Our Verdict
iCal is an easy , nonpayment option to trail your meetings , events , and appointments . It ’s installed on every Mac , and — provided you have a MobileMe report — it synchronize your calendars simply and seamlessly between your computing equipment and your iOS devices . But iCal is n’t much aid when it come up to calculating the amount of metre you expend on each task — the program does n’t even have a list opinion . TimeTablemines your iCal data to tabulate the prison term spent on especial task , making it a right pecker for consultants and other the great unwashed who involve to get over their time .
When you start TimeTable , you take one or more of your iCal calendar , and TimeTable displays a list of all the current month ’s outcome in each calendar . ( you could instead take to display the events from any clock time skeletal system . ) For each consequence in the list , TimeTable shew the start date , the length of the effect , and the issue ’s name . correctly - come home ( control condition - clicking ) any tower read/write head allows you to sum up extra columns such as Start Time and End Time . A search field in the program ’s toolbar admit you to dribble your results — for object lesson , you could display just the events for a particular client . ( One feature I ’d like to see is a setting to exclude particular calendars from TimeTable ’s sidebar . For representative , I ’m never going to worry about time tracking for my Birthdays or Holidays calendars . )
For billing and invoicing purposes , you could assign a undivided pay rate to all calendars or a different rate for each calendar ; each calendar ’s rate appears in TimeTable ’s sidebar . The syllabus mechanically calculates the cost of each event ( rate time duration ) and exhibit the total in the Cost column .
Before exporting information, TimeTable shows you a preview of selected events in your chosen calendars and calculates the total time and charges for those events.
After filtering and selecting the calendar data you want , TimeTable permit you export it as a plain - text edition file , an e - mail message , or a comma butterfly - separate - value ( CSV ) file , ready for import into a spreadsheet or invoicing program .
TimeTable has clear several improvement since Macworld last reexamine it , back in 2009 . you could now consider event in multiple calendar simultaneously , instead of just one . Event length can now be viewed as denary numbers , as total moment , or in hour : minutes data format . And the program now evidence you a trailer before it exports your data to a text file or e - mail message .
Before exporting information , TimeTable shew you a trailer of pick out events in your chosen calendars and calculates the total time and charges for those event .
However , the program has also increased in price by $ 5 since that recapitulation , and at $ 20 , it ’s fix closer in price to $ 40 programs such as Marketcircle ’s Billings or IGG Software ’s iBiz that are substantially more feature film - rich , including extensive options for customize invoices and payments . These programs also allow you to entrance billable particular that you might not put into iCal , such as clock telephone set financial backing or reimbursable expense . iBiz even synchronizes events with iCal , albeit in a substantially more complex fashion than TimeTable .
Still , TimeTable does a proficient job of extracting datum from iCal , and if your chief goal is to track the amount of time you spend on different natural process , it will probably be all you need — it ’s dead - easy to use and deserving the $ 20 .
( Compatibility note : If you use BusyCal , the popular iCal replacement , and you synchronise your calendar via MobileMe — specifically , thenew WebDAV - based MobileMe Calendarthat debuted in October 2010 — you’ll ascertain that calendar and events created in BusyCal wo n’t seem in TimeTable until you ’ve launched iCal and rent iCal synchronize with MobileMe . The reason for this is that TimeTable practice OS X ’s CalendarStore feature for find calendar selective information and BusyCal does n’t preserve your calendar data to CalendarStore . Launching iCal syncs your MobileMe calendar data to CalendarStore . )
Tom Negrino is a account book source and longtime contributor to Macworld . His latest book is Keynote for iPad : Visual QuickStart Guide ( Peachpit Press ) .