“I love doing expense reports,” said no one ever.

Rifling through receipts and tallying up expenses at the end of each month is a necessary evil.  Necessary for running your biz, and evil because it’s just plain boring.

But did you know that Freckle can help track your expenses & line items without you wanting to pull your hair out?

In fact, you may even feel the urge to polka dance.  That’s how easy it is to track your expenses in Freckle.

A little confused?  This 2 minute video will explain it all!

On every individual project page, you can enter the price and description of an expense under the “Expenses & Line Items” section.

You have the option to apply a tax to your expense, or to include a negative expense.

When you create your next invoice, all unpaid expenses and line items will be included, and Freckle will do all the work for you!

There’s no need for currency symbols because the default currency symbol of your invoice will be applied to whatever expenses or line items you have.

In your invoice, you can include any taxes you need to, and Freckle will take care of that pesky expense math.

You may just end up saying that you love expenses after all.

Have a great idea for Freckle?  Send us your suggestions at [email protected] or stop by the Freckle Lounge and chat with the Freckle Team!

Something shiny and new is taking over Freckle.  Oh yeah, and it’ll save you time while making you money!

Multi-project invoicing is in the house ya’ll.

Now you can send your client one invoice for all of your work, instead of creating four or five different invoices to send the same client.

There are two ways you can create a multiple project invoice.

The first way is by configuring your projects under one group/client.  Then, in your active projects list, view your projects “by group” and you’ll see an “+ new invoice” button showing you the total uninvoiced hours & expenses for the group’s projects.

The second way is by running a report on a group of projects, or more than one project. At the top of your report, where you’ll find the “Download as CSV” and “Save Permanently” buttons, there will be a shiny new “+ invoice” button for you to click on.

When you invoice your client for multiple projects, you can use the “append a full report to this invoice” option to show your client the breakdown of all projects in the invoice over time.

And for all of you Frecklers who don’t need to invoice a client for multiple projects, we’ve got a little treat for you too.

You can now create a new invoice from your active projects list and from within a report!

In your active projects list, next to any project with uninvoiced hours or expenses, you’ll see a shiny “+ new invoice” button.

You’ll also find a shiny new “+ invoice” button at the top of any report with uninvoiced hours or expenses in it.

We’ve been working super hard to get you and your team multiple project invoicing.  But it’s still a beta feature, so if you see something out of the ordinary email us at [email protected] or stop by the Freckle Lounge to tell us about it.

We know that time tracking is not your favorite thing to do — you’re out there creating awesome products & services!

That’s why, at Freckle, we try to create features that make the process of tracking your time feel less like work.

A few months ago, in our June Feature Update post, we briefly mentioned that it’s easier than ever to invite people to your Freckle account.  In fact, you can bring the whole team at once.

You can invite one or more people to your Freckle account by clicking on the pink ‘invite people’ button at the top of your screen.

If you’re inviting more people to your team, CONGRATS!  Go ahead and give yourself on the back because that means you’re biz is growing.

You can invite all of your team members by either typing their email address in the “invite people box”, or dragging their email from your email client into the “invite people box”.

You can enter just the person’s email address or you can include their first and last name with their email address.

If you include the person’s first and last name, those fields will be pre-filled when you team member logs in for the first time.

Once you’ve included all of the team members you want to invite, just assign them to a role — team member, admin, or freelancer — and click ‘add people & send invitation emails’.

That’s all there is to it! Let us know what you think at [email protected] or drop into the Freckle Lounge and give us some feedback.

Today we wanted to tell you about another great way to log your time in Freckle: through your commit messages! That’s right, we’ve built service hooks for Github and Beanstalk. Any commit message with a special time format will log time in Freckle, which will include the full commit message and a link to the commit itself. That way, you’ll know exactly what you worked on and won’t have to try to match your Freckle time to your code changes. Your commit message can even include Hashtags!

Setup

There are two guides for getting your repository linked with Freckle, one for Github and one for Beanstalk.

Here are some important rules that must be followed for the service hook to work:

• The email for your Github or Beanstalk account must match your email in Freckle, Otherwise we will be unable to track your time. Thankfully, Changing your email address in Freckle is really easy.
• If you are using Github: The Project name you want to use must already exist in Freckle. You can create a new project right from the dashboard.
• Time will only be logged in Freckle if the committer is already a Freckle User. You can now add your entire team to Freckle in just a few steps.

