Product Reviews

Billings 3 is an update to Marketcircle's estimating, time tracking and invoicing application. It's simple to set up, with a logical workflow that centres around clients and projects. Clients can be created from scratch or imported from your Mac OS X Address Book. Projects comprise the work you do for that client and are shown in the revamped main window, which now features a small pane that gives a financial summary of work done for a client.

As you highlight a project in the window, slips, which record work done in that project, are shown in the pane below. Slips are created quickly through a simple dialog box, where you can choose their type - for example, timed or flat fee, or an expense. Depending on the stage the project is at, the slips will be either estimate or working slips - estimates can be turned into working slips using an option in the menu.

Recording time in this update is easy. You can start tracking an invoice either through a button in the project's window or by clicking an icon in the Mac OS X menu bar. Usefully, you don't need to assign it to a project immediately - you can do this later.

The greatest improvement in Billings 3 is the way that it deals with accounts. The Accounts window sports a revamped client account area, which shows a chronological list of estimates, invoices and statements relating to a selected client. It's a useful record of work, particularly as you can see the account balance shown at the bottom and send a statement to the client at the press of a button. We also like the way a client's icon now turns red as soon as an invoice sent to them becomes

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overdue, and the fact that you can group clients together, which makes for a neater appearance if you have a large client base.

Most useful are Billings 3's reporting functions. The near-doubling of available reports offers an insight into your business, whether it's a summary of all money billed and collected in the past month, or detailed timed and flat fee activity on any given project between two dates. The reporting functions are useful for internal purposes too, letting you, for example, view activity by a worker during a set period.

Several weaknesses of past versions of Billings have been addressed. You can now generate recurring invoices and include slips from different projects on the same invoice. Although, by default, only the current project's slips are included on an invoice, other work relating to that client is shown and can be added by checking a box. Billings 3 still isn't multi-user, but it does offer a workaround of sorts. You can create a list of workers in the program's preferences, which is accessible in the Slips window via a pull-down menu. The worker's name will appear in the resulting invoice next to their chargeable time, although it's a shame you can't set default rates for them in the same way you can for the main user of the program.

If you care about the way invoices and estimates look Billings has a lot to offer. The choice of invoice templates is excellent, with 18 new ones added to this version. You can also create your own through the Designer window, which lets you drag in artwork, including EPS and Photoshop files, over the drawing window. Dynamic text can be added to an invoice too, though we found little documentation on how to do this.

Billings isn't a contact manager in the same way as its sister application Daylite, so you can't use it to track potential leads. It does, however, integrate well with Daylite, contacts can be shared and you can add Daylite projects or opportunities as estimates or working slips in Billings.

Unless you need multi-user access, Billings' ease of use and power sets it apart, and the improvements here cement its position as the premier time-tracking and invoicing application on the Mac.