The owntime blog.
Buy-once thinking for people who got the email. On ownership, migration, pricing, and the structural impossibility of being repriced. 48 posts and counting.
Industries"Time Tracking for Ad Agencies, by Campaign"The campaign launched on Monday. By Wednesday, the hours budget was at 60%. By Friday, the client had notes, and the notes had notes, and the wrap report was going to show an over…Industries"Time Tracking for Construction, by Variation"The job was priced at $14,000. It is now $19,000, and the client is asking why. The answer is three variations you priced from memory, two site visits you forgot to bill, and a st…Comparison"Toggl's Free Tier Is Real. Here Is Where It Stops Making Sense."I am going to start with a concession, because if I do not, the people who use Toggl will stop reading, and some of them should not. Toggl Track's free tier is real 6-person studi…Migration"The First 10 Switchers Get Free Concierge Migration. Here Is What That Means."The offer is exactly what it sounds like, and I want to be specific about what it includes, because "free migration" can mean anything from "we have a tutorial" to "we do it for y…Ownership"Software You Own: The Ownership Checklist"When you pay for software, what do you actually own? Not what the marketing says. Not what the checkout page implies. What do you physically, legally, technically own after the tr…Ownership"How to Get Cited by AI Search Engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini)"This post is about a specific kind of content: the kind that AI search engines pull into their answers. If you have ever asked ChatGPT or Perplexity a question and seen it cite a…Industries"Time Tracking for Design Teams, by Revision"Round one is in the proposal. Round two is in the proposal. Round three is where the margin goes, because the client had notes, and the notes had notes, and nobody counted the rou…Industries"Time Tracking for Accountants, by Job and Busy Season"This post is for accounting firms and finance practices that track time because the work demands it, not because the tool is fun. If your year has a busy season that breaks every…Ownership"Your Data Map: Where Every Byte Lives"This is a map of your data. Not a philosophy. Not a privacy policy. The actual file paths, what is in each one, and what reads and writes it. If you are evaluating owntime and dat…Comparison"Buy-Once Time Tracking Actually Exists. Here Are Your Options."You want to track time without a subscription. That should be a simple thing to find. It is not. The time tracking category is dominated by subscriptions. Toggl. Harvest. Clockify…Ownership"How a Desktop App Works With No Servers At All"You open most apps and somewhere in the background, they talk to a server. They sync your data. They check your license. They send analytics. You do not see it. It just happens. o…Ownership"What Is a Buy-Once Software License?"A buy-once license means you pay once and you own the software. The transaction ends. The vendor cannot charge you again for the thing you already bought. That is the whole defini…Industries"Time Tracking for Law Firms, by Matter"This post is for solicitors, barristers, and legal practices that bill by matter and are tired of forcing their workflow into a tool built for "projects." If your work is organize…Comparison"We Scored owntime Against Toggl. Here Is the Honest Result."I am going to do something that is genuinely bad marketing and I want to explain why I am doing it anyway. I sat down with the full feature list for Toggl Track, the tier most sma…Trust"Owntime: Questions Buyers Ask"These are the questions people actually ask before buying, answered directly. If your question is not here, email me at the address on the contact page and I will answer it. How m…Comparison"Mac Time Trackers, Compared"You track time on a Mac. That narrows the field more than you think, and it changes what matters. A Mac-native time tracker 6-person studio, 3 years is not just a web app that hap…Ownership"Your Time Tracker Can't Raise Its Price 15x If You Own It"Your time tracker cannot raise your price fifteen times if you own it. Read that sentence again, slowly, because it is the entire thesis of owntime, stated as plainly as I can sta…Workflow"What Time Trackers Get Wrong About Invoicing"The dirty secret of the time tracking industry is that most time trackers are not very good at the thing you are actually tracking time for. You do not track time for the sake of…Migration"The Dry-Run Preview: See Your Import Before Anything Writes"You have a CSV with three years of Harvest entries. Twelve clients. Some projects you renamed halfway through. A few entries with notes that have special characters, because you w…Ownership"One File. Here Is Everything It Replaces."Your timesheet is one file. timesheet.db. It sits in your Documents folder. It is about as dramatic as a tax document, and it replaces more than you think. Most time trackers stor…Ownership"What 'Local-First' Means for Your Business Data"Local-first means the software stores your data on your machine, not on the vendor's server. Your timesheet is a file at a path you can point to. ~/Documents/owntime/timesheet.db.