[TriLUG] Mildly OT: Self employment tools survey

[Steve Litt]

On Thursday 11 June 2009 10:42:52 am Joseph Tate wrote:

> So I know a few of you are self employed, run a small business, or at
> least do consulting work on the side.  What tools do you use?  What do
> you like about them/hate about them?
>
> I was recommended http://getharvest.com for time/project
> tracking/invoicing,
[clip]
> What do you use for project tracking?  Invoicing?  Bookkeeping?

PROJECT TRACKING:

If you mean tracking what I've achieved and what remains to be done, I use 
VimOutliner (http://www.vimoutliner.org). 

If you mean timekeeping I use a simple perlscript with command line args 
function, customer and tasktext. Function can be BEGIN, END, and CREATE. 
BEGIN ends any task now running and starts a new one. END ends the current 
task. CREATE queries you for the time and duration of a task instead of using 
the system clock.

I don't do much time-based billing any more so I never completed all the 
features of this program. The CREATE function needs refinement, and a 
matching _END_ needs to be coded, and there's no function for turning the 
time log into a report or invoice, although that would be almost trivial 
because the time log is so easy to parse. Besides, the time log is human 
readable.

INVOICING:

I use Vim. I started time based invoicing Fall of 1987. My first three 
invoices were made in WordPerfect 4.2, and then I decided it would be better 
to have everything straight text, so that's what I've done ever since.

If I were writing 10 invoices a week this would be a hassle, but for 1 or 2 
per week it's no big deal. About a year ago, research for a web article had 
me looking at my invoices from the early 1990's. They were still perfectly 
readable because they were text.

These days some people want invoices for books they purchase from me. I make 
the invoices text from a template, then use enscript and ps2pdf to PDF them. 
But the text is still there. I use the same technique to invoice for courses 
I teach.

BOOKKEEPING:

I use a shoebox and an accountant. I aced Intermediate Accounting 1 and 2, and 
in doing so realized I'd need to be a whole lot better accountant in order to 
take care of my stuff. Hence the shoebox.

My book sales are in Gnumeric spreadsheets, one per year. Go ahead and laugh, 
it works. When teaching courses, I keep the invoice and 
check-scan/paypal-receipt in a directory just for that customer. It's enough 
to reconcile at tax time, or quickly add up my revenue for the year. I scan 
the expense receipts from the course into the same directory so revenue, 
expense and profit from the trip can be calculated.

ABOUT ONLINE SERVICES

You mentioned http://getharvest.com, which is an online service. I have 
nothing at all against paying someone for good software. The problem is, I'd 
feel a lot more comfortable having this kind of data on my own hard disk. If 
getharvest.com were bought by incompetents or scofflaws who lost control of 
your invoice data (and thus your client's trade secrets), you'd be on the 
hook for it. If your clients were in the medical industry such a problem 
would probably open you up to a HIPPA lawsuit.

I don't like letting others control important data. Offsite backups are a 
necessity, but beyond that, not a fan.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt