1DayLater - The Blog

Some recent improvements to 1DayLater

Well it’s been a little while since we updated the blog; I figured it was about time we told you about some of the recent improvements that have been made to 1DayLater.

The main thing that our users have been asking for is a mechanism that allows customer details and invoice defaults to be saved. And that’s what we’ve done…

Invoice defaults

Now each time you select a client or project you will get an additional option to save details. As well as saving the client address, this will also save any other pertinent information such as your hourly rate for that client.

Although this is a fairly minor change we think it will make the invoicing tool much more functional. We’ve already had some positive feedback from regular users, saying that it’s saving time when working on multiple projects.

Templates

The other main improvement is with our templates. We’ve teamed up with our new pal Balazs Ertl-Bakos from Hungary to improve 1DayLater’s range of templates and we can now offer a customised service for users who need something extra.

Although this aspect of 1DayLater is still in its infancy, Balazs has shown great talent and skill and we think that user will be impressed by the new service.

Check out the new range of templates

For any users who want something a bit more personalised, please get in touch and we can introduce you to Balazs. If you need one of the standard templates in high resolution then please contact support@1daylater.com

Well that’s it for this blog post, but hopefully more updates and improvements coming soon!

Cheers

Chris

PDF invoicing is now in Beta

Hello everybody, I’m Chris and I’m new around these parts. Rather than describing what it is that I do, I thought that I’d reveal some new 1DayLater features which I’ve been working on. Much better!

PDF Invoices

So it’s been a good while since there have been any major changes to invoicing within 1DayLater. The simple option of being able to copy and paste information from an excel spreadsheet has suited many of our users just fine.

Users will soon have the choice between excel and PDF invoice formats

Although a simple spreadsheet invoice may be adequate for most people, myself included, I figured that it would be nice to give 1DayLater users an alternative option and throw some PDF invoices into the mix. 

An early peek into the PDF invoices which 1DayLater can generate

What we’ve tried to focus on is creating a professional-looking, hassle-free invoice layout which will appeal to users all across the globe. With slight variations in what international users are accustomed to seeing on their invoices it’s no small feat!

We’ve already opened this feature up to our 100 most active users so that we can gather some critical feedback. I have to say that the response so far has been great -  and you guys really speak your mind which is always great from a developer perspective!

Of course if anyone else fancies having their say, now is the time. To access PDF invoices:

1) Log in to 1DayLater as usual

2) Visit the new Beta dashboard - http://1daylater.com/dashboard_beta

3) Go to the ‘Business Tools’ section

4) Click ‘PDF Invoicing’

(note: you will have to be signed into 1DayLater before accessing this link - otherwise you will be taken to the old dashboard)

After we’ve gathered everyone’s feedback (and assuming there are no major issues) we’ll be launching the feature en-masse in a week or so. I can’t wait!

Thanks all, look forward to your comments / critique

Chris

Our redesign is now up and running!

So our new redesign has finally gone live. Hurrah! We crossed our fingers and hoped that the innevitable firefighting would be kept to a minimum, and it has been. Touch wood!

One of the main things our users will notice straight away is that modules are now segmented, so they are no longer all on one page. A lot of the reasons behind this will become clear once we add ‘teams’ next year, but we feel it separates 1DayLater’s functions nicely.

Another useful addition to the new site is multiple timers. We had several requests for this feature on our feedback form, with users suggesting that it would be a good idea to be able to start and stop different projects as they flicked between tasks.

There are some other nifty improvements too; including a search feature that sits separately from user’s historical data, a handy auto-fill for export, mileage claim and invoicing features and an improved demo system.

So far Feedback on the changes has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are a few of my personal favourites (via Twitter):

“Best thing about the new @1DayLater is the multiple timers, very useful!”
- KristianLunde

“Loving the new @1DayLater redesign - looking funky retro in IE and smooth as a pebble in Firefox”
- AidanGarnish

Of course we’re up for criticism too!. Please let us know your opinions via our online feedback form or be commenting on this blog

1DayLater phone apps are almost here!

Over this last month we have been waylaid slightly from our feature roadmap by a large corporate tender we recently won.

The result (which you might have noticed) has been less frequent tweaks and improvements to the site. But rest assured that we are still here working hard and that there are some very exciting new things to come out of our current development.

