Ride the ProfitTrain!

Mail.app black background issue

I’ve gotten a few emails from ProfitTrain / Billable users complaining about black email screens while trying to email invoices. This seems to be a Safari 5 issue as described by this Apple Support article.

They don’t have a fix but suggest toggling the plain/rich text to clear the formatting using the command shortcut Command-Shift-T.

Wish I could help but this bug seems to be on Apple’s end. :(

Thanks to @apricotstudios for the help article link.

UPDATE: This seems to be fixed with Safari 5.0.1. Use system preferences to update.

Using the Web Inspector in ProfitTrain (or any WebKit-based application)

This is a little technical, but for those extreme CSS crafters potentially useful.

ProfitTrain like many apps on Mac OS X utilizes the WebKit framework to render web pages. This is the same engine that powers Safari.

WebKit has a thing called the Web Inspector:

The Web Inspector is useful to debug CSS code and figure out which elements are getting which styles.

If you are a ProfitTrain invoice template designer and would like access to the Web Inspector while editing a template design follow these steps:

1. Make sure ProfitTrain is not running, and then via terminal execute the command:

   defaults write com.clickablebliss.ProfitTrain WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

2. Launch ProfitTrain and highlight an invoice. Traditionally you’ll be viewing the PDF representation in the view pane. Use the menu bar to switch this view to use the WebView.

   

3. Right click inside of the WebView and choose the Inspect Element menu. This will open the Web Inspector inside of the WebView. To detach the inspector click on the little button in the bottom left.

   

   

And now you can use the inspector to debug the CSS as well as other things.

Thanks to forum user fabiopigi for bringing up this need and getting me to figure out how to turn it on.

Email Customization

There is no way to compose an email that includes an attachment using the mailto: protocol. Therefore in ProfitTrain when we want to send an email with the PDF invoice attached we use a series of AppleScripts to support Mail.app, Entourage, Mailsmith, Eudora and Mailplane (Gmail front end).

If you want to run your own AppleScript when ProfitTrain wants to send an email you can do that as well. As we say in the help book article:

Under the application menu “ProfitTrain”, in the main menu, you’ll find a command labeled “Install Custom Email AppleScript…”. Using this you can copy a customizable AppleScript into place at:

[HardDisk]/Users/[you]/Library/Application Support/ProfitTrain/email_invoice_using_user_script.scpt

When ProfitTrain sees an AppleScript at this location, with this filename, it will use it when you use the Email publish action instead of the default built-in script.

ProfitTrain user Jankees van Woezik is using this feature to customize the subject line as well as archive the PDF invoices as he mails them. Cool stuff.

Double Click Love

Did you know you could double click on a client in the source list to open the Client Inspector? Or how about double clicking a report in the source list to run it? You can also double click an invoice row to open the edit invoice sheet.

We are striving to make sure little things like this work well in ProfitTrain. If you have any suggestions for a user interaction that you’d like to see, please let us know.

Tip: Red clients owe you money.

If you are just getting started with ProfitTrain you may wonder why some clients show up as red in the source list.

To help you get a quick sense of which clients owe you money and have outstanding invoices (invoices that are due on receipt or are past their due date) we will display that client name as red in the source list.

Additionally we will display the outstanding invoice row in the main invoice table as red to distinguish it from the other paid or open invoices.

We hope this cue helps. As always, if you have any feedback, let us know.

Submit your business profile

One of the things I want to do on this blog is to profile ProfitTrain users and their businesses. (Inspiration via The Setup.) I’ve experienced a lot of this via personal emails but I think it might be fun to share all the various types of people who are using ProfitTrain. I’ve seen professions from lawyers, therapists, web designers, authors and even dog walkers to name a few.

How to submit your business.

If you would like to participate in a ProfitTrain Business Profile please answer the following questions in a short essay (~200-400 words). Submit the essay as plain text and include a high resolution photo that represents your business (one that I would have permission to publish) to mike@clickablebliss.com with the subject line “ProfitTrain Business Profile Submission”.

The questions your essay should address:

• Who are you and what does your business do you do?
• Why do this and not a work for someone else?
• How did you come to use ProfitTrain and what is your favorite feature?
• If you could give past self some advice about running a business what would it be?

Please be understanding that every submission won’t get published.