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Friday, August 19, 2011

Comparing Granite and Marble Countertops: Which A single Need to You Choose?

Granite and marble are the two stones which implies they can be the two sturdy, major, and astonishingly tricky. Simultaneously, simply because both these stones can seriously last a lifetime, they are equally equally high-priced and quite tough to polish and install. Due to the fact they may be both equally stones, they may be naturally patterned, hence, chances are you'll get granite or surface encounters marble that is not rather similar for the design from your catalog that you ordered so it would be best to actually see the actual product when choosing the type of design and pattern which you want alternatively of relying only on photos. Both are warmth resistant plus they usually do not scorch when positioned even having a really sizzling product this sort of as iron pots and pans.

Nonetheless, granite is way more durable than marble and it can be a lot more resistant to scratches and heavy impacts compared to marble. Concurrently, granite is much more defiant to acids these kinds of as vinegar, lemon juice, and tomato juice, together with other items with high amounts of acidity. That can assist you better understand the strengths of both stones, let us acquire a nearer look as to how they had been formed. Marble, and all its stone relatives - onyx, travertine, and limestone for the onset had been sediments made of shells, plant make a difference, animal skeletons, and silt which all settled in the bottom of bodies of h2o and soon after years of being soaked in drinking water, they solidify and grow to be stones/ Marble’s primary element is calcium and that is the reason why it's got a tendency to react to acids this sort of as vinegar along with other drinks that consist of citrus. Granite, however, is manufactured up of crystallized minerals formed in the earth’s mantle at large temperature. The result can be a tough, incredibly resistant stone. Marble can be scratched and etched by acids since it is built of calcium carbonate that is a great deal like chalk nevertheless the only distinction is surface encounters marble is compressed and within a crystallized form. Inside the similar way, marble has less patterns, in reality it is additional typically marketed in its white shade so stains and mars may well stand out far more subjected in marble. Granite includes a more complex pattern that may hide the stains better. Concerning styles even so, marble features a finer, much more classy seem than granite. The crystal formations in marble are more satiny and finer in nature which makes it appear more deluxe. Granite has larger, pea-sized crystals that are coarser to your eye.

In the end, when it comes to sturdiness, the granite countertop could well be more tough and much more resistant to stains and scratches although the seems are won by marble. Marble on the other hand is less expensive than granite but it surely calls for bigger preservation. So, all of it boils right down to what you really want as being a countertop. Would you settle for any countertop that's extremely hard-wearing and however not as rather as being the other 1, or would you trade elegance for sturdiness and power?

Monday, August 15, 2011

Track record Examine Someone Using Criminal Records

It really is regular to wonder concerning other's background, along with a records search is the ideal technique to discover this type of information. If you are wondering about another person's background, using an web track record examine will allow you to obtain the precise information you occur to be looking for. Within this article we'll current for you probably the most effective method to uncover track record info on anybody.

And naturally these kinds of searches are not only used by males and ladies who are curious, these are generally used for particular circumstances.

Companies who will probably be considering employing somebody new will often want to take a look at a candidate's history. Some people might wish to investigate the previous of an additional person they just started dating to uncover if the things they have been informed from the man or woman so far is reliable.

A couple of organizations have started records search solutions on-line exactly where it is feasible to perform a background research on an individual. The web pages that provide you document checks purchase and compile public records. You can easily then look via these databases and uncover particulars on anybody.

In the time you submit the title with the person you are doing research on, the info will be displayed correct on your show screen. It is really exceptionally handy . You will find generally plenty of files to examine, and you're provided a login and password so that you are able to go back and take a appear at them anytime in the long term.

Such background checks usually price roughly twenty bucks every, however it is feasible to shell out about forty 5 bucks and this provides you unrestricted background check searches while you're a member.

If you're about to operate a track record document check on an individual, attempt the following trick to see in the event you probably can obtain a maintain of the info at no price.

Every so often you will find info concerning the man or lady just by operating a research in Google, even though obviously it is not as thorough and you might just discover information about a various person using the exact same precise title. There is no harm in operating a research in a search motor. Whether or not it doesn't display you anything, it is entirely free of cost.

You are able to also place the person's title into the research engine collectively with quotation marks around the title. This fairly often assists to retrieve more centered info, although bear in mind that there's likely not any background information regarding the individual that is printed on a web site.

The web has created determining any kind of info a great deal easier and track record record checks are truly a ideal example. So whenever you are intrigued about someone's story, try out an web background check.

Eliminate Credit score Card Debt Fast

Some are even looking at personal bankruptcy in their tough function to get rid of credit card financial debt. Credit card debt settlement could help a borrower steer clear of that.

seven to 10 Many many years

Bankruptcy has a extremely prolonged term damaging influence around the buyer who utilizes it to obtain from financial debt. But, plenty of Us residents are heading via personal bankruptcy. Bankruptcy can remain on your credit score score report from seven to 10 decades. That smudge on your credit report can make it fairly difficult to get a residence, or a automobile, or even a job, within the long term. You will find other options to bankruptcy for these with mind-boggling monetary debt, free credit score online or in every other case.

Credit card financial debt Settlement a Fantastic Option to obtain rid of Credit score score Card Bank card financial debt

1 these sorts of option that exists is a tactic identified as financial debt settlement. What transpires is that a debtor negotiates having a creditor to spend back a part of the financial debt. Hunting in the option - missed payments, regular reminders and cellphone calls, bankruptcy - a creditor might possibly very properly be eager to go more than a decrease payback quantity or decrease month to month payments. Specifically with so lots of purchasers facing bankruptcy or even the prospect of defaulting, most collectors are delighted to get some funds considerably than none. Forestalling bankruptcy can be an exceptional successful condition for each equally you as well as your creditor.

Credit score score Card Financial debt Settlement Negotiation

Approaching a mortgage business, maybe just one you have had to cope with within the previous and not on the most amicable circumstances, can be intimidating. There's also a great deal of monetary track document awareness that the regular buyer just doesn't have. The typical shopper just doesn't have a exceptional maintain on their rights and strengths.

Pennies around the Dollar towards Getting rid of Credit card Financial debt

Monetary financial debt settlement requirements a free credit score negotiator approaching every single loan company and negotiate a pay-back selection. Generally, this total can be really important -- up to 50% or perhaps a lot more with the authentic financial debt. So fairly a few individuals at current are on the brink of personal catastrophe, usually hunting to bankruptcy. Because of the, many creditors are relieved to be acquiring anything around the bank card debt considerably than next to nothing. That can occur quickly need to a borrower declare personal bankruptcy.

Finding a Negotiator

Bank card debt negotiators know how to tactic loan companies along with other collectors. They have an in-depth know-how of financial markets, financial developments, and also the fluctuation of curiosity costs and currencies. This info may be priceless when it arrive to negotiating a financial debt settlement. Also, just after preliminary negotiations, the negotiator will be ready to provide you the conquer shopper as to their rights and choice pertaining to the bank card financial debt.

Payment Because of

As soon as all of the negotiations have taken area, and this could obtain weeks, specifically when you have a lot more than one or two collectors with whom you're making an attempt to eliminate bank card financial debt, the payments will probably be produced towards the negotiator and he or she will maintain track the conditions they have negotiated are stored. The debtor will end up doing one specific cost-effective payment the moment a month, to 1 particular location, at one rate of interest.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

About Making Money

TMZ has learned ... Rachel Uchitel has given Tiger Woods back most of the settlement money he paid her ... and now Rachel is preparing to sue Gloria Allred, the lawyer who struck the deal, allegedly because Gloria sold her out for money.

As TMZ reported, Gloria negotiated a $10 million settlement for Rachel ... just hours before Rachel was going to hold a tell-all news conference about Tiger Woods. The settlement included a confidentiality agreement, which prohibited Rachel from talking about Tiger.

We've learned the agreement stated ... if Rachel violated the confidentiality clause ... she would not only have to return the money she received but Tiger could sue her for damages as well.

Sources tell TMZ ... several months ago Tiger's lawyer, Jay Lavely, contacted Gloria and said they were going after Rachel because they believed she violated the confidentiality agreement by allegedly speaking with TMZ and going on "Celebrity Rehab" to treat her "addiction to love" -- though she never talked specifically about Tiger on the show.

We're told Rachel felt strongly she had not violated the agreement, but Gloria allegedly convinced her she would lose if push came to shove, so Gloria struck a deal with Lavely -- that Rachel would return the lion's share of the settlement money.

But our sources say ... what has Rachel fuming is that Gloria allegedly made a deal with Jay Lavely -- that Gloria would still get all of her attorney's fees. Rachel believes Gloria sold her out ... allegedly making a deal with Tiger's lawyer to strong-arm Rachel into giving the money back and in return Gloria would get her fee -- a fee Gloria would not have received if Rachel went to arbitration and lost.

We're told Rachel went along with the deal, but as time went on she felt she had gotten screwed, and then hired a malpractice lawyer who has made a demand on Gloria to either pay Rachel what she gave back or get sued.

Sources tell TMZ ... Rachel's lawyer has given Gloria a deadline, and if Gloria doesn't ante up ... a legal malpractice lawsuit will be filed.

We contacted Gloria, who said, "No comment." Ditto Rachel, who was also mum.

UPDATE: TMZ asked Gloria if her law partner, Nate Goldberg, was the lawyer who negotiated Rachel's big give-back to Tiger. This time she said she couldn't answer because of "attorney-client privilege."

UPDATE: Gloria just told TMZ, "Our law firm no longer represents Ms. Uchitel and we have no comment on this story at this time. However, we are confident that we have always acted appropriately and in her best interests."

UPDATE: Gloria just gave TMZ another statement: "I was not involved in any way in the allegations set forth in the TMZ story which appears today and which references me. I have not had a conversation with or communicated with Jay Lavely about any client in more than a year. I am reserving all of my legal rights and remedies against anyone who defames me."

There is no fiscal crisis. Everyone should be clear on that.

The United States is not bankrupt. Social Security is not about to founder. Wall Street is not on a precipice, the IMF is not standing by demanding massive shifts in our government, and U.S. bonds are not trading 1:1 with Charmin. There is nothing wrong.

Nothing except that the Republican Party is prepared to slice the nation's throat to get its way.

Real crises do exist. There are moments in a nation's history where the government must take abrupt action, either military or fiscal, to prevent disaster. In the collapse of 2008, some might disagree with the exact nature of the action the Bush administration took in bailing out banks that had recklessly overextended themselves, but there's little doubt that there was a real problem and without action there was a chance that it could grow from disaster to catastrophe.

That's not the case this time. Not only does solving the issue at hand not require the launching of a single ship, it doesn't require the expenditure of a single dime. Raising the debt limit does not commit the United States to any debt it has not already incurred. Refusing to raise that limit is no more an act of fiscal prudence than refusing to pay the restaurant for a meal already eaten.

Not only is the money already spent, the Republicans are the ones who spent it. It's not Social Security that drove up the debt over the last decade. Social Security is responsible for 0% of the deficit. Make that 0.00%, to be exact. The deficit that the Republicans are railing against is driven by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the cost of the recently extended Bush tax cuts. You know what'll happen if we cut Social Security? We'll get less Social Security, not less deficit.

It's funny that politicians on both sides of the aisle keep demanding that "everything be on the table," when what they really mean is that "everything not responsible for the problem be on the table." Not that it matters. The truth is that Republicans aren't interested in solving the problem. They're making the problem. They invented it from thin, hot air and they're entirely invested in seeing that the problem gets worse.

Don't think the Republicans would put the nation at risk on purpose? Consider this: the only thing they won't even think about, the only option so odious they'll walk out of the room rather than talk about it, is precisely the only thing that would actually help. If we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled—all of the cuts—the deficit will dry up and the nation will return to sound fiscal standing in short order. If we don't allow those unsustainable rates to expire ... then we will. If we go down after making cuts in Social Security and health care, then we'll we'll only succeed in making a lot of people miserable to no purpose. Only returning taxes to viable levels will help.

If Republicans were actually concerned about the fiscal health of the nation, they would sign onto raising the debt ceiling without hesitation or condition. Because there's nothing wrong, and because raising the limit would cost nothing. Instead they've created a completely artificial problem as nothing more than an excuse to extend the damage they've already caused. It's really a wonderful little game they've created: drive the nation so far into debt that there's no choice but to raise the limit, then use raising the limit as an excuse to create more debt. No wonder they call it red ink.

The only crisis we're facing is that one of our nation's political parties has decided to hold its breath until the nation turns red. And the media, the public, and the opposing party are treating this massive tantrum with far more respect than it deserves.

what is reputation management

News In Brief: Atom & Cosmos - Science News

Trojan asteroids, black hole interactions and a gargantuan watering hole in this week's news.

News In Brief: Atom & Cosmos - Science News

News In Brief: Life - Science News

Flowery advertising, tempting toilets for shrews, bat beacons and more in this week's news.

News In Brief: Life - Science News

MAKE | News From The Future: Transparent Batteries

News From The Future: Transparent Batteries... Stanford researchers have invented a transparent lithium-ion battery that is also highly flexible. It is comparable in cost to regular batteries on.

MAKE | News From The Future: Transparent Batteries

Monday, August 1, 2011

bank foreclosure

Uh oh!

R. Kelly is just like the rest of America!

After failing to pay mortgage payments since June of 2010, JPMorgan Chase Bank has filed foreclosure on the R&B star's Chicago mansion for $2.9 million!!

According to one of his close friends, R. Kelly was purposely missing payments to manipulate the bank into negotiating the loan.

Oh, R. Kelly! You're famous! They're not going to feel sorry for you.

When asked to comment, his spokesperson declined to comment on the topic at hand, but insisted the singer was in no financial trouble.

SEE! That is not going to help your case, R. Kelly!

OMGosh. It's one thing when a family truly can't afford to make payments due to unforeseen circumstances, but if you have the money, and we believe you do, don't try to cheat the system.

Surely he'll fix this if he wants to keep the house. If not, there are plenty more closets to stay in!

[Image via PNP/WENN.]

Tags: banks, chicago, foreclosure, money trouble

Sheila Bair wrote an op-ed article in 2007 that made people in Treasury think, "Sheila Bair is difficult."

She was surprised to learn that mortgage servicers had pushed 99% of those surprise-reset mortgages (whose en masse defaults sparked the crisis) into foreclosure rather than modifying them. So she voiced her frustrations in an article.

According to the NYTimes:

[In an op-ed in the New York Times, she] called on mortgage servicers to reset adjustable-rate mortgages en masse. “These borrowers would still be required to make their monthly payments... Avoiding foreclosure would protect neighboring properties and hasten the recovery.”

Although she made no mention of the Treasury Department, everyone in the bureaucracy knew that it was her real target. It was now official: Sheila Bair was difficult.

That's one of two interesting things about the foreclosure process that we learned reading an interview with Bair in the NYTimes. Basically, that mortgage servicers "promised" (whatever that means, we don't find out. Obviously, it wasn't in writing.) to modify mortgages, but instead, they foreclosed on most properties and modified just 1%.

The second is that when explaining the rush-to-foreclosure process she says, “I think some of it was that they didn’t think borrowers were worth helping. There was some disdain for borrowers.”

Honest! And totally unproven because she doesn't go into detail. But it reminds us of the opposite of when Jamie Dimon said, "Giving debt relief to people who really need it. That's what foreclosure is."

It's a homeowner's worst nightmare: That banks rush to foreclose 99% of the time because (Bair suspects) bankers have a disdain for borrowers.

The entire "exit interview," which Bair gave to the NYTimes as she's leaving the FDIC for Pew Trusts, is a good read >

Two other interesting points:

1. She echoes the voice of the public when it comes to capital requirements (they should be higher to discourage risk-taking behavior) and the foreclosure process (banks should instead help homeowners modify the loans). She similarly seems to forget that politicians encouraged banks to loan to riskier candidates by throwing lawsuits at them if they disqualified borrowers with low income, and instead blames mostly the securitization process and banks' eagerness to make risky bets.

2. She also thinks that Bear Stearns should have failed, not given to Jamie Dimon as a Christmas present, like the book, Too Big To Fail put it.

Bair told Joe Nocera:

“Let’s face it.. Bear Stearns was a second-tier investment bank, with — what? — around $400 billion in assets? I’m a traditionalist. Banks and bank-holding companies are in the safety net. That’s why they have deposit insurance. Investment banks take higher risks, and they are supposed to be outside the safety net. If they make enough mistakes, they are supposed to fail. So, yes, I was amazed when they saved it. I couldn’t believe it. When they told me about it, I said: ‘Guess what: Investment banks fail.’ ”

Negotiating All But Done for $2.7 Trillion Deficit Reduction Deal ...

Sources from both parties tell ABC News that the major potential roadblock in deficit negotiations-- the triggers -- are now essentially agreed upon. The plan is for the House to vote on this tomorrow, assuming all goes ...

Negotiating All But Done for $2.7 Trillion Deficit Reduction Deal ...

Morning News | Slog

Posted by news intern Peter Johnson. Debt Ceiling: the Senate will vote on a new plan at 1 PM today. Talks are ongoing; Senate Majority...

Morning News | Slog

News In Brief: Molecules/Matter & Energy - Science News

Clear batteries, mucus busters, a 3-D invisibility cloak and more in this week's news.

News In Brief: Molecules/Matter & Energy - Science News

Friday, July 29, 2011

How to Making Money

Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

For Manchester City, money might as well be water.

You take it for granted and you end up wasting a lot of it.

The English side has thrown millions of dollars at countless players over the years, and don't have much on-field success to show for it.

Yet, it hasn't changed the club's approach, and it seems like Man City is ready to make a splash, and are looking at the world's best club to do so.

Per Tribal Football:

City boss Roberto Mancini has been told it will cost him £45m to lure Barcelona superstar Villa to Eastlands, says the Daily Star.
Villa is one of several targets on Roberto Mancini’s list as he plans for the departure of rebel Carlos Tevez.
The Manchester City boss reckons the Spanish World Cup winner would be a huge hit in the Premier League.

Somehow I doubt this move will ever actually go down.

Barcelona is not going to break up a club that has just won the Spanish crown and the European title in the same season, not even if the funds would allow the club to increase its bid for Cesc Fabregas.

Manchester City has high hopes after Carlos Tevez asked out of town, but Barcelona isn't one of those clubs who makes drastic moves just because another squad happens to put a lot of money on the table for a top player.

David Villa is a perfect fit for Barcelona, and Manchester City is just trying to make a splash for the sake of doing so.

That isn't the way to run a club, and there is a reason that City hasn't been able to consistently compete with England's top squads.

You need to build a team by making moves that compliment the rest of your roster. Clubs like City and Real Madrid make moves without considering how everything fits together, and then the results on the pitch suffer.

City will try and land Villa, but it will be a fruitless effort.

In the end, Tevez will likely stay in Manchester, and Barcelona will cling tight to Villa as they prepare to make another run on the world's biggest stages.

Most recent updates:

Barcelona Transfer News: Sanchez Signing Will Help Keep Barca at the Top

Barcelona Transfer Rumours: Slow Offseason Heats Up as Barca Closes in on Araujo

Barcelona Transfer News: Toure Loses His Mind with Barcelona Comparisons

View all updates

As someone who switches between the hats of freelancer and small business owner several times a day, I’m always on the lookout for software that will help me manage things like invoicing and expense management, financial reporting, project management and team discussion.

It’s not hard to find apps that excel at one of these things. What is hard is finding an affordable solution that allows me to manage all of these aspects of my business from one place, making it easier for myself and my team to get the busywork and administrative stuff out of the way and back to the work of creating content.

Paymo is an app that covers time-tracking, invoicing and project management for freelancers and small businesses. It’s challenging incumbents like Freshbooks, with an offering that is not only cheaper but — in many areas — stronger.

Paymo is a bootstrapped startup with an app built by a small team in Romania. Though they’re talented, their country of origin can make it hard to get any real traction in the West. Eastern Europe has started to create some great tech startups of late. Paymo.biz, which isn’t to be confused with Paymo.com, owned by American mobile payments company BOKU, is one of these.

Making you wait until the end of a review as long as this one to find out whether the app is worthwhile or not seems a bit unfair on the reader, so here’s the bottom line on Paymo: this week, I’m transitioning my freelance business and my small agency to run on Paymo, leaving a random collection of tools such as FreshBooks, project management apps and emails that belong in project managers behind. Paymo has everything I need to run freelance and small businesses, and I can see it scaling to medium size with relative ease.

The Dashboard

Paymo’s dashboard provides you with an overview of how time is being spent in your business when you log in for the day. It’s got charts that show the hours worked per day for the last week, as well as statistics and charts on how much business time was spent on work versus, well, nothing — it can tell you this because users set the work days and work hours of each week, making Paymo a good tool for ensuring that employees are spending their time wisely. With Paymo, time tracking is as useful for billing clients as it is for ensuring your team has been working.

Also on the dashboard is a Recent Activity summary, which shows you recent milestones and tasks that have been completed. You can get RSS or iCal feeds for recent activity.

Client Management

Paymo’s client manager is robust enough that most freelancers and smaller businesses won’t require a separate, dedicated CRM platform. When creating a new client, there are fields for a whole range of information for both the company, and your contact at the company, including an area to make notes in. Paymo lets you add a logo for the client for quick identification.

The Clients tab shows you an overview of all of your clients, including how many staff are allocated to them, the number of active projects they are on, and how many completed and archived projects you’ve done for that client.

The view for individual clients shows the contact information as well as all other details and notes for the company as well as the contact details of the individual you designated as the contact there.

You’ll also find financial statistics, such as how many unbilled hours you’ve done for the client, how much money is due from that client and a handy meter at the bottom that shows you how much of the time budget for each of that client’s projects has been used — you can set a number of hours per month per client project and the time you track or enter for the project will fill up the bar. This is a great feature if you have clients on retainer for a set number of hours to prevent you from going over.

There’s a chart for financial statistics, but it seems that I need to populate the system with more information before anything will appear there.

Project Management

The Projects overview is a simple view that lists each active project, their corresponding parent clients, and the used budget meter makes a reappearance. Clicking through to a single project, the first thing you’ll see is the overview tab, which contains data about the amount of time spent on tasks that fall under the project, recent activity, time worked, unbilled hours, and access to settings — such as the hourly rate on that project. From this view you can subscribe to a project specific RSS or iCal feed, and retire or delete the project.

On the Tasks tab, you’re able to set up a variety of task lists, which contain the actual tasks. Tasks can have a description, marked up with Textile, a due date, and related attachments. You can assign each task to a user, and determine whether that task is billable or not in case you include administrative tasks that you don’t normally bill for in project task lists.

You can save task lists as templates, which is fantastic if you work in a field where projects often look the same, at least to begin with. You can comment on tasks and discuss them with other users.

Milestones are an important part of all project management apps, and Paymo doesn’t disappoint. You can add milestones with a due date and a person responsible for ensuring progress towards that milestone, and associate it with a task list. Once the items in that task list are complete, the milestone is deemed reached, but you can manually complete a milestone without a task list.

Paymo’s data storage comes into play on the project level. The second-last tab in the project view is the Files tab, where you can upload and categorize images, documents and other files that are relevant to the project. Any file you upload as an attachment to a task will appear here as well.

Last but certainly not least is the essential Discussion tab. This tab works like a forum, where discussions are sorted by category, though there are none by default. As with most larger text inputs in Paymo, discussion posts can be formatted using Textile. There is unfortunately no way to reference attachments or tasks in discussions yet but the discussion area isn’t weighed down by bloat, which is a problem I commonly have with forum software.

The Timer

Paymo has a browser-based timer that can be launched from within the web app or a bookmarklet, and will appear as a smaller pop-up window easily positioned to the side of whatever you’re working on. It’s a breeze to use: select a project, a task, and hit the Start button. You can optionally include notes about the time spent, which allows you to easily account for every slice of time you spent on a project.

While some time tracking applications only allow you to tie time slices to clients and projects, Paymo has task management features right there in the timer. You can add a new task to a project to start timing right there and then, and mark a task as complete as well. You can’t set up a project from within the timer but once that’s done you can manage everything in it.

Paymo offers a desktop widget for Windows and OS X that simplifies the process of time tracking. While it is great to have the ability to track time from unexpected locations, a widget is more easily accessible and is still there when the Internet goes down. All you need to do after installing the widget is throw an API key into it, which is conveniently provided on the widget download page, and log in to your account. The widget is laid out just like the online time tracker so there’s no confusion.

While I doubt you’d even notice the size of the widget on a computer with a more regularly sized computer, I’m testing this on an 11″ MacBook Air which leaves me wishing there was a thinner option. The widget takes up about a quarter of the dashboard — still manageable, but a way to choose between the default view and a compact view would be fantastic.

While the beauty of tools like Paymo is that you can use a timer to automatically log how much work you’ve done on a project, you can also manually enter time slices into the Timesheet after the fact. If you go out on an in-person call or to a meeting, it’s less practical to use a timer. Or you may have simply forgotten to hit Start but still need to get paid for the past five hours of work.

Time tracking is certainly Paymo’s strongest suit. In the past seven years I’ve searched long and hard for a great way to unobtrusively track time and I’ve always hated the solutions I’ve tested. Paymo does it for me.

Desktop App

In addition to the desktop widget for time tracking, there’s a more fully-featured desktop application available. It’s still in beta, and comes in Windows and, more recently, Mac flavors.

As beta apps, they’re early on and not fully developed, but are an interesting way to see not just how much time you’ve spent, but how you’ve spent it. The app keeps a record of how much time you spent in each app you used for the duration, and allows you to sort them by client and project later.

This is a really cool feature: if you’re tracking time for Client A, but Client B calls you on Skype midway through, you can easily bill the appropriate clients for each slice of time and you won’t lose any billable hours due to not having an accurate account of the interruption.

Invoicing

Paymo’s Invoicing feature set is easy-to-use and robust without the bloat. From the overview, you can view and set the statuses on invoices. These include draft, sent, viewed, paid and void. Paymo makes it easy to export invoice data as CSV so you can set up Excel spreadsheets of your monthly activity and the like.

The invoice creator is a WYSIWYG affair, and draws on your company settings to populate the invoice with some default information, before you come in and set the individual details such as the client and the hours logged in question. You don’t need to draw on your tracked time and can enter fixed figures instead (or in addition). Like most invoicing apps, you can set taxes that are automatically calculated, provide notes, and so on.

One of the great things about Paymo invoicing is the ease with which you can change the currency of an invoice without having to go and edit the client settings separately. For a freelancer or small business owner with a situation comparable to mine — accounts in a range of different countries, paid in a range of different currencies — this small detail saves time.

Most apps don’t have a feature for this, and some that do (like Freshbooks) make it the default for the client in the future instead of just that invoice, which isn’t what I want.

Adding time to an invoice is a breeze. Click on Add From Time Sheet, select a date range — there are commonly used presets, such as the previous month — and barring any need to change details, click Submit. If you’ve set up your clients, projects and company settings properly, and tracked time accurately, creating an invoice is a matter of a few seconds and a few clicks.

You can create a PDF file from that invoice or provide your client with a permalink that shows them the invoice in the browser (with the option to download it as a PDF or print it). The most common route is to use the Send button which will email it from within Paymo.

Paymo has recently introduced a beta “pay online” feature that allows clients to click a Pay Now button on the invoice page they are taken to and pay the invoice then and there through PayPal. Despite the beta label it works like a charm.

Creating recurring invoices is just as easy, and can be done from the Recurring tab of the Invoicing section, or just by ticking the Recurring button in a new invoice. These can even be sent out automatically once configured so you don’t need to worry that you’ve forgotten to invoice and will be gnawing on your fridge, which with any luck has accumulated the flavors of its former contents, for sustenance next month.

Paymo has a section for expenses, which can be easily categorized, assigned to clients, and there’s a section to upload a scan of a receipt. You can mark these as unbilled or invoiced, depending on whether you want to claim a tax deduction or just get the money back from a client.

Next time you are editing a draft invoice or creating a new invoice for that client, there will be a notification on the editor that says there are outstanding expenses. Click one button and they’ll be added to the invoice with the description and amounts filled in.

If you frequently do estimates in your line of work, there’s a feature for that. It works much like the regular invoicing tool.

Reporting

Paymo’s reporting makes it easy to generate custom reports and look over your business activity for any time period, from the current day to all time, which is something I’m fond of as a stats-and-charts junkie. It’s good to be able to see at a glance where most of your money is coming from versus where most of your time is spent, enabling you to make changes that improve efficiency and earnings.

You can get a rough idea of how much income you are looking at for the current month’s unbilled hours with stats on hours worked (sorted by either project or user), and a financial statistics chart that shows dollars billed and received per month, which is handy for seeing at a glance where overdue accounts receivable are.

You can view reports in the browser, and they can be downloaded in PDF or CSV format. I have a feeling that I won’t really be able to put Paymo’s reporting to test until I’ve got more data in the system — at least a month’s worth for any sort of report I’d base a decision on — but the system seems promising.

Team Management

Let’s skip the boring stuff, except for one quick sentence: you can create users easily enough and allow them an appropriate level of access to Paymo. But what sort of team management features does Paymo provide for business owners?

Running a distributed team means that while the working environment for each member is almost always more to their taste than an office with headache-inducing fluorescent lights and no fresh air, it’s harder to keep a boots-on-the-ground eye on how things are going and whether the hours are getting done.

Once you’ve set up a user’s working days and hours and they start tracking time, you can take a look at their user page, which shows the amount of time they spent working in the past week, and has a Performance meter. Obviously time worked isn’t the only measure of performance, but if your employees have been spending fewer hours than they’ve been getting paid for, you’ll want to know — and Paymo makes that easy.

You can view the user’s timesheets to get more details about the way they’ve spent their time, and see meters for every day in your Paymo account’s history that tells you how much of each work day was tracked.

It’s possible to set up ‘non-working days’ on a user-by-user basis, so that taking leave or a sick day doesn’t impact their performance rating. Finally, you can assign projects to users directly from their profile page.

API

Developers who want to build apps that work with Paymo, either for internal apps or for publicly available apps, are in luck. Paymo have an API that’s freely available to all users, with documentation that appears to be up-to-date with Paymo features.

Mobile

If you go out for a meeting once or twice a month, perhaps it’s easier to manually input time spent later on as I mentioned earlier. But if your business is all about making house calls and the like, or you just like to be accurate to the minute, a mobile app is the way to go.

There’s a capable, free Paymo timer available for the iPhone, but there doesn’t seem to be an official Android app yet. There is an unofficial Android app available — it’s great to see that the API is doing its job in ensuring that Paymo is as accessible as possible on a variety of platforms.

Pricing

There are three Paymo plans available. The first is free, and is great for those who just want a time tracker or freelancers with just a few regular clients. It includes three invoices per month, two users, 50MB of storage, unlimited clients and projects and the time tracking features.

The Basic plan at $9.99 per month drops the limit on invoices altogether and boosts the storage limit to 5GB. It’s designed for freelancers who need to send more than three invoices a month, and young startups.

Finally, the premium plan uses a per-user pricing model at $3.99 each, and applies to businesses who need more than two users to access Paymo. It currently supports up to 40 employees. Premium also gives users 15GB of data storage.

Competitors

Paymo has several well-established competitors in the freelance and small business-oriented invoicing and time-tracking arena, like Freshbooks and LessAccounting.

LessAccounting has some fantastic offerings but puts more of its focus on the money. It’s used for tracking expenses, creating and sending invoices, keeping track of accounts receivable and so on. It starts at $30 a month and has add-ons for the assistance of a real bookkeeper with packages for 6 hours of help per quarter ($70) and 7 hours of help per month ($270). The offering is solid but the pricing and the feature set mean that users looking for something like Paymo aren’t likely to find their solution here.

FreshBooks has been in the game longer, and are best known for their invoicing features. The free plan is constricted to unlimited invoices but for only three clients, and their entry-level paid plan is $19.95 and has a 25 client cap — twice as expensive as Paymo’s plan without client or invoice limitations. Their strengths lie in the ability to send an invoice via email that makes it a breeze for the client to pay online through a variety of payment gateways, including PayPal. Using this in practice doesn’t always seem to pan out with the majority of clients (at least in my experience) having specific instructions as to how invoices should be received. The interface looks better than it works — I find it a bit fiddly — and the company’s foray into time tracking and project management has generally produced poor tools.

Paymo is faced with some capable alternatives. But their strengths are clear, Paymo strikes me as the best all-rounder suite for freelancers and small businesses who need a platform for not just money management but project management.

The Bottom Line

I told you at the start: Paymo is the app I’ll be using to run my business starting next week. After searching for an app with a feature wishlist that is pretty much summarized by Paymo’s actual feature list, and an implementation that doesn’t make me hate time-tracking, I’m sold.

If you’re paying a fortune to run two apps like FreshBooks and Basecamp, chances are all the features you need are in Paymo (though if you need the extra power that Basecamp’s specialization in project management provides, you can sync your Paymo account with it).

It has got some rough edges, but I’ve seen the Paymo team’s iterative approach at work and new features are tackled quickly and tested early. Paymo checks my boxes now, but I’m confident that anything I’ll miss won’t be far behind.

With a free account plan that lets you test out the full feature set, there’s no risk in giving Paymo a try. I suggest you head on over and see for yourself.

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Friday, July 22, 2011

Payday Loan Myths - Know The truth About Payday Loans

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