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# Freelance invoicing software that opens with your hours in it

> Freelance invoicing software that builds the invoice from hours you already tracked: a PDF with your logo and terms, and nothing sent without you.

Most invoicing tools start with an empty line item and a cursor, and ask you to remember what the month contained. That blank form is where hourly income goes missing, not through fraud or bad clients, but through a Tuesday nobody wrote down. BillNotch starts at the other end. The hours are already recorded, already attached to a client project, already marked billable or not, and the invoice is simply a view of them that you approve.

tracked hours → billable total → draft → you send it

[Start free for 14 days](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour.

## How an invoice gets made

Four moves, and you can stop after any of them.

1.  01
    
    ### Choose a client and a period
    
    BillNotch collects every billable entry for that client in that range that is not already on an invoice. Invoiced time leaves the pool, so the same hour cannot reach a second bill.
    
2.  02
    
    ### Read the preview before anything exists
    
    The preview is a dry run: lines, hours and totals with no invoice created and no number spent. If a project has no hourly rate yet it names every project that needs one, so you fix them in a single pass.
    
3.  03
    
    ### Create the draft, then adjust it
    
    The draft carries one line per project with the hours, the rate and the amount. Change a rate, drop a line, set a tax rate, set the payment terms, override the invoice number. It is a working document until you say otherwise.
    
4.  04
    
    ### Send it, or download it and send it yourself
    
    Take the PDF and mail it from your own address, or have BillNotch mail it and stamp the draft as sent. Marking an invoice paid or void is your call as well. Nothing reaches a client on a schedule.
    

## From tracked time to a sent invoice

Under the automation is a method any hourly biller runs, by hand or not. Five moves turn a list of entries into a document:

1.  Filter to one client and a billing period. Everything outside that range stays off this invoice.
2.  Keep only the billable entries. Drop internal admin, your own learning, and time spent pitching new work.
3.  Total the time to decimal hours. 8h 30m is 8.5 (minutes divided by 60), one rate band at a time.
4.  Apply the rate. Billable hours times the client’s rate is the line amount.
5.  Add a number, the dates, both parties’ details and payment terms, then export a PDF and send it.

Steps one to four are arithmetic over data you already hold. When the tracked time is clean and billable-flagged, they stop being work and become the preview above. For the conversion and rounding, see [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours).

## Nothing is sent on your behalf

That is a design decision, not a missing feature. An invoice is a claim you are making to someone who pays you, and a claim your software made while you were asleep is one you will have to defend anyway. So the preview creates nothing, the draft stays a draft, and delivery is an act you perform. There is no auto-send, and there is no scheduled billing run that surprises a client on the first of the month. When one goes unpaid, the [invoice follow-up email](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-follow-up-email) templates give you the wording for a firm, friendly nudge.

The same principle runs one level down, in the tracking. Time is categorized into projects automatically, but anything the tracker is unsure about waits as a suggestion for you to confirm. It is never written silently onto the entry that later becomes a line on a bill. The capture side of that loop, end to end, is [time tracking for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-freelancers).

## Getting the money right

Rounding is not a detail when the number is what someone owes you. The arithmetic is worth stating plainly:

-   Money is stored and added as whole cents from end to end. Nothing is held as a floating-point amount that drifts a penny per line.
-   Hours are rounded once, where the line is priced, not again at the subtotal, and not again at the total.
-   Tax is applied to the subtotal and rounded once, so the tax line and the total always agree.
-   Currencies are never mixed. If the projects in that range are priced in different currencies, BillNotch refuses and tells you which ones, rather than quietly summing them.
-   A project with no rate is an error, not a zero. Unpriced work cannot slip onto an invoice as a free line.

## What the client actually receives

A PDF carrying your logo and business address, the client’s details, one line per project with hours, rate and amount, the subtotal, any tax line, the total, the due date and your payment terms: either your standard terms or a note written for that invoice. Numbering is automatic and overridable, so an invoice can join a sequence you already keep. To bill by hand before you track anything, the [free hourly and contractor invoice template](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) puts the same fields in the browser and exports a PDF.

The look is yours to set: three layouts, a choice of typeface, your own accent and heading colors, comfortable or compact density, and a logo scale. Set it once for the business, or override it on a single invoice. What you see in the dashboard is the same document that renders as the PDF.

## Where the unbilled hours show up

Because an invoice consumes the entries it bills, whatever is left over answers what’s still unbilled: billable time that was tracked and never put on an invoice. The Revenue Leak Finder is that list. It is the one report worth reading before you send anything, and it exists only because the hours and the invoices live in the same place.

## When you want an accounting tool instead

BillNotch bills time. It is not an accounting suite and does not pretend to be one: there are no expenses or receipts, no bank feed, no sales-tax calculation or filing, no ledger, and no recurring or retainer invoices that raise themselves each month. If your billing is a fixed monthly fee rather than hours, most of this page does not apply to you. If you keep books in a dedicated tool, keep them there: BillNotch for the hours and the invoice, your accountant’s software for the accounts, and a CSV export between the two.

Or something better than a CSV, if your books are in one of two places. The [QuickBooks Online](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) and [Xero](https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero) integrations create the invoice in your ledger the moment you send it, and mark it paid in BillNotch when the balance clears. They push invoices and read payment status; they do not carry tax, and they are not a two-way sync.

## Common questions

Does BillNotch email invoices to my clients automatically?

No. An invoice is created as a draft and stays a draft until you act on it. You can download the PDF and send it from your own email, or have BillNotch send it for you, but nothing is delivered on a schedule or without you pressing send.

Where do the hours on the invoice come from?

From tracked time. The desktop app records your active window, the activity is matched to a client project, and each project carries its own billable flag and hourly rate. The invoice gathers the billable entries for a client and period that have not been invoiced yet, and groups them into one line per project.

Can I change the way the invoice looks?

Yes. You can upload a logo and set the layout, typeface, accent and heading colors, density and logo size. The setting lives on your organization as the default, and any single invoice can override it.

Is this a replacement for accounting software?

No. BillNotch bills tracked time and produces PDF invoices. It does not track expenses or receipts, connect to a bank feed, calculate or file sales tax, or keep a ledger. If you need bookkeeping, keep your accounting tool and use BillNotch for the hours and the invoice.

## Bill a month you did not have to remember

A 14-day trial, no card. If you would rather read first, [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) covers what belongs on the document itself. For the half of this that happens before the invoice, see [the automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists both plans.

[Start free for 14 days](https://app.billnotch.com/register)

Canonical: https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software