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 (128-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.

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 is optimized for the Retina Display on iPhone 4 or greater. We have also included graphical elements that are compatible with non-Retina displays such as with the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 3G.

Apple could have chosen to use the Retina Display graphical elements included with HourBill, for display on the iPad in 2x mode, but they have decided not to. This appears to be Apple policy, and surely they have reasons for it. This is beyond our control.

We are determined to produce a definitive iPad version of HourBill, with enhanced features that we've already mapped out. It's an enormous job with an app like HourBill, because of the number and variety of its displays, and so forth. It's a large app, descended from a much larger app, skillfully looking small.

HourBill's data is stored as a SQL database. If you've set 'Backup on Start', an automatic backup will be performed whenever the app starts, 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 few seconds 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 tested backups of HourBill to Google Docs every which way for three months before we released, and we stand by how reliable it is.

If title or description/comments fields have "boxes" around them, then touching inside the box should allow you to edit. If the title or description etc. has no box around it, then there will be an 'Edit' button at the top right, that puts up an Edit screen, that allows you to edit those fields, field by field.

When you are finished editing a field, tapping Done saves the field. You can then go on to edit another field in the Edit screen. If you tap Cancel after editing a field, only that field would be cancelled and put back to what it was before.

We designed the app this way so that you could cancel individual field edits, and you could also cancel all edits for an Edit screen. This is the way we like to use the app. You will get used to it quickly, and it is quite powerful. We call it "staged cancel", and it's very cool, we did it before anyone else on iOS.

HourBill currently has two Settings screens: 'Settings' and 'Account Settings'. 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. The latter has some buttons that allow preferences for that individual Account to be applied to all other Accounts as well.

The only element common to all of the Settings screens is the 'Maximum Help' button at the top, which is there for your convenience.

A bit of background: HourBill was designed to be timezone-agnostic. We wanted to be able to fly from Houston to Tokyo, or Madrid to Melbourne, and work on the plane the whole way, have all times be local throughout the trip, and never have to worry about whether time durations were compromised in any way by this. When you get back to your home base, everything should be accurately presented w.r.t. local time there as well.

A consequence of this is that the idea of what is a "day" starts to seem very arbitrary, particularly when you're doing crazy things like crossing the International Date Line, etc. So presenting data for a given day is not an "organic" thing for HourBill to do.

Regardless of that, if you as a user of the app can present a well-defined case scenario where the identification of a "day" would be useful, we'd be delighted to work with you.

The alternative would be to offer a "fixed timezone" mode. We don't like that, because it gives us jetlag.

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

With iOS 4, Apple introduced multitasking on devices that can support it. How do you know if your device/OS is currently multitasking? Press the Home button, to go to the screen that displays all of your app icons, and then double-press the Home button. On a device that is currently multitasking, the app icon screen will shift upwards to show a "shelf" of the various apps that are in a suspended state on your device, waiting to be brought to the foreground when you tap their icons either from this "shelf" or as usual from the screens of app icons on your device.

The apps that you see on this "shelf" are still "alive", but suspended in the background. To terminate a suspended app, touch the icon on the shelf until the red "delete" button appears, then tap the delete button. This is very different from doing the same thing to that app icon where it appears in the main screen of app icons. Doing it from the shelf quits the app; doing it from the main app icon screen ("springboard") DELETES the app along with its data. Opps! Hmmm, no wonder this doesn't get promoted.

If your device is not multitasking, all you have to do to quit the app is press the Home button while the app is running on-screen.

At the moment, no. For the purpose of storing encoded backups of business documents, Google Docs (our present choice) is excellent. It's free, fast, unreadable by anyone else, protected by your gmail password.

Dropbox is a fine service, we like it, but we are uncomfortable with some associated access security issues that are not present in Google Docs, at least the way we implement it. Dropbox tilts in a direction crossways to our purpose here.

Noted without comment or judgement.

Previously noted, without comment or judgement.

Hang on, wait a minute.

Our backup implementation is rugged, stable and reliable, and requires no maintenance on our part, in its released form, and that hasn't changed with iOS 5.

Backup to iCloud will appear in a future update, after enough testing.

Yes.

Because of United States technology export regulations, this is a long process.

Seemingly weird behavior of our apps should be reported to us directly. What you consider to be unexpected, we consider to be sublimely what you want to happen, but this is always up for discussion, and we welcome your input, always trying to improve.