Despite our current corporate goings-on, the latest build of our 1DayLater phone app is finally almost release-worthy. We now just need to do some user-feedback testing and then get it out into the big wide world of the app stores.

————A screenshot of the 1DayLater i-phone app————-

The 1DayLater phone app will make it easy to log snippets of information while on the move, whether that’s time spent with a client, miles travelled, or daily expenses accrued. 

It will be available first on i-phone, and then on Blackberry, Google android and Nokia N-Series. We expect that this will make our service exponentially more useful for many users!

If you would like to be one of the first users to test the app, please drop me an email. We would very much value your feedback - feedback@1daylater.com

Paul

1DayLater phone & desktop applications

Some months ago we surveyed our beloved 1DayLater users to find out what the most-wanted features were. A mobile phone application came out on top, with a desktop application not far behind.

We’ve decided to kill these two particular birds with one stone. And enlisted the help of some local pro’s to help us do it.

Twisted Studio are a digital design house operating from the heart of Teesside’s Digital City. They are versed in all the latest creative and interactive technologies, and whats more, they’re big on data visualisation.

Now here at 1DayLater we LOVE coming up with cool and innovative ways of displaying data. So as you might imagine they’ve already won us over! But apart from that we’d really urge you to use their services because they’re a great bunch.

Here’s what we can expect for 1DayLater over the next month or so:

1) Phone applications for the following platforms:

• Android
• i-phone
• Blackberry
• N-Series

2) ‘Adobe air’ cross platform desktop application
(serving as a handy reminder to log your time, money and mileage)

Assuming everything goes as planned we should see these start to emerge in February, with the desktop application coming first. I can’t wait to give our customers something really special as I get the feeling they’re going to dazzle us.

Paul

Our Ambitious Vision for 2010

1DayLater have enjoyed a great 2009, and look forward to celebrating this Christmas and New Year. But before we go, here are a some exciting things to look forward to in 2010…

• A Full feature set — with outputs including invoicing, mileage claims, export, more in-depth analysis, and 3rd party add-ons.

• Mobile phone & desktop app development — you’ll be able to log your activities on the move, and our handy desktop app will remind you to log them while you’re working at your pc.

• The launch of our market intelligence campaign — by London-based firm, Kingpin Intelligence. That means MORE FEEDBACK which essentially means better end service for you

• Development of an Outlook application for 1DayLater — A useful Outlook ‘skimmer’ being created by our friends at local Centre for Digital Innovation - Codeworks as part of their new Dev scheme.

- check out David doing ‘The Proposition’ pose, perfect for corporate photos!

Aaand if none of that other stuff tickled you, we’ll also have…

• Integration of 1DayLater with Sage Sales Logix (CRM) & Sage Accounts — Using the expert guidance of our friend Derek Curtis & his company Bond Solutions, the leading NE supplier of Sage software products

• A ‘secret charity based project’ — supported by our friends at Sunderland Software City, Newcastle’s Culture Lab, Codeworks & Bond Solutions - more info to come soon!

• A discounted ‘Time Recovery Tool’ for 1DayLater members — A tool to help you save time which has been created by time-management coaches, Cadenza associates.

Wow!

Writing it down like that just made me realise that next year is going to be epic. I don’t know about you lot but I can’t wait :)

An update on development…”the timer”

You may have noticed we’ve been a bit quiet on the official site updates of late! A thousand apologies! Well I’m happy to report that things are coming along nicely, with the developers beavering away in a zen-beaverlike frenzy.

Not ones to disappoint our fans, we decided it was about time we showed some of our new features off. Today I’m going to show you our new-fangled timer. Next week we’ll work our way down the page to show you other features we’ve added.

So (cue fanfare) the timer!

Having a timer is super useful, especially if you work at a computer like I mostly do. With a little “click” you can set it away while you’re doing a task and then forget about it. We’ve tried to make ours as unobtrusive and functional as possible.

After 1 minute…

After 3 minutes…

Once you’ve finished the task, clicking the stop button will neatly populate the time field for you :) Nice!

Those people who were familiar with the original prototype version will notice that our interface layout and wordage have changed somewhat. Why, you ask? Well this is mostly due to the addition of mileage and money into the system whereas originally 1DayLater could only understand notations for time.

I’ll be talking more about this in more detail in my next update!

Peace guys

Paul