Fanurio version 1.11 was officially released yesterday. I’ll use this post to talk about what I think it’s most important and isn’t covered by the release notes.
Check for updates
If you followed us so far, you’ve probably noticed that we make new releases quite often. It takes us between one and three months to release new versions. Until now, you were able to check for updates but manually. Starting with this version, Fanurio can check automatically for new updates. By default, it checks every 5 days.
This means we’ll no longer send notifications by email since Fanurio can do it automatically. If you want to be notified by email about new versions, please register here.
Cross-platform version
Another interesting addition is the cross-platform version. It is a .tar.gz file that contains everything that’s needed to run Fanurio on any platform. It covers those cases when the Windows, Debian or Mac OS X installers are not suitable.
You may also want to use the cross-platform version if you need to install Fanurio on a USB stick. It comes with launch scripts that start and configure Fanurio to keep its data on the stick. To learn how to install and run it, please read this user guide section.
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.
Cost, profits and money reports
The last thing I want to mention and the most important feature of this version is the possibility to record costs for project items. Many freelancers are reselling goods or subcontract some of their services. In both cases, knowing how much it cost is important to determine the actual profit.
To help you understand how much money you’re making, project reports can now display both time and money. You can read more about project reports here.
I hope you’ll find this new version more useful and it will help you have a better understanding of how much your work is worth.
I just downloaded the 1.11. It’s pretty good. The project management is simple enough that it doesn’t “get in your way”. It doesn’t try to force milestones or anything on you. I’ve been thinking about writing a Web version of exactly this functionality for many years. But, at $40, I might have to reconsider.
The *only* thing that GnuCash has that this doesn’t is automatic invoice numbers. But, gnucash doesn’t have a built-in timer. Hmm…
Mark, thanks for trying Fanurio. I’m glad to hear that you find it useful.
If you want to use automatic invoice numbers in Fanurio, go to Business > My Business Details > Billing to enable them.
You can number invoices globally or per client. To learn more about auto-numbering, please read this user guide section: http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com/user-guide/tutorial-describing-your-business.html
Wow, I didn’t see that feature. So, in terms of invoices, it’s actually *better* than Gnucash. And the HTML export of invoices is _valid_ HTML, unlike Gnucash.
Sorry if this is off-topic to the 1.11 release, but I haven’t used any of the previous releases. First of all, I think this program is nearly perfect. It does everything a freelancer needs. I only have 2 small critiques.
One issue is because I did not even attempt to read documentation, I just clicking around randomly. But, I kept inserting time against items in the “Pause” field. I did this because the Pause field is right next to the “Finished at” field. The “started at” field is disabled by default, so my eyes when right to the enabled field, and I started playing with the hours and minutes right next to it. This perplexed me because all the items kept showing 00:00 time. My fault, not a real problem, but it might be considered a tiny tiny issue for UI.
Second issue is, again, just a minor minor thing. But, every where that I tried to right-click, nothing came up. It only took about 3 min to get used to the buttons being on the bottom, but I really felt like right-clicking things to edit them and some things did not have right-click menus.
Also, the template editor for invoices kinda blew me away. Unexpectedly powerful.
Totally great, going to recommend it to all my freelancer friends.
> going to recommend it to all my freelancer friends.
Perfect
. Thanks a lot.
> I kept inserting time against items in the “Pause” field.
This is interesting. Maybe we should validate the input and make sure the Time field is not 0:00. I don’t think anyone would want to create time entries with zero minutes.
> every where that I tried to right-click, nothing came up.
There are places where we display popup menus if you right-click the mouse, the projects tree for instance but this is not generalized. I’ll write this down and we’ll consider it for implementation in a future version.
> I only have 2 small critiques.
Actually, we love critiques. If you have more, keep them coming
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I brought this to Mark’s attention, so you may see two Kimsal names here for a bit.
Something else came to me this morning using Fanurio. The time tracking is nice, but my clients don’t like having to wade through “4.03 hours” or “.79 hours” and such on an invoice. Could you have an option in the timer to round to the nearest interval (15 minute billing is common for many industries)?
Thanks.
Hi Michael, thanks for recommending us to Mark. When I saw his first comment, I mistook him for you. Then I realized it’s someone else
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> Could you have an option in the timer to round to the nearest interval?
That’s already possible. When you create an hourly rated item, you can specify how time is rounded in the Billing tab. You can round time up, down or to the nearest specified value.
You can also define a default rounding rule in Business > My Business Details > Billing. Once you do this, all project items will use it when created.
Any new items created in project will use that rounding feature after the change? I don’t need to recreate the project, right?
Thanks!
Yes.
I’m enjoying taking the eval software through it’s paces.
I’m playing with all the features and managed to maximize the timer window. Now I can’t figure out how to restore to the mini-timer. The restore button in the maximized timer switches to the fanurio view.
The maximized timer window remains the prominent window, so that won’t work.
I did see the instructions for using the timer in the system tray – will try that, but I’m bugged about this maximized timer and would very much appreciate the fix.
Any suggestions? Thank you!
Maria, it’s very nice to hear that you are enjoying the evaluation. Thanks
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About the mini-timer window. This is an annoying bug that we haven’t fixed yet but we have a work-around. To restore the size of the mini window, you will have to delete the setting that keeps it.
This user guide section http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com/user-guide/faq.html#faq-settings tells you how to change the settings manually. Follow the steps listed there and at step 4 delete the line that starts with ui.window.mini.bounds. This is the setting that remembers the size and location of the mini window.
This bug survived too many releases and should be fixed soon.