Project estimates? Just ballpark it.
Update: The project is now listed on my Portfolio.
Over the years I’ve consistently maintained side projects, of which there are two kinds: those that pay and those that don’t. While the side projects that have no monetary value still prove to have huge benefits, I’m going to touch upon the one’s that pay for a minute.
When a person or company is willing to give you money for your efforts, most of the time, that person or company would like an estimate before any contractual agreement is made. And understandably so. In the past I’ve broken the work down on paper, tallied it up, summarized it in an email and off we went. Needless to say: blah. Then I tried spreadsheets. While it does work, it’s not the most desirable solution, and for obvious reasons.
Recently I stumbled across a simple, one-page project estimator on astuteo.com that pushed me to want to build my own. As it were, I’ve been sitting on the idea for a while now, but have been too lazy (or busy?) to do anything about it. Until now.
(oh the suspense…)
People of the web, freelancers of all ages, I give to you:
It’s very, very basic, and targets one thing: creating and showing project estimates. It rids me of those aches and pains I’ve been dealing with over the years. Now I can create an estimate based on tasks and send it off to a potential client for review. The best part is Ballpark can show estimates with or without an account, so there’s no reason for said client to sign up.
And guess what? You can use it, too! All you need is an OpenID.
Current Features…
- Create estimates based on unlimited tasks
- Add or remove tasks inline
- Set a default rate for your estimates
- Specify default tasks that show up on new estimates
- Show estimates to anyone with or without an account using a public URL
- No IE6 support and minimal IE7 support (yes, that’s a feature :-)
What’s in the pipeline…
- Drag-n-Drop reordering of tasks
- PDF downloads (or exports)
- Notifying clients from within Ballpark itself
- Implementing a form of tinyurl to shorten public URLs (maybe)
- Clone existing estimates for those projects that are almost the same
For future estimates: just Ballpark It.
The next time you need to estimate a project (doesn’t have to be web related!), keep Ballpark in mind. It’s free and really easy to use.
Let me know if there’s something blatantly obvious that’s missing from the initial release, and I’d be happy to work it in.
Hopefully others find this as useful as I do. And kudos to astuteo for being that extra nudge of motivation. I’m glad I finally cured this headache.
Enjoy!
Josh Tuesday, 03 Feb, 2009 Posted at 11:37PM
Hey Ryan… looks like a cool new site. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to log in with my openID. After authenticating, I get sent back to the home page with the openID box again. Thanks!
Ryan Wednesday, 04 Feb, 2009 Posted at 08:24AM
@Josh -
Sorry, my exception handling was swallowing the errors, leaving you clueless. I just fixed that.
The problem is, I’m requiring a “nickname” and “email” from your OpenID provider (your SREG info) before saving to the database, and it seems that you aren’t providing that or aren’t allowing that information to pass through. If you update your OpenID account (the registration persona area) to include that stuff, you shouldn’t have any problems.
While I haven’t shopped around too much with all of the providers, I think myopenid.com does a nice job of handling the spec appropriately.
Let me know if you have any further issues, and sorry about the confusion!
Josh Wednesday, 04 Feb, 2009 Posted at 10:30AM
@Ryan: Thanks for the fix! I created a new account on myopenid as suggested, and it’s working great now. (your validations are working too, because I tried it without adding a nickname first)
Very handy web app. It is a really clean and easy to use design. Nice work!
Troy Wednesday, 04 Feb, 2009 Posted at 04:20PM
Congrats on launching, Ryan, and for kicking a real problem to the curb :)