iRachet is a promising time-tracking/billing/invoicing program off to a great start. With some tweaking it could become the program of choice for Mac-based small business owners.

Things I like:
- The iCal integration is great. I love how it automatically places events in iCal for projects and payments. Very nice!
- While I don’t use this feature, the mileage tracker could be quite useful to many businesses. There isn’t a competing program out there that offers this feature that I am aware of. I also like the way iRachet gets the mileage from your office to your client’s doorstep.
- The developer is friendly and very quick to reply to questions.

Things I don’t like or need improvement:
- There seems to be a bug when entering a price in the “Manage Charges” window. If I highlight the cost and try to enter a price the value only increases by 1 cent. I’ve contacted the developer and he is working on a fix.
- I’m not big on the interface, especially the way projects are listed. If you have a relatively large list of clients and projects there could be a lot of scrolling involved to find the right listing. I’d like to see the hourly and fixed project items put into one window with an icon differentiating the two. With the space gained by doing that you could put a list of all projects for the client.
- This is a minor thing but I think the project timer menu item should not have movement. It distracts the eye while I am trying to work.

Considering this is still a 1.0 release and it already offers so many positives, iRatchet is definitely one to watch.