14 DAY TRIAL // Project Calculator, a Mac OS X app that helps you keep track of and manage the time spent working on your projects, has been updated to version 3.0. According to Blue Banana Software, the most important new features are Quick Filters (allows activating often used filters with a single click), a menu icon to control Project Calculator without its main window, a pause period editor, reminders (supported by Growl), and tags.
Meant for small projects which don't need a fully featured project management system, Project Calculator allows you to manage several projects at the same time and, whenever you’re working on a project, you can create an entry containing information on your progress, as well as on the time you spent working.
The new Quick Filters feature also required the addition of a new button bar, which can be shown above the project list. It contains 4 quick filters - Today, This Week, This Month, This Year. By pressing one of these buttons, the corresponding filter is applied immediately.
The status menu item can pause, resume, stop and start timers. The Pause editor allows for pause periods to be edited manually, while Reminders displays a message in a predefined interval, listing running and/or paused timers, either using a standard alert message or Growl. As noted in the introduction, version 3.0 of Project Calculator also includes tags, which can be added to projects, timers and flat fee entries. Also worth noting is the option to open a customer's vCard right from within the customer editor flyout, should that customer be imported from Address Book. Other 3.0 changes include:
- New "Stop" toolbar item for stopping timers. - New "Add Flat Fee" toolbar item. - New "Find..." menu item with shortcut CMD-F. - Context menu in customer list. - Project and entry flyouts are now vertically resizable. - Web links can now be added as attachment. - "Select all" in description fields. - Some new icons. - Removed "Load" and "Save" toolbar items. - Changed font size in exported reports to 8pt.
Blue Banana has also improved general formatting of exported reports, removed Danish and Russian localizations (because of too few users speaking these languages), and fixed an issue where projects expanded when rearranging them via drag-and-drop.
Project Calculator 3.0 is available here. Users of Project Calculator 2 can update to the new version for US$9.99. Those who bought version 2 after August 1, 2008, will receive a free upgrade key shortly, the developer says. Project Calculator is currently in beta. Feedback is appreciated over at Blue Banana Software.