mite.nano, our little app for the macOS menu bar, is now available in an updated version. The add-on should automatically prompt you for a restart, so you don’t need to download anything manually.

What’s new?

In version 1.1.0, we have expanded the »Projects« section in the drop-down menu, from where you can create a new time entry. Thanks for all your suggestions and feedback across different channels.

1. Projects are now displayed grouped by customer, by default. This new view should hopefully provide more clarity, especially if you have several projects for different customers with the same name.
2. Alternatively, you can now choose in the settings to have mite.nano display only customers in this section. In this case, you’ll first select the customer and then their project, adding an extra layer to the menu. We suggest to try out the new settings yourself and decide which view works better for you. We assume that the new customer view will be faster and easier to grasp for accounts with many projects.
3. After selecting a project, you choose the service for the time entry. Services are now displayed grouped by billability, as they already are in the browser version. This change is also meant to improve clarity, particularly when a service is set up both as billable and non-billable.
4. For customers, projects, and services with long names, more characters are now displayed. The menu adjusts further in width.

Additionally, the new version of mite.nano includes security and stability updates.

Without mite.nano yet?

mite.nano is a complementary app for macOS that sits in the menu bar. The currently ticking timer is always visible there, so you can keep an eye on your hours without switching context, and the timer is thus almost impossible to forget.

mite.nano is developed by us, and thus, like everything from our team, included in the user fees for mite. Please click here to download mite.nano for free.

Julia in New features, Add ons

Next time you receive an invoice from us for the user fees of your mite, you will not notice any difference, visually. We will continue to send it to you as a PDF via email.

However, the PDF will be smarter: in addition to the visible part, a small XML file is embedded that contains the invoice data in a machine-readable format.

ZUGFeRD / Factur-X is the name of this hybrid format. It offers the best of two worlds: humans can continue to view and check PDF invoices as usual with all common PDF readers. But additionally, the data is also available in a structured, standardized format. Accounting software like DATEV and various invoicing tools can thus process such invoices automatically.

eInvoicing – a collective term for electronic invoices according to standards like ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, or XRechnung – will become mandatory in Germany for B2B in several stages, starting in 2025. This is based on the EU Directive 2014/55 and thus affects all European countries. Further information on the topic of eInvoice obligations in Germany and a timeline can be found, for example, at the IHK (in German language). Machines ready to go!

Julia in Inside out

Our hoster SysEleven will perform scheduled maintenances in our primary data center in Berlin, Germany. They will take place during the nights from Monday to Tuesday, March 19th, and to Wednesday, March 20th, between 0:00 and 7:00 AM CET. During these timeframes mite will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully. mite was unavailable for 19 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

No more detours: Time entries and projects can now be exported as a PDF file, directly from mite, properly formatted. Please find this new export option at the tabs »Reports => Time entries«, »Reports => Projects« as well as on shared reports.

Hopefully this new feature will smoothen your work days a little bit. In case you stumble upon any bug, we would appreciate if you got in touch, please.

Julia in New features

You can find us on Mastodon now: https://mastodon.social/@mite
We will post about what's new at mite in a calm, low-frequency way. Also, we'll inform you there in case of a server hiccup.

Simultaneously we say: Good night, Twitter. For more than 15 years, we've been chirping there as @mite and enjoying conversations with lots of users. But on X we do not feel comfortable anymore. We cannot stand what this place is being turned into by Musk. Hopefully, we`ll re-connect in a more civilised space – if you want to. Of course, we'll continue to post here on our home base, our blog. Thanks, and on to more important things.

Julia in Inside out

For each project in mite you can define a budget – in hours or dollars, for the whole project or as a monthly recurring one. A budget may help you to keep your project on track, at a glance.

On the dashboard reports, at the »Reports« tab, mite used to display a section labeled »Critical budgets«. Active projects showed up there as soon as 75% of their budget had been utilized. mite suggested to pay extra attention to these projects.

Now, you can choose which projects should be displayed on the dashboard reports:

You may want to see all active projects with a budget, or projects with a budget utilization from 50%, from 75%, or from 100%. You decide. To pick your favorite view, click on the small triangular button on the righ-hand side of the section headline »Budgets«.

Please note that on the dashboards of each team member, mite tries to only display projects that are relevant to this person. Projects will only show up there if you or the team member in question has created at least one time entry on this project.

In this section, mite will display a maximum of 20 projects. If there are more you'll see a link leading to the tab »Reports => Projects«. There, you may analyze all hundreds or thousands of projects of your account.

Thanks to all users who suggested this improvement. Hopefully this small update will make it a little easier for you too to keep track of your projects.

Julia in New features

We will perform a scheduled maintenance during the night from today to tomorrow, June 15th, between 0:00 and 1:00 AM CEST. During this timeframe mite will be unavailable for up to 15 minutes. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully. mite was taking a break for less than 2 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

Our hoster SysEleven will perform scheduled maintenances in our primary data center in Berlin, Germany. They will take place during the nights from Monday to Tuesday, June 6th, and to Wednesday, June 7th, between 0:00 and 7:00 AM CEST. During these timeframes mite will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully. mite was taking a break for 12 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

Between 14:47 und 15:28 CEST, mite was unavailable for many users. In the beginning of the affected time frame, about 5% of all requests could not be fulfilled, at the peak about 40% could not be handled successfully.

No data has been damaged. Nevertheless this interruption had a negative effect besides the unavailablility: We had to log-out all users, so everybody has to log-in once again.

The problem was on us, not our hoster. Right now, we are still investigating, we do not know exactly yet which processes blocked each other. We are very sorry for this interruption. Especially during working hours this is more than annoying. The last downtime has been several years ago ago. But, each interruption is one too many. Again: please excuse us.

Julia in Tech talk

For our official iPhone app there's an update available on the App Store. Version 1.2.0 includes two new features and some polishing:

• Add a new project or service while creating a new time entry. When selecting the project or the service, click on the icon with the plus sign on the right-hand side of the search field to add one that's missing, fast.
• Forget forgotten timers. If a timer is still running on another day than the currently selected one mite will show you a small orange indicator in the app header.
• The app has now arrived at the new domain mite.de too. Also, we polished some little things here and there.

Thanks for your feedback on all channels thus far. Adding projects and services right from within the app has been your top suggestion. Hopefully, this update will improve your workflows a little bit.

Julia in New features, Add ons