Formatting

Add time to your commit message using square brackets containing the key f: followed by the amount of time you’d like to log.

For example:

• [f:5m] will log 5 minutes
• [f:1] will log 1 hour
• [f:1h] will also log 1 hour
• [f:5] will log 5 hours
• [f:10] will log 10 minutes

The [f:xx] syntax provides the same smart time parsing features as the Quick Entry box.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of how you can specify time:

• m, min, mins, minute, minutes – Sets the time in minutes (i.e. 15m)
• h, hr, hrs, hour, hours – Sets the time in hours (i.e. 1h)
• d, day, days – Sets the time in working days (i.e. 1d would be 8 hours)
• 4 – Sets the time in hours
• 4,15 / 4.15 / 4:15 – Sets time in hours and minutes

The rest of your message will be used to create tags and description. The syntax is exactly the same as the TAGS/DESCRIPTION field in the Quick Entry box.

For example:

"fixed some #bugs with our latest feature [f:1.5h]" 

The f:xx part will not show up as part of the description in Freckle.

We want to hear from you!

Are you a developer who’s using Freckle, or someone manages developers? Let us know how we can make your time tracking experience even easier! We’re looking at how to improve the experience of developers are using Freckle, so email, tweet, or write to us on Facebook with your suggestions!

You never have to remember your Freckle subdomain ever again. Say what?!

That’s right, now you can sign in from the Freckle homepage and we’ll remember your subdomain for you.

When you sign in from the Freckle homepage, you’ll go directly to a log in screen where you can enter the email address and password associated with your Freckle account.

If you have multiple Freckle accounts under one email address, Freckle will ask you which one you’d like to log in to.

You can also reset your password from the log in screen you’re directed to.

And, if you have multiple Freckle accounts under one email address, you can reset your password for all of your accounts at the same time!

You’ll get an email from us letting you know which accounts you’ve changed the password for.

Got an idea?  Let us know at [email protected] or drop into the Freckle Lounge and tell us about it!

Hey there Frecklers! It’s been a busy month, and we want to let you know about all the great things we’ve done to make your time-tracking experience even better. Not only did we roll out Hashtags, which are awesome and you should migrate your account right now (seriously, it will be done before you finish reading this blog post), but we’ve also made some smaller changes that you might want to know about.

Bring your team!

We’re really happy about this one: it’s now super easy to invite people to your Freckle account. All you have to do is type the email address of everyone you want to invite, pick their role, and Freckle will do the rest!

You can even drag and drop from your email client!

HELP WITH ALL THE THINGS!

Lost, stuck, or wanna be a Freckle master?

Just look for these help icons we’ve put all over!

They’ll take you right to the help page you need, so you don’t have to go searching around.

We’ve also put up some great new help content to make sure you get help as quickly as possible should you need it. We know that tracking time can be a chore and we’re here to make your life easier, not harder.

Project and Invoices now remember how you group them

Freckle will now automatically remember what you last picked, which means it takes one less mouse click to look at your projects and invoices the way you want to. For example, if you group by unvoiced projects on the projects page, Freckle will show you the same grouping the next time you load up the projects page. No need to configure anything.

Imports now auto-detect UK dates

Sometimes your imports would get confused because you were using the UK date format (which is DD/MM/YYYY, instead of MM/DD/YYYY like in the US). Well, that shouldn’t happen anymore, because we’ve come up with a way to auto-detect if your import uses UK dates. (In some cases we can’t auto-detect, and then we assume US format.)

Login directly from the Freckle Homepage

You can now log in directly from Freckle’s homepage (sign in button on the upper right!) without having to know your Freckle subdomain or log in URL. If you’re a member of multiple Freckle accounts, we’ll let you pick the one you want to go to.

Using Windows 8? Freckle now has a shiny tile & icon when you pin it to your Start screen!

Now you can show off the time-tracking app that makes you money whenever you take your Surface out and about!

Here’s how you pin your Freckle account to your Start screen.

You can now download all your tags as a CSV file

With the click of a button, you’re now able to export all of your tags, so you can use them in other places. We even let you know if it’s billable.

Oh, and we’re on Facebook now!

Freckle is on Facebook now, and we’d love it if you’d like us.

