Kaal: Freshbooks Timekeeper 4+

Necessary, but a rip-off and no support

It's exactly like Chronomate, which I'd already paid for, and now I have to pay again for this new app, and $40 is quite a lot. Plus, there is NO SUPPORT. Every support link and help link in the app itself and in the app store links to their homepage, which only has a link to "get kaal" in the app store. No email, no helpdesk, no nothing. Abruptly, today, the app stopped syncing with Freshbooks. It just shows a spinning wheel, but won't pull or push. Normally, I'd email support for an app, rather than posting a 2-star review, but what other choice do I have? None. Please fix the app and please create some kind of support access.

A travesty at $40: massive flaws, no response to support requests

First, is it ridiculous to pay $40 for what is essentially non-browser front-end for Freshbooks? Absolutely. But the new Freshbooks interface is so clunky and inefficient I was desperate for options before giving up and migrating to another platform, since I've been tracking and billing in Freshbooks for about ten years.

The primary issue is that Kaal duplicates instances of services/items for each client where the item is present. So if you have ten clients each with ten services they can be billed for, you have a *massive* dropdown to contend with when setting up a timer or tracking time. It manages to be *worse* than the Freshbooks web interface, if you can imagine that.

I've done the usual troubleshooting: disconnecting and reconnecting to Freshbooks, reinstalling the app, screwing around with the settings at great length. Nothing works. There's no support link in the app or on the Kaal site, the FAQ link in the app is broken, and emails to the developer detailing the issue and requesting support have gone unanswered.

I've requested a refund from the Apple App Store and recommend avoiding this app.

Developer Response ,

Sorry about that -- for support, please email us at hello@kaal.app.

We've fixed the dropdown bug in our latest release.

Appreciated

We were heavy users of the old Chronomate app, and when that was discontinued we were concerned since our team used that a lot. I'm glad someone picked up the torch with Kaal, we use it everyday and it works pretty well. UI is basically identical to Chronomate, which our team is used to, but if you never used Chronomate I can see how it might take some getting used to.

Kaal has a few quirks but overall works well and I am glad it exists!