Testers wanted: Billable 1.2b1

As I continue to work on Billable 1.2 I thought it was time to get a build out there some people could play with and give me feedback on. As an experiment I’m putting this beta download on the public site but please only use this version if you are comfortable with betas (ie: application crashes, data loss, restoring from backups, etc.) And with all that said what’s new?

Well a full changelog is online but some highlights include:

  • A new date picker helper UI widget next to all of the date fields.
  • We now store PDFs in-between application launches. Additionally we also now enable changes to services even when they have been already invoiced. Billable will also watch for changes to your custom invoice template on the hard disk making the workflow of editing it and previewing invoices much easier.
  • Much better email support.
  • New quantity type option for services.
  • A new checkbox option next to Invoice Due Date that will let you choose “due on receipt” instead of a specific day.
  • New per-service notes let you be much more verbose about what you did for that service.
  • Basic AppleScript support
  • Bug fixes, optimizations, yatta and yatta.

Other notes:

  • This version does work better on the Leopard seeds than version 1.1.2 but is not fully compatible yet. More info on these issues can be found at the top of the changelog.
  • This code has an expiration date in it for Sept 1st.
  • There is no sparkle support for the betas so when beta 2 inevitably comes out it won’t auto-install. Please subscribe to the blog or the twitter account to keep up.

One big area I need feedback on is the AppleScript support. Adding this to Billable was no small feat but in the long run will enable lots of interesting integration options so it’s important to do right. What I’ve made available in this beta is fairly raw object access. There is much less automatic stuff here than the UI version. As an example, when you create a new invoice in the UI I can determine the client it is for based on the service selection but in AppleScript I can’t, so you need to do it manually. For some example code you can try out this test script I wrote and used during development.

Download: Billable 1.2b1
Bug Reports and Feedback: http://clickablebliss.com/contact

Posted on: August 6, 2007 – 9:08 pm

5 Comments

  1. adam bell wrote:

    Badly in need of even a few examples of AppleScript. I haven’t been able to sort out how to open the invoice in process for a specific client.

  2. adam bell wrote:

    I should have added, that if I can sort it out using the demo, I’ll write a review and AppleScript tutorial for MacScripter.net.

  3. Mike Zornek wrote:

    I responded to adam via email, but for the public I’ll be working on more examples asap when I get back from C4.

  4. Brady Myers wrote:

    Just bought my copy of Billable, yay!

    Suggestions after using the beta:

    -ability to select which Mail.app address is used by default for emailing invoices (not just account - you can have multiple email addresses per account in Mail by putting a comma-separated list into the address field…not sure how many people are aware of this)

    -ability to change default subject line for emailing invoices (regex or something similar would be nice here (e.g. invoice # for )

    -ability to sync clients in Billable with a group in Address Book on launch, or manually

    With those features implemented, I’d gladly pay for a whole second license :-) Keep up the great work!

  5. Mike Zornek wrote:

    @Brady Thanks for your interest and the feedback.

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