Receipts, not promises.

19 October 2026

A timer on every plan

• Start a timer from anywhere — the button under ＋ Create in the left rail, the Create menu, the Dashboard, the Week toolbar or ⌘K. A chip in the top bar shows the elapsed time and the job code; click it to stop. You pick the project and task when you stop, and can create a client, project or task right there.
• Rounding you can predict: sessions round up to the quarter hour with a five-minute grace (1 h 05 logs as 1.0 h, 1 h 06 as 1.25 h).
• A forgotten timer can't run away: a 12-hour cap holds the session for review, a “Still on this job?” check-in every two hours (a browser notification when the tab is hidden), a split at midnight so each day gets its own entry, and a pause when your computer goes idle where the browser supports it.
• One timer per account, on every device. Start on the desktop, see and stop it on your phone.
• Focus runs on the same engine with two modes: Stopwatch and Sprint (work / break, 50 / 10 by default; breaks are never logged). Focus is now part of Power; the everyday timer above is in Core.

The screens, rebuilt on one kit

• Week grid: every control is now the shared kit — the same buttons, capacity cards, Both / Plan / Log switch, modals and skeleton loading as the rest of the app; undoing a plan change rides the normal toast.
• Invoices, Recurring and Quotes: one filled action per screen, financial-year cards, labelled fields, and a Sent badge that says “Due in 5 d” so you don't have to work it out. Recurring invoices now live as a tab inside Invoices.
• Projects, project pages, Clients and client pages: the same kit; a project's tabs (Tasks · Time · Invoices · Expenses · Notes) have their own links you can paste.
• Settings in six groups — Business · Work & rates · Connections · Bean · Account · Data — instead of nine tabs; old links still land in the right place. Payment terms gain Due on receipt; task rows get one Actions ▾ menu.
• Fixed: the ＋ Create and account menus took no clicks for a short while after a navigation change; the Dashboard's “This week” strip now follows your week-start setting.

18 October 2026

• Dashboard redesigned. Three numbers in a fixed order — Outstanding (sent + overdue, with the overdue count), Unbilled (days and hours; internal work shown beside it, never mixed in) and Billed vs your band — a “This week” strip of hours per day, and one Needs you board: overdue invoices, quotes going stale, days under-logged, jobs due, work on hold.
• One text size everywhere. The app no longer shrinks by 11 % between a monitor and a laptop; money and hours columns line up in tabular figures.
• Every screen is now on one component kit — buttons, menus, tabs, cards and tables behave the same way everywhere, menus work from the keyboard, and every icon-only button carries a label for screen readers.
• Privacy, kept by code: error reports and feedback are deleted after 12 months, and the text of a question you ask Bean is only stored when you have opted in to help improve Hello Bean (topic and page are kept for everyone; text is stripped after 12 months).
• Everything runs in Sydney. Every server function behind the app is now pinned to Australia, not just the database and files.

16 October 2026

• Your data lives in Sydney. The database, files and server functions moved to Supabase's Sydney region.
• Two tiers, settled. Core finishes the whole freelancer job on day one — time, quotes, invoices, payments, expenses with receipts and every Reports tab including GST by BAS quarter and cash flow. Power is only the time-back layer: reminders and thank-yous, recurring invoices, retainers, the Planner, the vehicle log, overhead and Bean. Nothing moves from Core to Power later.

15 October 2026

• Two-factor sign-in. Add an authenticator app under Settings → Account → Sign-in methods; it covers password and Google sign-ins.
• A quieter first hour: the New client form asks for the essentials (name, main contact, ABN, address) and tucks the rest behind “More options”; the region pack is one line; a fresh Dashboard shows only the setup card, the actions and Bean's read.
• Imports understand more spreadsheets: a Days column instead of Hours, an invoice register with only a Total (inc GST) and a GST column, and a Paid? Yes/No column.
• Bean: when your pricing answer names a day rate and none is set, a one-click hint sets it for you.

