Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage your freelance projects?

21 points by gashmol 1 year ago | 30 comments

I've used several tools over the years but no one fits my needs well enough. I wonder if I miss some magic tool. Which tool work best for a single person operation?

sandreas 1 year ago |

I wrote a tool based on my own custom markdown format / file structure. The file is always called `project.md` and part of the project as well as my personal invoice generator git repository, which is basically a parser + pdf generator.

The md file contains customer information, todos and time tracking. Based on this format I can generate an invoice with a detailed table of every task including the time required. And it even looks pretty good in the markdown view.

It can be edited in any IDE / text editor and even in the online editor of the git management.

Works pretty well so far. An example:

  # Customer
  ```
  Company Name
  Magic Avenue 12
  Zip-Code City
  Project name with short description
  30 day terms
  ```

  # Todo
  - [x] create project
  - [x] init git
  - [x] add build scripts
  - [x] draw UI concept
    - [x] Home
    - [x] Settings
    - [ ] Choose icons
  - [ ] Build prototype
    - [ ] Choose UI framework
    - [ ] ...
  
  # Time tracking
  
  2022-04-26
  - 17.42-18.02 project creation and git initialisation
  
  2022-04-28
  - 11.55-13.23 basic project setup and build scripts
  
  2022-04-29
  - 16.47-17.08 new UI concept (drawing and design, HomeView)
  - 17.20-17.42 new UI concept (drawing and design, SettingsView)

gashmol 1 year ago | |

How do you handle deadlines and setbacks?

sandreas 1 year ago | | |

For deadlines i use a week based paper calendar and setback can be handled by negative time entries, like:

  01.15-00.00 refund for issue 6789 (75mins)

It's not ideal but it barely happens.

Another minor issue is that my parser currently does not support overnight shifts like

  2022-11-15
  - 23.45-01.18 another task

These have to be divided into 2 separate ones:

  2022-11-15
  - 23.45-23.59 another task
  
  2022-11-16
  - 00.00-01.18 another task

slurpyb 1 year ago |

Todoist, Obsidian and Eagle form the second brain. Write to forget things, not remember them. Only plan daily if you can. Github issues + projects, even without a team helps to track progress and prioritise tasks. Mix Clockify in there as a time tracker and invoice generator for short and long term tasks

nuc1e0n 1 year ago |

Git for source code control. A notepad and pencil for listing out the TODOs. I write "Done" next to a bullet point when it's done. I might rewrite the list occasionally without the done items for clarity or write numbers next to the bullet points to prioritise them. I think if you can't write out a task description as a short sentence then it's either not well understood enough or too broad in scope to accomplish easily. In the latter case it needs breaking out into a set of smaller tasks.

I don't use any framework for unit tests. Only a short program for each test that returns 0 on success or some other number for failure and prints a message to stderr about what the problem is. These get run in a loop from a shell script.

hyperbrainer 1 year ago | |

The same as you, but for TODOs, I have a simple macro on my neovim setup because then I can keep the todos with my version control(it is a single text file, newline separated) and see what changed and why I added something. Really helpful if I come back to something after some time.

jvanderbot 1 year ago | | |

I do something similar. Simple highlights on to-do items helps a lot.

And using bullet journal style to-do markers help organization.

- [ ] todo

- [x] done

- [-] failed

- [v] dropped

- [>] migrated

- [^] scheduled

- [<] delegated

Easy to set up vim highlighting on those patterns.

I have some examples here:

https://jodavaho.io/posts/bullet-journalling.html

And a bash setup here

https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog

kingkongjaffa 1 year ago |

The free tiers of https://linear.app/ and https://www.notion.so/ are pretty good.

Combined with plugging your linear account into the VCS of your choice (probably github/gitlab/bitbucket).

The free tier of https://www.figma.com/ is good for mockups and design.

sandwichsphinx 1 year ago |

The only tool I truly find magically despite how boring it sounds is chatGPT, I can tell it everything as a living dev log, I tell it time date when I do things and why and so on just documentating my progress, listing todos and reminders as I go but now I can "talk" back forth on the administrative things like reminding me where I was, recap here, it's just great for managing boring things like I never been able to do before

etcd 1 year ago | |

Does ChatGPT have storage options now? Seems like you would need that unless you paste the output into a doc and reupload it.

runjake 1 year ago | | |

Yeah, it now saves your chat history.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7260999-how-do-i-export-...

sunnybeetroot 1 year ago | |

What happens when you reach the context window and it never longer knows about older messages?

_shantaram 1 year ago |

I just have a long text file with notes of all different things in it which I grep through as necessary for todos etc. But for time tracking I didn't really like what was available so I (shameless plug) built etu[0]. It's free and open source and I quite enjoy it.

[0] https://github.com/xyzshantaram/etu

mgirkins 1 year ago |

I built Tatask.com for this! I want to have easy visibility over everything but quickly drill down into specifics so it uses a tree structure for tasks.

You can break down any project into smaller and smaller sections to whatever degree you like and it makes it super easy to visualise everything and make progress.

brokegrammer 1 year ago |

Usually my client will invite me to their task manager, which is Trello most of the time. The I track my time and generate invoices with Zoho Invoice.

warriorj 1 year ago |

- clockify for time tracking - Google keep for notes - Trello for my personal work management - DocuSign to sign contracts - eProcessify for generating and sending invoices

elric 1 year ago |

Obsidian. It can be as simple as a bunch of checkboxes in a markdown file, or as complex as a kanban board.

aosaigh 1 year ago |

What are your needs?

bigs 1 year ago |

Joplin for notes self hosted, Trello (free) for kanban.

Hashex129542 1 year ago |

I don't use any tools. Just plain text editor for notes

etcd 1 year ago |

Trello is good for the kanban side of things.

gashmol 1 year ago | |

Trello was the first tool I used. Drag & drop and the whole UI was fun but it's hard to see the big picture.

nuc1e0n 1 year ago | |

Trello is good for small teams that aren't co-located.

ensocode 1 year ago |

Definitely clockify for time tracking

mmphosis 1 year ago |

  make

nuc1e0n 1 year ago | |

Yeah make is nice for managing simple build steps.

austin-cheney 1 year ago |

I typically write my own.

gashmol 1 year ago | |

So far I've managed to overcome the itch to write my own solution for this problem. It is tempting though.

# Customer ``` Company Name Magic Avenue 12 Zip-Code City Project name with short description 30 day terms ``` # Todo - [x] create project - [x] init git - [x] add build scripts - [x] draw UI concept - [x] Home - [x] Settings - [ ] Choose icons - [ ] Build prototype - [ ] Choose UI framework - [ ] ... # Time tracking 2022-04-26 - 17.42-18.02 project creation and git initialisation 2022-04-28 - 11.55-13.23 basic project setup and build scripts 2022-04-29 - 16.47-17.08 new UI concept (drawing and design, HomeView) - 17.20-17.42 new UI concept (drawing and design, SettingsView)