still believe it’s a step ahead compared to the last version. Please upgrade your copy of Fanurio to protect your data from accidental losses.

How to translate Fanurio to other languages

Two weeks ago when we released version 2.1, I said we’ll publish a guide on how to translate Fanurio to other languages. Unfortunately we’ve been very busy lately and we’ve only managed to publish it today.

So, if you want to translate Fanurio to other languages or if you want to use non-official translations, read this section of the user guide.

If you choose to share your translation with other users, send it to us so that we can make it public.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Fanurio 2.1.1 Released

Due to a critical bug that sometimes makes the user interface unresponsive, we released version 2.1.1. This is a highly recommended upgrade for all users. You can upgrade your copy by clicking Help > Check for Updates in the menu.

This release also fixes a few other bugs. The rest of the changes are documented in the release notes.

Fanurio 2.1 Released

I’m very glad to announce that after four and a half months since our last release, version 2.1 is ready for download.

Version 2.1 is a free upgrade for all our users. You can upgrade your copy by clicking Help > Check for Updates in the menu. For a complete list of changes, please read the release notes.

This version has lots of improvements that I’m sure will make it easier for everybody to record and bill their time. All changes are strictly based on user feedback. Apart from these improvements, Fanurio is now available in other languages than English.

Now, let’s see in more detail what has changed.

Translated to German, Romanian and Spanish

Fanurio is used by people from all over the world and although English is the lingua franca on the Internet, not everybody feels comfortable using it. That, plus the many requests we received in time, talked us into opening up Fanurio for users who don’t speak English.

Fanurio can now be used in English, German, Romanian and Spanish. We also have partial translations for French, Italian, Dutch, Danish and Swedish but they will not be distributed officially until they are completed.

Fanurio can now be easily translated to any language by anybody. We’ll publish a guide on how to do that in the following days.

Time tracking

If you’ve read the release notes, you probably noticed that most changes are intended to make time tracking easier.

When it comes to tracking time, most users appreciate the reminders that help them control the timer. This version makes it possible to override the snooze interval for these reminders. For instance, at the end of the day when you don’t want to be reminded to start the timer every 15 minutes just override the snooze interval to a big value (300 minutes) and it won’t bother you to start it very soon.

Idle time notification now works on all platforms. Linux was the last platform where this feature wasn’t implemented.

Mac OS X users can now access the timer from the menu bar icon just like Windows users can from the tray and Linux users from the notification area. This feature works only if you are using Java 6.

The last feature I want to mention here is the possibility to import time from other applications. Fanurio can now import time from iTimeSheet and TimeLogger (two iPhone applications) but it can be extended to support any other applications.

Billing

Projects now have a billing section where you can specify default billing settings for their items. These settings are used when a new service or expense is created for that project. For instance you can specify a default hourly rate and a default rule for rounding time. Each time a new service item is created, it will have the default rate and rounding specified at project level.

You can email or print invoices once you export them to PDF but the new version makes it possible to do that directly from the application. Email support is not enabled by default because you need to configure the outgoing email server.

I hope these changes will make it easier for you to use the application.

Fanurio 2.0 Released

I’m very glad to announce that we’ve just released Fanurio version 2.0. It took us thousands of suggestions, almost three years of work and 15 releases to get here. Thanks to everyone who supported us and gave us feedback during this time.

Version 2.0 is a free upgrade for all our users. You can upgrade your copy by clicking Help > Check for Updates in the menu. For a complete list of changes, please read the release notes.

Version 2.0 is an important milestone for Fanurio as it is ready to be used by many more people. It is a full-grown application whose design has proved to be intuitive and reliable for most time tracking and billing problems faced by freelancers. That’s why we decided to label this version 2.0 instead of 1.12.

Now, let’s see the important features of this release.

New views: Timesheet and Payments

Previous versions had two views, one to manage projects and the other to manage invoices. This version comes with two more views to provide more useful features, a Payments view and a Timesheet view.