14 October 2026

• Email clients without connecting Gmail. Invoices, quotes, statements, reminders and thank-yous send as “Your Business via Hello Bean” with replies going to you; the PDF is attached. Connecting Gmail remains the optional send-from-your-own-address upgrade.
• Plans and billing. Core and Power subscriptions with monthly or yearly billing, a 14-day trial once we open, and founding-member pricing for beta testers; manage everything under Settings → Plan & billing.
• Bill by Day, Hourly or Flat fee on every invoice; one rate field in Settings with a Day / Hour toggle; the PDF reads TAX INVOICE only when GST applies and your ABN is set, otherwise INVOICE.
• Import your history: time (the common time-tracking exports recognised, any CSV with a column mapper), invoices (the common invoicing export; numbering can continue after the import) and contacts. Everything is previewed before anything is written.
• Calendar feed: paste any calendar's published iCal / ICS link — Outlook, iCloud, Google — and meetings appear beside your plan without an OAuth sign-in.
• Retainer statements: when a client holds a fund, the statement shows paid-in, each drawdown and the remaining balance.
• Refunds flow back: a full refund in your Stripe returns the invoice to Sent and emails you; a partial refund emails you.
• Teach Bean how you work: six guided questions compile into the playbook Bean reads before it answers.
• Under the hood: security headers on every page and a tighter cross-origin policy on every server function.

13 October 2026

• Clients can accept or decline a quote from the email. Accepting creates the draft invoice for you and logs the touchpoint; you are emailed either way. Quotes that go quiet for seven days are flagged on the Dashboard.
• Linked sign-ins: add a Google account to an email sign-in (or the reverse) and use either.
• Deleting your account has a 21-day cooling-off window with a required backup download, email notices at each step and a cancel link that works signed out.
• Revenue bands: set a monthly minimum, target and stretch; the Dashboard's Billed card reads against them.
• Overdue reminders and payment thank-yous (Power, opt-in) now run nightly — capped at five of each per day, never for invoices older than your automation start date.
• Privacy policy and Terms of service published at app.hellobean.com.au/privacy and /terms.

12 October 2026

• Bean learns people and listens for feedback: name a new contact at a client and Bean offers an “Add this contact?” card; describe a problem with the app and it offers to send it as feedback. Nothing is saved until you confirm the card.
• Bean speaks for your business, not ours: its advice reads your pricing model from your own playbook — day rate, hourly per task or mixed — and it never invents period totals; figures come from the live snapshot.
• Power includes a daily Bean allowance on our key; bring your own Anthropic or Gemini key for no limit.
• No rate until you set one: a new account starts with a blank day rate and generic example text, not ours.
• Fixed: a tab left open across a deploy now reloads itself instead of showing a blank page.

11 October 2026

• The product is Hello Bean on every surface — tab title, PDFs, emails, Bean.
• Invite-only sign-up for the beta, with starter tasks, sample data you can load and clear, a weekly three-question debrief and a “Beta · until” pill.
• Email me when an invoice is paid online — opt in under Settings.
• When a payment lands, the app offers to close the job it belongs to.
• Bean reads retainer funds correctly: drawdowns are prepaid money being worked off, and an idle fund gets a nudge.

4 October 2026

• Pay online runs on your own Stripe account (Stripe Connect). Hello Bean never holds your money; payment methods follow your Stripe settings.
• Fixed: a client who paid an older link saw a sign-in screen; they now see a plain payment-received page.

2 October 2026

• Core and Power become the two plans (an owner-only lab flag hides experiments).
• Faster everywhere: screens load from one small bundle per page, cell saves no longer round-trip the auth server, and “today” is your local date, not UTC.
• Relationships (CRM) moves to the lab until it can run on automatic signals.

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Earlier history (June – September 2026) predates the beta and is not listed. Found something that should be here? hello@hellobean.com.au.