Billings is designed to monitor and track who much work you do and how much you can charge for it. It a simple way to make sure you don’t under cut your profits and you charge your clients at the correct rate. Its not designed as accounting software to tell you how much you are making, however that is not the focus of the application.

This app is split into 4 main areas. The first section contains the majority of the tools which you end up working with, this is known as the projects section. In the sidebar you have your client lists, as well as a general section which you use to generate overall reports and view all of the time slips. Within the main section of the app you have a projects section which you use to setup a project for a client. A client can have more than one project associated to them. The third section which you will use a lot is the time slips section, this is used to record the time and costs associated with a project. The final section is the “Accounts” section. This is where you send invoices and estimates to a client and track there results. It has plenty of tools to see who has paid and what stage a project is at.

This application, which seems simple on the outside, has plenty of features. I am going to walk you through how you set up a project can calculate the cost. When you first start out you need to add a client, the clients information can either come from address book (if you have worked with them before you have used Billings) or from information you have entered yourself. Once as a client has been added you need to generate there project folder. As mentioned clients can have more than one project. When you enter a project you can enter some limited details such as start and end date, you can also link a folder to specific files.

Once the project folder has been set up you can now begin to add estimate and working slips. Estimate slips can be used to send to a client before you begin work, this is a good way to track how much a project a cost and who you have sent an estimate to. The accounts section tracks when you have sent invoices so you can keep on top of things.

After you have sent your estimate you can now begin to work. Within the “Working Slips” section you can add expenses which are either timed, flat, quantity, mileage or a general expense. All of these expenses are added to the project so you can keep track of exactly what you are doing. One very nifty feature is the ability to track a cost for the client for the amount of time worked. For example if you charge £20 an hour and you have worked for 5 hours 37 minutes this will show up on the cost sheet. This means you don’t over or under charge your client.

Once you have tracked every little cost you can now generate an invoice. Invoices, estimates and reports are all added to a template. You can pick a default template or make your own. This does make invoices look a lot smarter and allows you to look more professional. Invoices are calculated on all of the costs and work in taxes and any other expenses.

The final section is the accounts section. All invoices and estimates end up in this section. A client has a specific accounts section which tracks how much they have paid, how much is outstanding and any retainer applied to the account. This is a simple way of seeing how much someone owes for the work you have done. Any overdue payments are shown in red in the sidebar so you can see who’s payments are late.

There are more features to this application, such as generate reports for the amount earned over a certain period, however I want to wrap this review up. To conclude this application is very easy to use. After you have read the support manuals using the app is very simple. The estimates, working and reports section are very simple and provide you with a lot of information. The app also has a lot of small features to make your life a lot easier. If you own a business of any sorts, or are self employed it may be worth having a look at this app and see if it is right for you. It only costs $40, which I think is a bargin.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Billings – Professional Billing Application

Related posts:

1. Calories – Food Tracking Application
2. Witch – A Different Application Switcher
3. Timelog – Track How Long Your Work

At first I didn’t really know what to do with Berokyo. After running through the Wizard which picked my most used items and having a read through the quick start guide didn’t feel I could use the application. However, I persisted and after creating a couple of my own cabinets of files the application grew on me. Berokyo is designed as a quick start system. You make a cabinet of your most used applications (or other files) and you can then quickly access them at a touch of a button.

Each cabinet is kind of like having a stack, except its more versatile. From using the shortcut, you can quickly see what is in each cabinet. There is a search function to narrow down files if you have a larger cabinet. You can also use the slider in the bottom right to zoom in and out of the icons to get a better look at things.

Within each cabinet you can add categories to organise things more, these can be expanded and collapsed. The whole app is centred around organising your stuff and making sure you can get to it. Once as you use the app for a while it does become dead simple to use and is very useful. There is also plenty of customisation features allowing you to adjust the look and feel of the app.

There is a couple of problems I would like to address, first it runs from the menu bar, which is bad in itself but means it doesn’t have an option what you alt tab, this means switching back and forth between the app becomes very difficult. One problem with this app is its visual appeal. It doesn’t look very Mac like. some of the dialogue boxes look a bit rough and the general interface does need to be improved slightly. Having said that the core of the application works well.

Overall this application is useful. If you find you have files and folders every where but need a useful place to put them, Berokyo would do well. There is some problems but these would probably get improved in later issues. As always try it out and see what you think, it may be right up your street.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Berokyo – Desktop Organiser And Quick Launch

Related posts:

1. Desktop Curtain – Hide Your Desktop Icons
2. GeekTool – Geek Out Your Desktop
3. Together – Keep Your Files Together

Today I am going to review Stuf, a neat little clipboard manager that enables you to store more items on your clipboard, very useful if you do a lot of copy and pasting. There are hundreds of different clipboard managers out there, most of them are the same. Stuf, however, has one feature that sets it self apart, the ability to share your clipboard over a network. Interesting.

Collect Your Stuf

As mentioned in the blurb to this post, Stuf is a clipboard manager. Clipboard managers are designed to record more than one item to your clipboard, this enables you to generate a history of clipboard items which you can access later. Very useful if you are doing a lot of copying and pasting and want to review any items you may have copied to your clipboard. Stuf takes this concept and packages it a nice neat wrapper, making a well rounded application.

Stuf runs from the menu bar. Once as you set up a short cut for it to appear, there is a small window showing you you previously copied clipboard entries. The window shows your a preview of the text or image, from here it allows you to restore an item to the clipboard (so you can paste it into an application directly) or paste it from Stuf into your currently active application. Once as you get the hang of how the applications works, using the app is a doddle.

The menu bar option is basically a stripped down version of the app, it will store your latest clipboard entries in a list and allow you to select which ones you want to paste, very handy and and easy way to manage various items.

As mentioned Stuf also supports the ability to view other users clipboards over a local network. The app must be installed and running on both computers, although I haven’t tested this feature (I only have one Mac), it would be useful if you are working in an environment which called for you to quickly forward pieces of text or images to each other. There may be some security issues with using this type of feature, as well as this, apart from sending one or two items over the network I really don’t see why you couldn’t save what you wanted to send on a network storage device.

Overall this app works really well, the network clipboard is a nice feature although I wouldn’t see why you would want to use it. There are a couple of smaller features which I haven’t mentioned but would be useful to anyone who is thinking of using this app long term. As always try this app out and see what you think, as a clipboard manager it is great and works really well. It only costs €12.99 which is a great price.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Stuf – Share And Organise Your Clipboard

Related posts:

1. Clips – Get The Most Out Of Your Clipboard
2. Little Snitch – Snoop On Your Network
3. URLWell – Temporary Store URL’s

I must first state that I may end up comparing the application to Photoshop since I have used that app for many years. However Photoshop is very expensive and very good at what it does. Pixelmator is a lot cheaper, however it is designed for the every day user. So if I end up saying it doesn’t do a feature very well, i’m just being padantic. Its like comparing a family car to an Aston Martin. To get the best feeling for this app, download it and try it out.

Pixelmator is an image manipulator. It is designed for you to take an image (or a blank canvas), and have the tools available to you to change it and convert it as you see fit. This means you have brushes and erasers to make basic manipulations, and more advance tools such as Levels and Curves to tweak and adjust the image. Pixelmator has all of these.

The app is designed around lots of small floating palettes. Each of these palettes is designed to feature as something specific. For example the layers is in one palette, the Swatches is in another palette. All of these palettes have the same basic feel and operation making it easy to understand what each bit does. As a result working with the program is dead simple. It takes a while to learn what each bit does, but you soon master the operations of the app.

You can use the app for a variety of different pictures and images. Although the image shown above is rather poor, if you actually dedicate some time to developing your image there is lots of tools to help you. For example you have the Levels Tool, Curves, Exposure, Hue & Saturation plus plenty of Filters such as Distortion, Blur, Sharpen, Stylize and Half Tone. There is more small features which help you work with your image.

One of the biggest features of this program is the way it works and interact with the user. For example if you click on a tool in the palette it will enlarge as your select it, there is lots of highlights and shadows to help you user the program. Take, for example, the palette on the right to control Hue and Saturation. Its probably one of the best designed palettes. The controls move smoothly as your rotate the sliders round and there is lots of options to control how the image looks from a couple of simple options. This type of features are present throughout the program.

Overall this app runs very smoothly. Its designed to run from your graphics card, so the bigger your graphics card, the faster it will run. I really like this app after using it for a while. The $59 price tag is great for practically anyone. If you are in to image manipulation, download this app and try it out.

The only downside to this app is the learning curve. Once as you get the hand of how to use it, its a lot easier to use. Getting used to how the palettes change and works takes a while but you soon pick it up.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Pixelmator – Show Your Artistic Side

Related posts:

1. Keep Your Word – Language Learning Program
2. Brush Pilot – Fast Easy Brush Viewer
3. Timelog – Track How Long Your Work

The Daily Grind

As mentioned this app runs from the menu, this doesn’t mean you should take it lightly. Its split into six main sections (and one section to address the app specifically). Each covers a different section of your application from system to user. Each section has a variety of different options which will do something to your system.

There is quite a lot of options, as a new user you may be overwhelmed with what you can do, to summarise:

• Batch Tasks: Is used to set up batch tasks within MainMenu, allows you to run the tasks automatically.
• System: Repair disk permissions, activate cron scripts, clear caches, remove logs and temporary files, and rebuild various databases.
• Network: Clear DNS settings
• User: Clean caches (again) and do various system level stuff such as hiding and showing invisible Finder options.
• Applications: Allows you to quick restart and force quit apps.
• Disk Utility: Repair and Eject volumes.

There are quite a lot of different tasks, each do a different options. A lot are actually very useful. The app can also be used to access extra features on your system such as showing hidden files or relaunching the menu bar or dock.

When actually carrying out a task, such as clearing a cache, you do have to close all you program and restart your computer, which is slightly annoying. It does do a good job and if you are experiencing major slow downs this app may solve them for you.

Overall this is a good buy, it does a variety of tasks which you can automate to take the load off yourself. I don’t recommend you use every option everyday as it may have a detrimental effect on your Mac, however as a weekly or monthly run it is really useful. It does cost £15, which isn’t that bad. I’m not sure of the licensing conditions but it may be a good buy if you have a couple of Mac’s in the house, or your personally use your Mac alot and it has a lot of clutter.

As with every app featured on this site, download it and try it out. It may be the right app for yourself.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

MainMenu – System Tasks From The Menu Bar

Related posts:

1. CleanMyMac – Spring Clean Your Mac

Cleaning Things Up

Using this app, like most Mac apps is dead simple. Once as the app has run and searched through your Services options you are given a simple check list. These check list options relate to the services options on the menu.

To remove a service option you simply uncheck the box. When you are done you hit save and the changes will take effect. Its that simple. You can at a later date add them back in if you miss them.

This application is dead simple and I recommend you try it out.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

ServiceScrubber – Clean Up Service’s Menu

Related posts:

1. CleanMyMac – Spring Clean Your Mac
2. URLWell – Save URL’s For Later
3. Twitterific – The Best Twitter App For Mac

Compressing Files

Springy is the sort of application that should be included with the operating system. It has a very simple interface, yet has hundreds of little features which make it a well rounded application. When you run the program you are asked to create an archive (you can turn this off if you don’t need it). As mentioned it has a large focus on making and extracting compressed files such as zip, rar etc. Once as you have chosen a location for your archive you can begin adding files to the archive. You can add files through the file window, or dragging them into the window. You are then given the option of how you want to compress the files, and the level. The higher the compressing the smaller the file size, but the slower the file will run. You can also just store files which is very useful when you want to send files over the Internet.

When you add files to the archive (you can add as many or as little as you want) they are automatically compressed. You build your archive as you go along. This give you a lot of power over how the archive is built. Plus if you forget anything or make a mistake, it is really easy to remove a file, you just delete it out of the archive.

Extracting Files

Extracting files is just as easy as adding them to the archive. You can either drag files out, use the button on the toolbar, or extract all of the files out (again using a button on the tool bar. This will extract the files to your chosen destination. Since this app is designed to add and remove files, you can also add files to an existing archive, which makes it very useful as you generate files that need archiving.

Other Features

Everything is done through the single window show in the screen shot above. This make learning and understanding the application very simple. I picked up how to use this app in a couple of seconds. Other than the adding and extracting of individual files there is also a whole load of other options. As you can see there is the an image being rendered in the screen shot above, this also extends to being given more information when in column view, very similar to Finder.

You also get a search feature, which is useful for large archives. There is also a right click contextual menu, which I didn’t test but provides a shortcut for using the application. You can also add encryption (not sure of the length of the security keys but it will probably be strong), splitting of files into multiple archives of specific sizes. There is also the ability to edit files while it is in the archive, which could be very useful if you have just realised you have cocked something up before sending it some one.

Overall this is a brill app. There is a great deal of control on how you use your archives. It is not a simple matter of adding files and having to re-do it every time you go wrong. You can now control indiviual files and folders while you use your archive. Its a lot better than using the disk utility built into Mac OS X.

The only problem with this app is that doesn’t look very nice. The website has a beautiful design and I was expecting an application to match, however i’m just being picky. It also doesn’t have rar support when making archives, which is slightly annoying, it does have support for extracting files however.

I recommend you download and try this app out, it is really good and useful. It cost $19.95 which is a reasonable price for what you do get, but you would need to make and use a lot of archives to full justify the cost.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Springy – A Better File Compressor

Related posts:

1. GrandPerspective – View File Sizes
2. iFlicks – Your Videos To iTunes
3. Together – Keep Your Files Together

Learn Those Words

This app is designed for you to input words. It doesn’t have a built in dictionary, but I think it is better without one. Adding words is simple. You press the new word button, you enter the word you want to learn, the English translation (or any other translation). You can then add tags so you can find the word easier, you can also add comments to give you a better understanding of what you have written when you come back to it.

