Thumbs up: the busiest mite.account has created more than 100,000 time entries by now. But even if we put this spike aside, we’re seeing more and more accounts with five-digit data. Which is absolutely great—besides one fact: those huge figures brought the Excel/CSV export feature (which can be found under the tab »Reports => Time Entries«) down to their knees.

Time for a rebuild! Thanks to today’s update, even huge data sets can now be exported reliably. Furthermore, we were able to significantly accelerate the export. It is now up to three times faster. Ready, set, go, to your next 100,000 time entries!

Julia in Tech talk, New features

You answered the mail, made your customer happy, and closed the deal. Now, you could move your hand away from the keyboard over to the mouse, click the tab »Time tracking«, search for the running timer, and click to stop it. Or, you could simply type s.

Keyboard shortcuts are here! From today on, all main features can be triggered this way, too. Keyboard shortcuts can be a real time saver—we do recommend to take five minutes to memorize them.

Amongst other things, the new shortcuts support time tracking actions and navigating tabs. To see the whole package, please press ? (in mite). If your cursor is active in an input field, please press esc first to leave the field.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to speed up your time tracking considerably thanks to the brand spanking new keyboard shortcuts. Please get in touch if you happen to stumble upon a bug, or if you have any ideas on how to improve them. Merci!

Julia in New features

When accessing mite on the web, we offered optional HTTPS from very early on. Today, we switched to HTTPS-only. Thus, the connection between your browser and our servers will always be encrypted. Just like in online banking.

HTTPS is especially helpful when you access mite over an unsecured Internet connection like a public wi-fi network. There are no disadvantages to HTTPS for you. Therefore, HTTPS is always activated.

Besides switching to HTTPS-only, we launched some more updates to improve the security of mite. For example, if you forgot your password, mite will now e-mail you a link to change your password yourself. We introduced the same process to inviting new team members to your account. Several updates in the background accompany these changes, e.g. stronger algorithms for password encryption.

While we work hard to secure your data, you can help, too. The best point to start is to choose a secure password which you only use in mite. A secure password cannot be found in a dictionary. It consists of at least eight characters, and it mixes letters, numbers, and special characters.

API developers, listen up please!

We will switch our API to HTTPS-only, too. If you do not access the API via HTTPS yet, please update your code. Starting March 30th, the mite.api won’t accept HTTP requests anymore. Hopefully, five weeks will be more than enough time to change your code unhurriedly. Please support this update and help make mite more secure!

Julia in New features

The bar charts on your dashboards, project reports, and shared reports just leveled up! Now, they’re not only able to display all hours or revenues, but also detailed information on services, projects, customers, or team members.

On your dashboard, hover your mouse over a section of the snake chart of services, projects, or customers. The bar chart will highlight those hours or revenues then. On project reports or shared reports, the bar chart behaves likewise: Hover your mouse over a row of a service or team member to see those hours highlighted in the bar chart.

Hopefully, this small update will help you to understand and analyze your time entries more in-depth!

Julia in New features

They’ve arrived! After hundreds of user suggestions and amazing input during concept phase, they finally launched today: more flexible hourly rates in mite.

You can now specify an hourly rate per customer, per project, or per service. Furthermore, the default hourly rate of a service can now be adapted per customer or per project.

Sounds complex? It is—in the background, at least. Nevertheless, we hope that you won’t have to rack your brains. We iterated for months to build the simplest interface possible. You’ll probably have to think it over once—but after that, mite will handle the complexity for you. So let’s get started, let us guide you through the details!

Hourly rate per service

Under the tab »Services«, you can still specify one hourly rate per service. The revenue of a time entry will be calculated with this service hourly rate if you did not tell mite to do otherwise on the corresponding customer or project.

Hourly rate per customer

Under the tab »Customers«, you will now find three options how to handle hourly rates. For each customer, you can tell mite to apply

• the default hourly rates of the services, or
• one hourly rate, no matter the service, or
• special hourly rates per service.

In the above screenshot, we chose to set the hourly rate for our customer »Acme« to $80. Those $80 will be applied to all time entries of this customer. The service of those time entries won’t affect their hourly rate then.

Hourly rate per project

The hourly rate of a customer serves as the default for all of his projects. Under the tab »Projects«, you can override this default.

For each project, you’ll again find three options. In the above screenshot, we chose to set the hourly rate for our project »ReDesign Website« to $70, whereas usually, the hourly rate of »Acme« is $80.

Customer- and project-specific hourly rates per service

While working with hourly rates per service, you might want to adapt the default service hourly rate per customer or per project every now and then. Now, this is possible.