Up until now, the only way to edit time was to edit the item where it was saved. The Timesheet view lets you manage time across services, projects and clients. It should be very useful for people who need to review the time recorded in Fanurio, especially at the end of the day or at the end of the week.

In the previous version, an invoice was either paid or unpaid but now you can add as many (partial) payments as you need to close an invoice. This feature is very useful if you have clients who partially pay their invoices. The Invoices view also displays the balance of each invoice so that you can easily see how much money you have to collect.

Merged items with expenses

Items and expenses are no longer managed in two different project sections. They are represented in the same table to help you see the big picture of a project (costs, profit, total).

By merging the two, we also changed the terms used to refer to items and expenses. We changed the term item to service item because that’s what items were used for, to keep track of services and we changed expense to expense item to group services and expenses together as items. Starting with this version, we use the term items in contexts where it’s not important to distinguish between services and expenses.

Multi-user/multi-computer support

One big advantage when using Fanurio is that it can run on multiple platforms at no extra cost. You can use it on your Mac at home and on your PC at work. But what if you want to merge the time recorded on both computers? You can now export the time recorded on one computer and import it on another computer.

If you are part of a team, each member could install Fanurio on his or her computer to track time. Team members can then export their time and send it to the team leader to prepare invoices.

November release

If you followed us for the past several months, you probably saw that we announced this version for November last year. Now I feel it’s necessary to tell you why it took longer.

None of our previous versions took more than three months to be released. That didn’t happen with this version because we were impatient to implement many features at once. In November, lots of them were already implemented but unfortunately they just didn’t fit together. Then, we decided to start over again and include only what made sense. The rest of the work will probably be integrated in future releases.

Fanurio is appreciated for its design and we didn’t want to ruin that. We apologize for creating false expectations and we hope the waiting was worth it.

Out of office for Christmas

Starting on Wednesday afternoon (Dec 24th, 15:00 GMT) until Monday morning (Dec 29th, 08:00 GMT) we’ll be out of office to spend Christmas with our families. We’ll answer all emails and support issues when we get back.

Merry Christmas!

Fanurio 1.11.3 Released

Today we’ve released version 1.11.3, a patch for version 1.11. Usually, we don’t release patch versions unless they are very important and this version improves data security.

You can upgrade your copy by clicking Help > Check for Updates in the menu.

Fanurio now checks if it can connect to the database each time it is started. If there is something wrong with the database, Fanurio will alert you and we’ll probably be able to investigate and fix the problem. We’ve also increased the size of the log file and its backup to 2 MB (a total of 4 MB) to make sure all errors are saved. Previously the log file was only 0.5 MB.

If your computer is closed unexpectedly, the database will not delete its lock file and when restarted, it may complain that it cannot connect. This is a common situation when checking the database connection is useful.

The rest of the changes are documented in the release notes.

Since this patch is mainly about data security, I would like to remind you that you can keep automatic backups with Fanurio. It’s recommended to keep at least five copies.

P.S. If you haven’t voted for us at the Epsilon Award yet, you still have time until October 27th.

Vote for Fanurio at the Epsilon Award

We are very proud to announce that Fanurio has been nominated for the Epsilon Award. The organizers consider it to be “a combination of excellency, craftsmanship and visionary ability [...] characteristics of an outstanding programmer and a piece of true software art”.

If you like Fanurio and you want to support us, please give your vote here:
https://digiumenterprise.com/answer/?sid=239855&chk=TH9WW2JH

Voting is open until October 27th and it won’t take more than 30 seconds to do it.  Fanurio is third on the list. The winner will be announced at the European Software Conference in early November.

Thanks a lot for your support.

Cross-platform version

Fanurio is developed using Java which enables it to run on many platforms. We are currently providing installers for the most popular ones: Mac OS X, Windows and Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu. For any other platform, we provide a cross-platform version.

There are no big differences between the cross-platform version and the others except for the packaging and how they are installed. To install it, you must simply unzip the .tar.gz archive to a location you prefer.