Once you have added the word you have not finished with the app. There is lots of features which allow you to organise and use the words you have added. You can classify words by adding them to folders, the defaults are Adjectives, Substantives and Verbs, although you can add more if you wish. You can also use smart folders which is a very quick way of organising words. These are usually based on the tags you have added, although you can set it up for other features if needs be.

You can also practice the words once as you have added them. There is a couple of types of quizes, including a flash card test where you practice with yourself what the words are. There is also a more formal test with multiple choice and if you want you can print out a printed test. The tests are quite fun and an interesting way of learning the words.

This app is useful. It does take a while to enter the words into the program, but I feel you will probably learn them better that way anyway. There is also a large sub set of features available to you, such as the tests as mentioned and the ability to add it to your iPhone or iTouch for on the move learning. I could see this app being quite useful. It only cost $25 and for anyone who does want to improve their language skills this app would be pretty useful.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Keep Your Word – Language Learning Program

Related posts:

1. Cram – Learn Those Facts
2. Springy – A Better File Compressor
3. Billings – Professional Billing Application

A Big Brush Please

This application is simple. Its main job is to find brushes and show them to you in the fastest possible time. It will do this by searching your hard drive for installed brushes. It will also look into applications such as Photoshop for locations of any brush that is installed. The app is smart enough to realise where a brush has come from and the app it belongs to.

In the sidebar of the app, clicking on any brush file will load it up in the main window. You can resize the view so you change the size of the brushes to get a better look. The app is designed to be fast, and I must agree. Once as you click on a brush a millisecond later it will open the file. Brilliant if you want to quickly view what brushes you have installed.

Other than the ability to install and delete brushes this app is pretty simple. Its sole purpose is to show you your brushes. It does do this well. For a designer who uses a lot of brush this may come in very useful. However for the causal user this app may not be worth it.

Overall this app is well built, designed well and runs like a dream. However I don’t feel that this app is wroth buying unless you are a compulsive brush user.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Brush Pilot – Fast Easy Brush Viewer

Related posts:

1. GaragePay – Manage Your PayPal Transactions
2. Layers – Send Your Screen To Photoshop
3. Pixelmator – Show Your Artistic Side

Stock Market Tracker

This option is quite complicated, but this is simply due to the fact that there is a lot of information available to you. This program runs from Google and Yahoo Finance, as a result it does make quite a few Internet connections, which can slow down your connection. This also means that any quote is the usual 15-20 minutes late. However once as you get used to how everything works, it is really simple to keep track of everything. The application does have a lot of features so I will outline the main ones here.

Once as you have set the application up, which is very simple as you run through a step by step guide, its split into three main sections. In you portfolio (which holds all of your stocks) you can view an over view of you earnings, the stock prices and any transactions. The overview section shows you the latest news in the stock market world, including the main market movers and prices. It also shows you the market value and portfolio value of your stock. For instance it can work out how much each of your stock is worth, plus any costs. Its a quick way of seeing how much you have made or lost.

The portfolio section is the section you will use the most. Here you can store all of your stock options that you are looking at. Here you can add stock. It shows you the current price, the price which you bought it at, plus any change. The bottom half of the screen shows a variety of options which include, charts, quotes, plus various different options such as trades and dividends. You can also set alarms so when you have made your first million you can be duly notified.

The final main section, is the transaction section. Here you can monitor all of your transactions. This includes, buying, selling plus a hold load of other transactions. Its a good way to monitor how much you making or spending.

Other than the three mentioned, there is a whole load of other minor options included with the program. Since the app uses live data you can make accurate decision about the stock market, and then promptly buy or sell stock using your stock broker. In essence this app is a very large and useful spreadsheet, which offers you more features than you could possibly write in yourself.

Other than the positives of this application being very easy to use and having a lot of available data, there are a couple of downsides. For instance the download of the demo is slightly annoying since you have to enter your email address before you can receive the file link. Other downsides include, it being slow to update the quotes. It can take a long while before you have the latest information and you can be waiting a while before the spinning wheel stops. However the most annoying feature is the fact that the app takes ages to close. You can press Quit and you can be waiting ages for it to close, as well as this it also has an over lay which appears over everything in the middle of your screen.

Overall this is a good app. If you are into stock market quotes and tracking their  progress I recommend you try this app out. It has got many good features which make it worthwhile the asking price.

Did you know that you can get more information about an application at the end of the post? Visit the post to find out more. Post from: I Love Mac Apps

Stox – Track Those Stock Options

Related posts:

1. Timelog – Track How Long Your Work
2. GaragePay – Manage Your PayPal Transactions
3. Billings – Professional Billing Application