…Workflow"Track Time Without Touching the Mouse"⌘⇧T. Timer starts. You did not touch the mouse, you did not open a menu, you did not wait for a page to load. The timer is running and you are back to work. This is the interactio…Money"The Harvest Price Hike, Worked Out For Your Studio"You have probably seen the headline by now. Harvest raised prices after Bending Spoons acquired the company. The widely cited figure is around 1500%. That number is real, but it i…Industries"Time Tracking for Architecture, by RIBA Stage"This post is for architects and architectural practices that bill in stages and are tired of pretending a flat project budget captures how a job actually runs. If your work moves…Trust"The Changelog as Proof That Buy-Once Does Not Mean Abandoned"There is a reasonable fear that comes with buying software once, and I want to name it directly, because if I do not, it will sit in the back of your mind while you read everythin…Comparison"Why owntime Will Not Build Forecasting (And Who Should Look Elsewhere)"I get this request every week, usually phrased as a question and sometimes phrased as a dealbreaker. "Does owntime do resource forecasting?" "Can you add Harvest Forecast?" "I nee…Ownership"Audit Your SaaS Stack for Rug-Pull Risk in Twenty Minutes"Take out a piece of paper, or open a note. Write down the tools you depend on for work. Not the tools you like. The tools you would have to stop working if they disappeared tomorr…Workflow"The Four Minutes You Bill For But Did Not Work"You are on a client call. The timer started when you opened your laptop at 9:02. It is 9:37 now. For the last four minutes you have been listening, not typing, not clicking, doing…Trust"I Got Mad and Built a Clone: The Real Origin Story of owntime"I am going to tell you the origin story of owntime, and I want to start by admitting that the first half is unoriginal, because honesty about that matters more than a good hook. I…Workflow"From Estimate to Invoice Without Retyping Anything"There is a moment in every fixed-fee project that nobody talks about because it is too small to complain about and too common to be surprising. The client accepts your estimate. G…Comparison"A Team of Six People, Six Separate Files. Here Is Why."I get the same email every few days. It usually starts with "this looks great for me, but..." and ends with some version of "how does it work for my team?" The team in question is…Migration"The 10,000-Row Import Test (And Why It Mattered)"There is a moment in every tracker switch that decides whether the new tool is real or just looks good in a demo. It is not the timer. It is not the invoice template. It is the im…Ownership"Price Certainty Is Architecture, Not a Promise"Somewhere in the onboarding flow of almost every subscription tool, there is a moment that feels like safety. A pricing page that says "from $9/month." A founder who tweets "we wi…Trust"47 of 50: Why I Am Pre-Selling owntime at $99 (Honestly)"There is a line on the owntime pricing page that reads something like "Early-bird, 47 of 50 left." A small number, updated by hand, counting down from fifty. It is one of the most…Migration"Your Harvest History Is a Hostage. Here Is How to Get It Back."There is a reason most people do not leave Harvest the week the new pricing lands. It is not the timer. It is not the invoice templates. It is the history. Years of entries, in on…Ownership"The Anti-Roadmap: Five Things We Will Not Build"Most product roadmaps are lists of things the team is building next. This post is the opposite. It is the list of things we are deliberately not building, and it is one of the mos…Ownership"One File You Own: Why Your Timesheet Should Be a File on Your Disk"There is a moment early in building owntime when I did something that felt small but locked in the whole product. I opened a SQLite browser, pointed it at the timesheet.db file in…Workflow"Retainer Invoices That Remind You to Bill (Instead of Billing Themselves)"I had a client on a monthly retainer, the kind that should be the easiest invoice of the month. Same hours, same rate, same client, same fifteenth of the month. No scope to estima…Money"A 6-Person Studio, 3 Years: $2,570 vs $198"When a studio picks a time tracker, the decision usually comes down to a glance at a pricing page. Nine dollars a user a month. Twelve dollars a user a month. Free. The numbers ar…MoneyStop Over-Serving: Project Budget Alerts at 75, 90, and 100%There was a client, early in my consulting years. A website project. Fixed fee, which I set myself, which means I have nobody to blame. The work went well. The client was happy. A…Ownership"Free Forever Is the Most Expensive Plan"When I tell people owntime is a one-time purchase time tracker, the response is usually some version of the same question. Why would I pay anything, when Clockify is free? It is t…Ownership"Octopus Deploy Went From $50 to $15,000. Nobody Is Exempt"There is a Hacker News comment from August 2026 that does more work than most essays. It is short. It is angry. And it ends with a phrase that should worry every team that rents t…WorkflowTime to Invoice Without Retyping: How Friday Stopped Being Invoice NightThe timer stopped at 5:02 but the week did not. Every consultant knows this Friday. The client work is done, the week is over, and now comes the part nobody bills for: turning the…Trust"If I Disappear Tomorrow, Your Copy of owntime Keeps Working"When you buy software from a solo developer, there is a question underneath every other question. Nobody types it into the support form. It sits in the back of the mind while you…ComparisonWhat Harvest Still Does Better Than owntimeI make owntime, a buy-once, local-first time tracker and invoicing app. owntime exists because Harvest raised prices roughly 1500% for some teams after Bending Spoons acquired it,…Comparison"The Ownership Matrix: Harvest vs Toggl vs Clockify vs owntime"Four tools, one question: who controls the price and the data after you commit? - Harvest is the cautionary tale. Great product, now owned by Bending Spoons, with pricing that rep…MigrationHow to Leave Harvest in One Afternoon (Export to owntime)The one thing that usually stops people from switching trackers is not features. It is history. Years of entries are your billing memory, your tax trail, your evidence in a disput…OwnershipThe Anatomy of a Software Rug PullA software rug pull happens when the company that sold you a tool changes the deal after you are locked in. Harvest users woke up to roughly a 1500% price increase after Bending S…