Launch scripts

The .tar.gz archive contains two types of script files that launch Fanurio. The first type launches Fanurio and creates the data repository somewhere in a user-specific folder on the computer. The purpose of these scripts is to create the repository in a location that’s recommended by the operating system. These files are:

• fanurio.app – Mac OS X
• fanurio.exe – Windows
• fanurio.sh – Linux and other flavors of Unix

The second type of script files launches Fanurio and creates a subfolder called local (hence the local suffix in their name) in the same folder where they are located. This type of scripts is especially suited if you want to run Fanurio from a USB stick. Data will be kept in the same folder with the rest of the application files so that you can reuse it when moving from one computer to another. These files are:

• fanuriolocal.app – Mac OS X
• fanuriolocal.exe – Windows
• fanuriolocal.sh – Linux and other flavors of Unix

Install on USB

The cross-platform version is also useful if you want to install Fanurio on a USB stick. Some of our users installed it on a USB stick and use it from there on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Fanurio can also be installed on a USB stick running PortableApps. Just follow their instructions to do it.

If there’s anything you want to say about the cross-platform version, please leave a comment or send us an email.

How to sync data between two computers

If you install Fanurio on two different computers (desktop and laptop) or two different platforms (Windows and Mac OS X), it’s very likely you will want to keep your data synchronized. Here are some common situations:

• If you do consulting work and you need to travel a lot, you may have a laptop and a desktop PC in your office. When you get back to the office, you may want to sync the desktop with the laptop.
• You’re a big Mac fan but unfortunately you have to do some of your work on Windows. You want to use Fanurio to track time while on Windows and then sync this information with the Mac.

This post explains how to synchronize your data between two computers. There are multiple ways to do it, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully, this post will make it easy for you to choose the right one.

I. USB stick installation

The first solution is also the easiest. Instead of installing Fanurio on two or more computers, install it on a USB stick. This will save you the trouble of synchronizing the data because it will always be kept on the stick.

Download the cross-platform version and follow these instructions to install it. The nice thing about the cross-platform version is that you can install it on a USB stick and then run it from there on any computer, whether it uses Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

Recommended: If you have to work on your client’s computer and you don’t want to install Fanurio there.

II. Shared folder

This solution is a bit more technical because it requires you to configure Fanurio manually. By default, Fanurio keeps its data somewhere in your user account but it can be configured to keep it somewhere else. Please read this section for more information.

If you can create a folder that is accessible from all computers, you could configure Fanurio to keep its data there instead of the default location. Follow these instructions to learn how to configure Fanurio manually and then add this line to the settings file:

database.dir=PATH_TO_SHARED_FOLDER

You need to replace PATH_TO_SHARED_FOLDER with the actual path. Assuming you are on Windows and you have a shared folder called Folder on computer Alpha, the path is //Alpha/Folder. If you have a dual-boot system (Linux and Windows), you can access the Windows folders from Linux.

IMPORTANT: If you share the database folder between two computers, make sure you don’t use it at the same time on both computers. The database doesn’t support concurrent access.

Recommended: If you can share a folder between two computers or two platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).

III. File synchronization

Another solution is file synchronization software like FolderShare (reviewed here) which can help you synchronize the data folders of each Fanurio install. The location of the data folders is presented in this section.

• Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Fanurio/data
• Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\Application Data\Fanurio\data
• Vista: C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Fanurio\data
• Linux: ~/.fanurio/data

IMPORTANT: As is the case with shared folder, you shouldn’t work independently on each computer and then expect the data to be merged by the synchronization software. Instead, try to synchronize it after each use.

Recommended: If you want to keep your data synchronized no matter where you are. This is a more general solution than the shared folder approach.

IV. Backup transfer

The last solution and probably the less practical one is to create a backup on one computer and then restore it on the other. The main disadvantage is that you have to do this manually every time you switch computers otherwise they will be out of sync.

You can read this post for more details on how to create and restore a backup.

Recommended: Only if you need to use a second computer from time to time otherwise there’s too much overhead to create and restore the backup.

As you can see, none of these methods is perfect but they work in many situations. One feature that we intend to implement is the synchronization of multiple computers from Fanurio thus eliminating the need to rely on outside tools.