Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1. About Fanurio

If you are new to Fanurio, this section provides a quick introduction to what it does and its main features.

Fanurio provides freelancers with the right tools to track time, manage projects and invoice their clients so they can get paid for their work. Fanurio is a cross-platform desktop application that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other flavors of Linux.

Fanurio uses billable projects to organize tasks, expenses, trips and products that must be sold to clients. Internal projects can be marked as non-billable. Here are some of the things projects can record.

  • Work can be planned, managed and billed using tasks. A task can be used to bill three hours of programming or ten pages of Greek text translated to Latin, it's up to you how you bill your work. Tasks can be billed in units or hours.

  • The time spent working on tasks can be recorded manually or with a timer. To make time tracking more accurate, Fanurio can detect if you leave the computer and forget the timer running (idle time). Fanurio has a few reminders to help you start, resume or stop a timer. Instead of relying on your memory and attention to control the timer, you can use these reminders.

  • Expenses record money spent for a project. Billable expenses can be billed at their actual cost or marked up.

  • Trips record the distance and time travelled with a vehicle whether it's for billing or for tax purposes. Distances can be tracked in miles, kilometers or both.

  • Products can be used to bill something to a client that is neither a task nor an expense. A product could be a computer, a set of icons or a monthly fee for website hosting services.

When it comes to billing, Fanurio has many features that can help freelancers get paid.

  • Fanurio can export invoices to HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word 2007, OpenDocument and other formats so they can be printed or e-mailed. Invoice templates can be created manually, with a visual editor (Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Word or LibreOffice) or with the built-in template editor.

  • Billable time can be rounded up, down or to the nearest specified interval. Fanurio supports complex time rounding rules like "round time up to 15 minutes for each time entry and bill at least 30 minutes".

  • Discounts can be used to offer introductory rates (discounted prices) to first time clients or to bill less work if a service takes longer than estimated. Discounts can be applied to individual items or to the whole invoice.

  • Fanurio can deal with a whole range of taxes and tax combinations. Invoices can use one, two or more taxes (cummulative or not).

  • Fanurio can work with multiple currencies.

Fanurio comes with many reports that help you see how much money you've made or how much time you've worked.

Fanurio can import data from other applications. It can import time from any CSV file and clients from a CSV file or from Apple Contacts. If you need to use data outside Fanurio, you can export it to CSV or Excel.

Fanurio stores its data on the local hard-drive but it can be shared across multiple computers if it's saved in a Dropbox (or a similar service) folder. Fanurio performs automatic backups to ensure the integrity of its data.

Fanurio can be used in other languages than English.