April 27, 201016 yr 'Everything Manager' is a system I've been developing for my own uses for a number of years to keep track of all my web design clients. Basically, I wanted something to take care of everything centrally, rather than using multiple systems or using spreadsheets. It's now getting to the point where I might be able to offer it to other people if there is interest. So if you're a web designer and you're looking for a simple way to manage all your clients, projects and web hosting, read on! How it's built Despite appearances, this is not a Mac application. It's actually built using PHP, MySQL and jQuery, and runs on a server through any web browser. This means that it's actually cross-platform, so you can use it on a PC or a Mac, or anything else for that matter. All the code has been written by me, and is all tidy and object-oriented. How I've got it set up At the moment I've got a Site Specific Browser set up (courtesy of Fluid) to display the system as if it were an actual application, although it'll work in a normal browser just fine. I've got it running on our private development server, with password protection so it's protected. You could easily put it on a normal web server though, with adequate security in place. What it does Client Management. Add as many clients as you want, with some basic contact details, and add as many projects and hosting packages to each client. You can filter out inactive clients in the display to focus on the active ones. Project Management. Each project can contain details about estimates (which can be cancelled or accepted), multiple hourly rates, work logs (i.e. when you worked, what you did, how long it took, which hourly rate it was using, how far you travelled, one-off expense), web site systems (like CMS details), invoices and payments. Web Hosting Management. Each 'package' can have up to one domain and one webspace package. Invoices can be generated for each package. Invoice list. Shows a list of all open invoices, and flags up any that are overdue. Invoice reminders. Shows a list of any hosting packages that are coming up for renewal, so that you can generate the invoice and send it to the client in good time. Reports. Graphs of your yearly/monthly earnings. Calculates all sorts of totals that are useful for filling in your Self Assessment form at the end of each financial year. Timer. A little 'pop-up' that gives you a timer to log your work for any active project. Choose the project, choose which hourly rate to use, then set the timer running. You can stop and start the timer, and the total time is logged. You can also put in a description of the work you've done. Stuff I'm still working on Preferences. You'll probably want different settings to me, like a different invoice number format, or something. Choice of themes. At the moment it's designed to integrate nicely with Mac OS X, but it's all done with templates so I could easily create some templates for a Windows theme. Install script. More graphs. I like seeing project progress visually! Data export. Perhaps exporting to CSV format so work logs or payments can be opened in a spreadsheet program or printed. Email reminders. If it's supported by the server, email reminders could be sent to remind you to invoice a client when their hosting is due. What do you think? Would you be interested in this? To begin with at least I would be proposing to offer this for free, on the basis that there are plenty of other systems out there that you could pay for to do this.
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