HourBill does not transmit your data to third parties (or us!)

Your backup files are stored in your personal Google (gmail) account, in an encoded form that is only readable in any meaningful way by HourBill.

It has come to our attention that there are other apps in the App Store, claiming to do something similar to what HourBill does, that require you to provide your email address to the developer before allowing you to access basic functionality such as backing up your data. HourBill has no such requirement.

HourBill needs your gmail address and password in order to access the Google Docs functionality that is a free service accompanying your gmail account. That address and password are stored in the Keychain (256-bit encrypted) on your device. Transmission of backups to and from Google's server network is similarly encrypted. The entire backup/restore transaction is between you and your password-protected gmail account, with that level of security. In no way does ThorJupiter Software or any agent thereof play any intermediary role. It's totally between you and your gmail account.

It's important for us to point out that there is no connection whatsoever between the gmail address that you provide to the app for the purpose of using HourBill's backup feature, and whatever email functionality you are using in the Mail application on your device. Many people have multiple email addresses (we have dozens of them for testing.) Nobody cares if you set up a new gmail account for the sole purpose of using HourBill's backup functionality.

The Undo/Redo buttons only appear in an Account/Invoice screen, or an Entry screen, if there is something to Undo or Redo, i.e. after you have begun editing the content of the screen.

If you've finished editing the content of one of these screens, by tapping the Cancel/Done buttons or backgrounding the app, the Undo/Redo buttons will no longer be present, because the data in the screen has been committed. In particular, backgrounding the app is treated as equivalent to having tapped Done (in order for you to not have lost data if the app backgrounds due to a time-out, for example.)

In the 'Export' screen, there is a 'Change Address' button that allows you to select an email address from your Contacts to export to. If this has been blocked, proceed as follows.

Go to Apple's Settings app, and tap on Restrictions. In the Privacy section, tap on Contacts. Select Allow Changes, and set the row for HourBill to be ON.

How this ever got turned OFF, we don't know, at least for HourBill. We are the sweetest most innocent app there ever was.

Our backgrounds are in mathematical modeling, physics simulations, database development, AI game engine design, gaming systems, and productivity applications, on various platforms.

No. HourBill is built around a SQL database stored on your device. In a sense, HourBill is the front-end, and our SQL manager is the kernel. We've gone to great lengths to design the app for maximal stability and safety of your data. Even if the front-end were to experience a malfunction of some sort, there are multiple layers of internal protection and correction, and you likely wouldn't notice, nor would your data be affected. This is very important to us.

There are internal backup systems in the app itself, that kick in automatically in the case of recoverable faults, restoring data from files on your device. You will probably never notice.

Backups that you control are stored in the cloud (Google Docs). Take this feature and use it well. Regular off-site backups are always a winner.

HourBill's data is stored as a SQL database. If you've set 'Auto-Backup' to ON, an automatic backup will be performed whenever the app starts, i.e. comes to the foreground, provided that the data in the database has changed since the last time it was backed up, whether that previous backup was automatic or manual (tapping the 'Backup Now' button.) This reduces identical backups that would be caused by starting the app just to "look at something". BTW, because the app's Settings are also stored in the database, changing your Settings (in any of the Settings screens) also qualifies as changing your data.

Tapping the 'Backup Now' button proceeds with immediate network backup regardless of whether the database has changed since the last backup.

It boils down to reliability. If HourBill, on detecting that there is some change to the database that needs to be protected/saved/backed-up, requested a network backup on app quit, there is no guarantee that there would be time to make that happen, in the short time that iOS allows us.

HourBill backup needs your gmail username (e.g. declanfarber@gmail.com) and password, in order to access the Google Docs feature of your gmail account, which is where its backups are stored. HourBill requires the "@gmail.com" (or some other Google-based domain name) in your username. The password may also be case-sensitive.

See our above Privacy Statement for how this is between you and your gmail account. There are no intermediaries (except for the Internet pipeline between your device and Google's servers, and that's encrypted.) We have no way of facilitating this transaction.

To set up your gmail account, if you don't already have one, there are instructions you can access from the info button (i in a circle) that appears on the Backup screen in the app.

Once all of that is set up, you should make sure that you can log into your gmail account from your desktop or laptop computer using that username and password. Sometimes if you have a gmail account and try to log into your account repeatedly from any device with an incorrect or incomplete username/password, Google will suspend the account until you log into your account directly on (for example) www.gmail.com on a desktop or laptop computer and correctly answer a "Captcha" (you know, where you have to identify the distorted letters you see.) Then they will automagically un-suspend the account, because you've convinced them that you're not a bot. You should be able to use the gmail account on that computer - if you can't, then it's something beyond our control.

Further help to follow, if there is ever more than the one person to have contacted us about this (and that case seems to have been resolved.) We have been testing backups of HourBill to Google Docs every which way from Sunday since it was first released three years ago, and we stand by how reliable it is.

HourBill currently has two Settings screens, one reachable from the 'All' screen that lists all of your Accounts and Invoices, and the other from the screen which lists all of the Entries for a particular Account or Invoice. The first is for user preferences that apply to the app as a whole, and the second is for user preferences that apply to an individual Account or Invoice. The latter has some buttons that allow preferences for that individual Account to be applied to all other Accounts as well.

The only elements common to all of the Settings screens are the 'Maximum Help' and 'Pause Starting Keypad' buttons, which are there for your convenience.

This is not specific to HourBill, this is general troubleshooting.

When you are using an app (such as HourBill) and tap the Home button, the app moves to the background, but is still "alive". If you double-tap the Home button, you'll see a left-right scrollable view of all of your "sleeping" apps. Scroll to the app you want to quit, and flick upwards on the presented screen for it. It will be terminated.

Yes.