The art of billing

It seems like such a simple task for a contractor; bill for the hours you worked. In my profession and how my brain operates, defining "work" is not easy. My brain doesn't have an on/off switch so at the end of the day, if I was working on something, even if I walk away from the computer, I may still be thinking about it. Same goes for when I run, especially if I'm working on a hard problem.

Tonight as I was giving my son a bath, I realized that code that I had written today (based on other code in the project) could potentially crash in some race conditions. Do I bill the client for only the time that I'm typing? Do I bill the client for 24 hours a day just to make things easy? What is considered work and what isn't? I don't really have the answers to those questions; I look at things on a case by case basis. I've been doing contract work for a long time now and so far no one has ever questioned by time as I'm very honest and provide a detailed invoice with all of my hours and tasks recorded.

The next part of billing that doesn't seem clear cut is during the day when I am at my computer, when do I start and stop billing? Do I round to the nearest 15 minutes? Do I bill for every minute? I've seen invoices from some contractors that recorded time down to the minute and even one with a fraction of a minute. Do they sit there with a timer and start and stop every time they read and email message? If they get a phone call, do they start billing when they see the caller ID? These just are far too extreme for me. I do reasonable billing and round my billing.

Finally, one area that I still haven't figured out the best practices is handling interruptions and emergencies. If I get interrupted to work on something else (email, phone call, or instant message), it can take time for me to get back into the thought I had before I got interrupted. Best case it takes me few minutes, worst case, it can take me hours. Who do I bill for this? Do I bill the client that interrupted me or the project  was working on before the interruption? I don't have a clue.

Luckily all these billing issues are minor and as long as I'm honest and ethical, no one has a problem with my billing practices. It also doesn't hurt that I get the job done!

Review: On The Job - Time Tracking for the Mac

Before I became self-employed again. I looked for a time tracking application. I tried one on the iPad which was a complete waste of money. So, I decided to go back to time tracking on my Mac. At least I could evaluate the programs before buying. Over the years, I never found a program that I liked and eventually wrote my own little app. For various reasons, I was tracking time outside of QuickBooks (which I was using for account for my family's LLC) and always ended up recording time and then generating invoices in QuickBooks. At that time, I didn't need an app that also did invoicing, so finding a simple app was difficult. Now that things are different and I wanted to do invoicing in the time tracking app, finding the right tool became easier.

One evening I sat down and downloaded something like 10 Mac time tracking applications and gave each one a quick evaluation. I was willing to spend up to about $50, so that gave me a lot of choices. I settled on a program called On The Job. The interface is very utilitarian and Mac like, but its ability to create very professional looking invoices makes it a huge time saver for me.

You create clients and then jobs for the clients. Like many good Mac applications, you can organize things however you want. I created folders under each client for year, month and project (some clients have multiple projects that need to be tracked separately). I also created folders for the invoices (I do 1 invoice per client no matter how many projects). It allows you to round your time to the nearest 15 minutes (and a few other options). So far none of my clients has had issues with the way the invoices come out; I had one minor issue that I alerted the developer about and he said he might consider it for the future. The feature is that I work on the same task over many days and I'd like to just be able to record the task, start and stop the timer, and when the invoice is generated, have it create separate line items for each day. Say I work on bugs for 3 days straight, in the main view, I'd like to see Hours: 24, Start Date Monday, End Date Wednesday, but on the invoice have 3 lines.

The template editor for customizing invoices is very flexible and easy to use. I created a template, made a few tweaks and now I just crank out invoices every month with a few clicks. It also has this slick idle timer so if I start the timer and then walk away, when I come back, it asks me if I want to subtract my idle time.

Pros

• Idle timer acts as a reminder when you forget to turn off the timer.
• Flexible invoicing.
• Ability to organize client and projects in pretty much any way you want.
• Easily handle multiple clients with different rates.
• Can setup rounding separately for each client.