To override the default hourly rate of a service, head over to the tab »Customers« or »Projects« first, and select the customer or the project in question. Choose the option »Special rates per service«, and pick those service from the select menue for which you’d like to adapt the hourly rate. The current default hourly rate will still be applied to those services that were not picked from the select menue.

Updating hourly rates

If you edit the hourly rate of a customer, a project, or a service, mite will ask you how to handle old time entries that were tracked for this customer, this project, or this service in the past.

If you do not check the update checkbox, the altered hourly rate will only apply to future time entries aka time entries that will be tracked after you edited the hourly rate.

If you check the update checkbox, the altered hourly rate will apply to all time entries, old ones and new ones, locked ones and unlocked ones. mite will re-calculate the revenue on all existing time entries for this customer, this project, or this service.

View hourly rates under »Reports => Time entries«

Under the tab »Reports => Time entries«, you can check which hourly rate applies to a specific time entry. Hover your mouse over the revenue of a time entry to see if it’s the hourly rate of a customer, a project, or a service.

Reorganize easily with bulk edit

Some of you added lots of different services to deal with customer- or project-specific service hourly rates. Now, you might want to tidy up? To do this with ease, bulk edit is on your side. Every administrator can access this feature under the tab »Reports => Time entries«. Click on the button »Bulk edit« there. For example, bulk edit is helpful to change the service on lots of time entries at once.

Feedback?

We do hope you find the new hourly rates useful! We’d be so happy if they could help you to manage even complex requirements without standing in the way. Please get in touch if you happen to stumble upon a bug, or if you have any feedback on how they’re working out for you. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Julia in New features

Four months ago, a third-party developer got in touch by e-mail. He asked us to check out the private beta of his iPhone app with full mite.support, Anytime. We did. We gazed. We were amazed. This guy did nothing less than a fully-featured mite for iPhone, out of the blue!

Time tracking, management of customers, projects, and services, as well as detailed reporting, and export features to Dropbox on top. Anytime was a real deal, and got even better during the following months when we were invited to witness the ongoing improvements.

Today, Anytime is finally officially available on the App Store. It’s $4.99. Congrats to the launch, Josef Materi, and thanks for your dedication!

Anytime video on Vimeo

Anytime joins a duo of iPhone add-ons for mite: one, our own version optimized for the mobile Safari browser, two, mite.go, the native app developed by Daniel Rinser and Victor Saar. Our mobile version focuses on time tracking only, mite.go enables you to track your times and to manage customers, clients, and services. Thus, we’d like to especially encourage you to check out Anytime if reporting on the go is important to you.

Please note: Anytime communicates with your mite.account through the mite.api, our open data interface. You’ll have to allow API access for your account first, so the app will be able to work properly. Click on your user name in the upper right-hand corner of mite to allow API access.

If you give Anytime a try, please be so kind to take a minute to leave a review on the App Store, or a comment right here. You’ll not only support Josef in improving his app, but you’ll also help other users with your opinion. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Julia in New features, Add ons

Smartphone users, prick up your ears: there’s an app for your Palm Pre or Palm Pre2 now, too. In mite.touch, you can either track your time with a built-in timer, or you can add hours manually. You can manage your customers, projects, and services right in the app as well.

mite.touch is a 3rd party tool. It’s available from the App Catalog for $4.99, a one-time fee. Thanks so much for your great work, ZenAppStudios!

Please note: mite.touch communicates with your mite.account through the mite.api, our open data interface. You’ll have to allow API access for your account first, so mite.touch will be able to work properly. Click on your user name in the upper right-hand corner of mite to allow API access.

Julia in New features, Add ons

The most important input field of mite, the duration of a time entry, supports a variety of notations to track your time: the bare number of hours, time frames with a starting time and ending time as well as basic arithmetic operations. From today on, this input field got even more flexible. It’s a small update, but hopefully one that’ll save you some precious seconds day by day!

Timer quickstart

If you append a + to any input in the field »hours«, mite will start the timer on the new time entry right away. You can combine the plus-sign with bare hours, time ranges, and basic arithmetic operations.

E.g., 0:10+ creates a 10 minutes time entry with a running timer, 8 11:30+ creates a time entry with a running timer with the time frame from 8:00 to 11:30am as a note, and 2*3+ creates a six hour time entry with a running timer.

Time frames

0:00* or * is a new shortcut to create a time entry with a running timer including the time frame as a note. The starting time is the current time; The ending time will increment automatically as long as the timer is ticking.

