Do Your Billing Online with TimeXchange

Remember QuickBooks? In the early 19th Century, everyone used it -- or a program like it -- to manage time and expenses. I'm here to tell you to remove your Bowler hat, set down your buggy whip, and take a look at TimeXchange, a Web-based time and expense reporting tool that lives in the cloud, just like Lando Calrissian in Star Wars Episode V.

The benefits? TimeXchange lets you input time and expense data for your projects from any browser, and there's even an iPhone app [iTunes link] for on-the-go reporting. It's collaborative; you can loop in co-workers and project managers to share data on common projects. And you can easily generate reports in PDF and XLS formats.

Still, I'm not completely jazzed. The TimeXchange folks need to work a little harder at making the language less accountant-ese for us poor freelancers and small biz folks who might lack an MBA. The Web interface is slow; when you try to enter an expense, for example, the whole page refreshes every time you select a time period. And the free version nags you to upgrade to the subscription-based, ad-free version (a one-time $20 fee). Even so, this is an idea whose time has come.