Cons

• Timer button from menubar is kind of useless for me due to my hierarchy of client, year, month, project. (At least the part to select a task.)
• Timing Sessions aren't that useful to me as it lumps all the sessions for 1 task into 1 line item on the invoice; if it separated it out, it would work better for me.

Summary

On The Job is almost perfect for me. I've been using it every work day for the last 3 months and other than a few nits here and there, the app works flawlessly and is out of the way. I have it running just about all the time and it definitely works better (for me) than any other solution I've found. I know that other people have more complex time tracking and invoicing needs, but On The Job was well worth the $39 I spent on it.

Three months of self employment

It's now been 3 months since I left my job and became self employed. As I wrote after my first month of being self employed, things are still going quite well. I really like my projects and even though I was recently put on a rush project, I like being able to show something for what I do every day. It should have been no surprise to me that enjoying work affects my whole life, but it is quite easy to forget it as I've been wrapped up in my work for my entire career.

While I wasn't on the wrong track with my life, I now feel that things are going much better with me having time to relax. My side projects are kind of in a limbo state at the moment and will be winding down in the next few months. I've decided to not take on side projects for awhile which will be a huge change for me as I've had side projects going on (for the most part) since I left college 15 years ago.

I don't claim to be a life coach or a motivational speaker, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt. I'm quite pleased with how things have worked out for me and am I'm going to do my best to keep on the same track and push work a little down in my priority list (work a full work week, but don't work like a mad man).

Review: Syma S107 RC Helicopter

As a child, I had RC (radio controlled) cars a few times and enjoyed playing with them. However, they ate batteries like no tomorrow and since they weren't rechargeable, play time was quite short. Years later, the battery technology has gotten a lot better and rechargeable batteries are in almost everything. As an adult, I've owned an RC Hummer and an RC hovercraft, but have never owned a helicopter. I've always been fascinating with them; however, I never made the leap into owning one.

Last week I was looking for something on the Internet and came across an advertisement for a company that sells RC helicopters. After a little research, I found a very beginner helicopter, the Syma S107, for about $30. I decided to give it a try knowing that it was a toy and I didn't expect a whole lot from it given that some helicopters I saw cost significantly more.

Once I received the helicopter, I plugged it into USB and charged it for 45 minutes or so. My first few tries were not very good and had hard or crash landings. The blades are quite durable and seemed to handle my poor flying (however, I did order some additional main blades and tail blades off eBay).

Flying a helicopter is definitely not like driving an RC car; once you take your finger off the throttle, it immediately falls to the ground and crashes. Also, hovering isn't as easy as just making it lift off the ground and leaving it there. You have to continuously adjust it to keep it in one place. I'm now 3 days into it and am starting to make progress at controlling it. My office is quite large and allows me some room to fly, but I keep hitting my desk chair (yes, I should move) or the base of my punching bag.

This little helicopter has definitely piqued my interest in RC helicopters and I'll be going to a hobby store later this week to start drooling (I'm looking at the Blade mCX2).

I've been searching for a hobby for years; my hobby has always been writing software. However, I'm not really sure I can consider my work a hobby! I'm excited enough, that this little helicopter may have opened my eyes to something I didn't know could be fun.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Durable main blades
• Durable body and landing skids (haven't broken then, yet)
• Easy to charge with USB
• Replacement parts are cheap and readily available on eBay

Cons

• Infrared remote; you basically can't fly it outside and fluorescent lights could interfere with control.
• Short flight time
• Manual is poorly translated from Chinese
• A little difficult to master
• A lot of drift even with no wind; this could be all RC helicopters, but from what I've read, the better ones are easier to hover in place
• Tail rotor is easily broken (it comes with a spare, but I'm already using it)

Summary

For $30, this is definitely a fun toy. However, I wouldn't consider it a child's toy as it isn't easy to control. My 3 year old son drives my RC truck, but I wouldn't consider handing him the controls to the helicopter. If you've never flown an RC helicopter before, don't expect to be flying perfectly on the first flight. It will take some time to learn the controls and master flight.

The biggest downside I can see to this is that after the first taste of flight, you'll want to get something better!