If you append * to any input in the field »hours«, mite will add the time frame as a note. You can combine the asterisk with bare hours and basic arithmetic operations: e.g., enter 0:10* if you worked from 10 minutes earlier until now.

Furthermore, you won’t have to type in the rather unconvenient colons anymore. mite now supports four-digits, too. Type 0800 1230 if you worked from 8:00 to 12:30.

Cheat sheet

Don’t remember all input options yet? Please head over to the time input cheat sheet, you’ll find an overview of all notations there, old and new. You can reach this cheat sheet right from your mite.account, too: simply click on the question mark on the right-hand side of the field »hours«.

All notations are supported on your desktop browsers as well as your mobile browsers, e.g. on your iPhone or your smartphone running Android. Hopefully, this small update will be helpful and speed up tracking your time a little bit!

Julia in New features

Your project at a glance—that’s what a convincing project report should be all about. Three years ago, we designed the now-former version of the project reports in mite. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve learned a great deal about which information is really relevant for a project. So much, that we decided to go back to start. And redesign the project reports from scratch.

Today, we’re extremely happy to lift the curtain, finally: here they are, meet your brand spanking new project reports!

Slimmed-down project header

We reduced the info shown in the header area rigorously. There are only a few key figures that are always worth your attention: the total hours, the total revenue plus the budget if there is one. Thus, the new project reports feature only those figures in the project header—period. Focus is what counts.

Activity graph

Below, the new project reports display an activity graph, a timeline of your project. The resolution of the bar chart adapts to the total duration of the project: each bar represents either a month, a calendar week or a day.

Hours & revenue per service or team member

The third area of the project report breaks down hours and revenue per service. mite shows the total for each service and its percentage. The color code should make it easy to spot A, B and C services at first glance, from an hourly perspective as well as a financial one.

You can switch this section from »Services« to »Team« to analyze hours and revenue per team member.

All time entries / unlocked / locked

On every project report, you might choose if all time entries should be analyzed, or unlocked ones only, or locked ones only. All areas of the report will adapt accordingly: the key figures in the header, the bar chart as well as the service / team section.

Removed: list of all single time entries

On the new project reports themselves, you won’t find a list of all single time entries any more. Instead, click on the total hours, on the total revenue or on the new button »Show time entries« in the sidebar to navigate to the tab »Reports => Time entries« which will be pre-filtered by project then.

In our opinion, this reduces complexity—which is always a good thing. Under the tab »Report => Time entries«, mighty tools to analyze and export time entries are available already. We’re convinced that an easily accessible link to this tab is far better than to dublicate all of those features on every single project report. Two, this change speeds things up a great deal: even big projects with several hundreds or thousands time entries now load in a snap.

Shared reports

The new project reports can still be shared; we redesigned those shared reports accordingly. There’s one new setting though: you can choose whether or not you’d like to include all single time entries on the shared report. If you activate this option, a slimmed-down version of »Reports => Time entries« will be displayed. Thus, you’re customer can filter, group, and sort the time entries of this report by himself. Also, he can export those time entries to Excel or as a .CSV file.

This setting is disabled by default. On those reports that were shared already, we disabled it, too. Please enable it yourself if you’d like to grant your customer this little extra transparency.

Some tech-stuff on the new charts

On the new project reports, we got rid of the old Flash charts. Thus, all charts can be viewed without a special browser plugin, and printed without a hassle. As a bonus point, we had another look at printing in general and improved this part of mite, too.

Feedback?

We do hope you find the new project reports useful! Please tell us if you stumble upon any bugs or if you have any feedback on how they’re working out for you. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Julia in New features

iPhone, Android and Palm Pre users have been enjoying the mobile version of mite for a pretty long while now. Today, it’s BlackBerry time, finally!

mite for mobiles, which is a version optimized for small displays, is now available on all BlackBerrys running the new operating system BlackBerry 6; by now, these are the following devices:

• BlackBerry Torch 9800
• BlackBerry Bold 9780
• BlackBerry Style 9670

To get mite for mobiles on your BlackBerry, you won’t have to install an app. Simply point the browser of your BlackBerry to your known login address – done. mite detects your device automatically and serves the simplified view, optimized for a fast mobile experience. With this mobile version, you can track your hours manually or with a timer. Time entries can be edited, deleted or moved to another date.

Please note: Today’s release is a so-called beta, which means that it’s a first approach, a test version. So please: if you stumple upon a bug, get in touch with a detailed description! Thanks to those details, we can find a bug much faster – and get rid of it. Thanks up front for supporting us!

Julia in New features