Got any ideas on how we make your Freckle experience even better? Leave a comment, shoot us an email or tweet us your thoughts!

Don’t like our classic tagging system that sometimes can clutter up your Freckle account? Want sleek-looking Hashtags instead? Watch the video to learn all about Hashtags!

Check out the transcript of this video below!

This summer we wanted to make a splash!  Start things off right and look good doing it.

So we decided to give tags a major make-over.  It wasn’t easy and it got a little ugly, but we can proudly introduce to you, HASHTAGS!

Gone are the days of 1 to 2 word tags.  Hashtags can be up to 50 characters long and just like in your Twitter or Facebook account, they can’t have spaces.  If you need to use a space, just type the underscore key.

When you use hashtags, you avoid accidentally creating too many tags that clutter your Freckle account. Too many!

No more confusion.  No more silly song and dance to keep tags from becoming descriptions and descriptions from becoming tags.

That’s because anything you type without a hash sign (#) at the beginning will automatically become a description.

Aaand best of all, hashtags make for a more mouse free entry. You can quickly tab through your choices just by typing the first letter of your tag.

Like what you see? Let us know on Twitter and #hashtagthatshhh.

If you don’t have hashtags enabled yet, visit our guide on migrating your account, it’s quick and easy!

And, visit us on Twitter and let us know what you think!

You’re busy creating—and time tracking is probably low on your list of priorities. At Freckle, we try to get out of your way by providing a fast-loading and friendly app to get your time entries logged quickly.

But wouldn’t it be great if Freckle comes to you instead of you having to go to Freckle?

Introducing our weekly activity reports! Punctually every Monday morning (in your local timezone!) we will deliver you a personalized weekly activity report email, showing everything you’ve logged for the previous week, including the mini-pulse!

The best thing? One click will take you to a report in Freckle, where you can edit entries or add time that you forgot to log (we’re human, after all). For your business, it’s important that you don’t miss out on logging billable time and the weekly reports will help getting you paid for your hard work!

And for admins of bigger teams, we’ll additionally send you a weekly report of all time logged by everyone for the previous week (we’re truncating emails that would get too long, but you’ll be able to get the gist of it plus review all hours via a link to a Freckle report!)

In our efforts to save you time, we’ll automatically stop sending you reports if you don’t log time for a while (so you don’t have to read these emails!), but you can also choose either not receive Freckle’s weekly time reports at all or just until you log time again.

You can also edit your report preferences in the new Notifications section under Settings & Tools in Freckle.

Look for your weekly report in your inbox!

We have good news for those of you who don’t have a need create invoices (or if you roll your own invoicing), or if you need to use an external app for it (maybe because your accountants make you do it!)—Freckle now supports turning invoicing off altogether.

To turn it off, you need to be logged in as the account owner Go to admin then Settings.

To disable invoicing, uncheck the checkbox and click “Save settings”. The change will take place immediately, but you can always re-enable invoicing again.

The settings page will show you in detail what will happen and how Freckle deals with any existing invoices you may have in your account (we’ll just hide them for later, so you can restore ‘em).

With our HTML invoice customization that’s available in our small, medium and large plans, it’s easy to make your Freckle invoices extra stylish. Here’s how you do this with a font from Google Web Fonts.

First, choose the font you like of course. Here we’re picking Open Sans, and select the normal, bold and italic styles so we can have some extra fun. Next, copy the link element that’s generated for you.

Then, just paste it into your Freckle invoice customization. _Be sure to replace http:// with https://_ in the link element so your invoices will show correctly on all browsers. To apply the new font to the invoice and the optional report, use a CSS style rule that targets the #invoice and #invoice_report elements, and sets the font-family.

To have some extra fun, let’s try out Freckle’s new support for Markdown in the description and footer fields in your invoice. Markdown is a simple formatting language that allows you to easily add extra headlines as well as \*\*bold\*\* and \_italic\_ text to your Freckle invoice:

This even works with our new PDF downloads for invoices! Here’s an example of a Freckle-generated PDF invoice! And there you have it, amazing-looking customized invoices, and it took just a few minutes to set up!

The best thing? In a month from now, when you generate the next invoice for the client, Freckle remembers all your settings and your invoice will look gorgeous with no extra effort needed!

With our invoice customization, you can do some pretty fancy things. Check out this live example of a shared Freckle invoice!

Here’s the customization code for this invoice: