If you’ve already used a previous version, the most prominent change you’ll notice is the UI differences. I am not a huge fan of changing a UI that already looks and feels good, but they did a great job here, everything is a bit bigger, easier to use, and logically arranged into tabs. My favorite new visual feature can be observed right here in a project’s summary menu, where there is a big “Actual hours vs estimate” representation with a horizontal bar filling up as you go along. Visual stuff like this helps me tremendously, it instills more “panic”, so I will probably get a move on if I see the estimate being overshot soon.

Of course this isn’t a hugely useful feature otherwise, but some great time tracking and usability issues have been addressed as well. You can now reorder your projects using drag and drop, which was something I really missed, now you can push subtasks between main tasks, so if you work in a project oriented workspace (as opposed to a client oriented one), you can easily move subtasks here and there. Another great feature implemented is better exporting capabilities. If you click on a summary you can now simply drag and drop an Excel icon onto the desktop to export to a file (along with comments), but if Excel is open, you can simply drop it in there to open it right away. So simple, yet so elegant, I love it!

Apart from these, smaller issues were addressed, for example renaming was a bit clunky in previous versions, it wasn’t updated automatically, you had to click update for it to get updated, which is not a huge thing, but having it all done without needing to commit the changes can save you a boatload of time when adding a lot of projects.

I’m really hoping a lot more development goes into the app, as I can think of a lot of features that could be helpful. I would welcome some client management options. Since I organize Klok projects on a client basis, it would be great if contact people for all subtasks would be the same as the contact for the main entry by default. I would also have use for a sort of client management page separate from tasks where I could assign a project to a client and the appropriate structure would be created. A wonderful feature implemented is the option to give a project code to a project. I actually do this anyway, so inputting it here too is a great help, but it would be even better if you could set some rules to create these numbers automatically. I know its a long shot, but I actually manage my projects in a mysql database because I have a project management site for my clients, so exporting and interacting with mysql would be awesome, but I think I personify the one and only unit of demand for this feature.

All in all I would recommend Klok to anyone, freelancers, young mothers staying at home, office workers, anyone can benefit from a little time tracking, maybe only for fun to see what you waste time on? On another note, does any of you know if there will be a paid version of Klok? The download link says “Free personal edition”, although there is no payment option. I am guessing there are some plans to add extra features later, anyone have some news on this?

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Each project consists of a name and a color. That’s the minimal constellation. Additional data like contact names and email addresses can be added and sub projects can be created. Each project and sub project is listed in the left column and can be accessed with a double-click to change data, add sub projects or write comments on previous time entries.

The time of a project will be tracked when the user drags the project into the Currently Working On area of the application or by clicking on the Work On button in the project’s detail view.

Instead of tracking the time in real time it is possible to drag projects into the weekly view and edit the time manually. A double-click leads to that option which also offers access to the comment function.

Automatic time tracking cannot get better than this. The application is very responsive and it is easy to create new projects or sub projects. Reports are saved in Excel format which is also excellent.

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