In the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast, young Belle is admired by the townsfolk for her ethereal beauty and charm. The Beast is feared for his strength and power. Beauty and brawn are mutually exclusive.

Often times this phenomenon is found in software. Gmail, for example, is a great service that’s not long on looks. The folks at Marketcircle, however, have created a near perfect synthesis in Billings Touch for the iPhone and iPod touch. In the two weeks that I’ve been using it, I’ve upgraded to the paid version, purchased the companion desktop app and abandoned Freshbooks. Here’s why.

Brawn

What are the necessary components of a time-tracking client manager?

• Client management Easily enter client information on the fly, edit existing contact records, delete clients (it happens).
• Time tracking Start/stop timing for given tasks and projects, assign time spent “on the clock” to the appropriate project, move from project to project easily, generate invoices based upon time spent on individual clients/projects, report on time spent/money earned.
• Task management What are the tasks that must be completed to mark a project as done?
• Reporting Time spent, money billed, money received, money overdue, projected earnings.
• Invoicing Getting paid!

Special attention must be paid to mobility. Let’s say you’re working for Client A. Upon finishing Project A, you’re assigned Project B. It’s tremendously wonderful to be able to create that new project on the iPhone right there “in the field,” complete with a breakdown of all tasks with a timer for each.

Billings Touch satisfies all of these requirements beautifully.

Client Management

You’ve got three options when adding a client to Billings Touch: Create a new contact from scratch, import one from the iPhone’s Contacts or collect existing clients into a new group. Each works as you’d expect and contains all of the fields that are a part of the iPhone’s built-in contact manager.

Assigning a project to a client is easy. Just navigate to that client and click the “+” icon. From there, you can assign the project’s name, due date, status and project code. What’s really nice is that Billings Touch provides extra fields that you can customize to suit your needs.

As you assign and complete projects, they’re listed on that client’s page, sorted by completed and open projects, along with a running tally of what’s owed.

The fact that you can create a new client, project, task or timer on the fly while in the field, perhaps no where near your computer, is huge. “Dave, can you run up to the projector room and update the slideshow, transfer it to the Mac mini and make sure it’s set to run automatically at 4:00 PM?” Sure can, and I’ll set up in Billings on the way. No more scribbling in notebooks or (gasp) relying on my memory.

Time tracking

This is beautifully executed. The main UI of Billings Touch is divided into 3 areas: Home, Work and Timer. Clicking Timer produces a list of all timed “sheets” that are currently in play. To get started, click anyone and hit “Start.” You can pause and resume at anytime, and the app needn’t be running to keep timing. Has a phone call or text arrived? No problem.

You can create a new slip just as easily. Hit the “+” icon and select your rate, give the task a name, assign it to the proper client/project and begin. It couldn’t be easier.

Task management

This is really an invoicing app, not a project manager, but it sill does an admirable job of keeping things orderly. Click the “Work” icon to browse all clients, overdue invoices, unbilled slips and a list of recent projects. Click any project (or create a new one) and easily assign it to the proper client, note the start date, assign a project code, etc.

Reporting

As modest as they are, the “reports” that Billings Touch offers are fun: On the home screen, you can toggle between two bar graphs that depict the number of dollars earned over the last seven days and the number of hours worked.

You can absolutely use Billings Touch as a stand-alone app, but the paid version syncs with its desktop companion over Wi-Fi.

Invoicing

Once that magical time comes, the app is ready. Just navigate to the client and all of the completed projects are listed. Simply select “Make invoice” and choose from one of three templates, set the terms and add a note. Then click “Create” and it’s converted into a PDF that’s attached to an email message.

Beauty

Plain and simple, this is an attractive app. The homepage presents a lot of information in a readable, organized fashion and the blue-and-grey color scheme is quite nice. Moving from screen to screen is quite snappy on my 3GS.

The icons are especially impressive. Each would be instantly recognizable even without the accompanying text. The whole thing feels absolutely at home on the iPhone’s screen.

Two complaints

My first complaint is the business of sending invoices as PDFs. Freshbooks handles this online, and I can see when an invoice was opened by a client. Also, Billings Touch doesn’t offer easy online payment options. Instead, you must forward  your Paypal address for example.

But wait, there’s more

There are additional features here that I didn’t mention because I don’t make much use of them, like expense and mileage tracking, modest inventory tracking and something called “blueprints,” which are templates that can be used over and over.

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While using Billings Touch, I realized how an application’s features and benefits affect its longevity. Specifically, the features attract your attention, while the benefits grab you for good.

Here’s an example. Billings Touch provides super-simple task and project management, client management, invoicing and (modest) reporting. All of this is presented in an attractive, readable UI.

Those are the features.

The benefit is a feeling of confidence that you’re using the right tool for the job. That you needn’t worry about timing this correctly, being on task or getting billing done right. It’s that piece of mind that’s the benefit. I know I can leave this app alone and do my work. That’s worth a lot more than $15 to me.