# BillNotch: full text > Complete markdown text of every indexable page on billnotch.com, generated > from the built site. The short index version lives at https://billnotch.com/llms.txt. --- # Product ## Source: https://billnotch.com/ [Passive time tracking: no timers, no manual entry](https://billnotch.com/#how) # Automatic time tracking that adds up your billable hours. > BillNotch turns tracked hours into invoice-ready totals: automatic, passive time tracking and PDF invoicing for freelancers who bill by the hour. The desktop app records what you work on and sorts it into projects automatically. See your billable total, send a PDF invoice, and catch the hours you forgot to bill. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [See how it works](https://billnotch.com/#how) Free to start No credit card Windows · macOS · Linux The loop ## Three steps, and you never reconstruct a week again. 01 ### Capture Install the desktop app once. It watches the active window and logs what you work on, second by second: no timer to start, nothing to remember. Connect a Google or Microsoft calendar and BillNotch reads your recent meetings, read-only, and suggests them as entries you approve. 02 ### Categorize Activity sorts itself into projects by your keyword rules. Turn on AI categorization for the fuzzy cases. Billable is inherited from the project. 03 ### Bill Read the billable total, send a PDF invoice, or export CSV. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you never invoiced. Built around the billable hour ## Everything from raw activity to an invoice-ready total. zoom.us Client · Discovery linear.app Acme · Planning meet.google.com Standup Internal github.com Acme · Engineering figma.com Acme · Design ### Categorization on autopilot Keyword rules (domains, app names, ticket prefixes) sort activity into projects out of the box. Add an AI key and the fuzzy cases get sorted too: billable when the project bills. T ### Built for you, not your boss Sync window titles or keep them on your machine: your call, per device. Connect each one with an API key you issue and revoke anytime. Billable today $0 04:32:10 running ### Billable, to the second Every entry inherits its project’s billable rate, summed live into a total you can invoice. This week 28.4 / 37.5h billable Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri ### Invoices & the leak finder Totals by day and project, ready for a [PDF invoice](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) or a CSV export. The Revenue Leak Finder answers what’s still unbilled: billable time you tracked but never put on an invoice. [See what you’re leaking, free, no signup](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) Pricing ## Less than one billable hour a month. Start with 14 days of full access, no card required. Flat per-seat pricing: no usage fees, no surprise overages. Pick a plan when the trial ends; your data exports cleanly if you don’t. Yearly saves 2 months 14-day free trial on every plan Full access to every feature. The on-ramp, not a separate tier. Card optional ### Pro Most popular For a freelancer billing by the hour. $9 /mo 1 seat [Start free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) - Automatic desktop tracking - AI categorization - Unlimited history - PDF invoicing - Client & project management ### Team For a studio billing as a team. $12 /seat/mo per seat [Start free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) - Everything in Pro - Team dashboard - Billable rates - Utilization & capacity reports - CSV & data exports ## Start tracking the hours you can bill. Set up the desktop app once. Your ledger keeps itself, your invoices write from the total, and the leak finder makes sure nothing bills late. [Get started](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [See pricing](https://billnotch.com/#pricing) Free to start No credit card Revoke access anytime ## The short version. Billing on your own? See how the loop runs [for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). On Linux? The [Linux time tracker](https://billnotch.com/linux) runs native on X11 and Wayland. Still curious? Sign in and connect the desktop app in a couple of minutes. ### Do I have to start and stop a timer? No. The desktop app records the active window for you. You can still start a manual timer on the dashboard whenever you want one. ### How accurate is the categorization? Keyword rules are deterministic and need no setup. That is the default. Add an AI key for the fuzzy matches; the rule-based categorizer stays the tested fallback either way. ### Can I invoice from it? Yes. Generate a PDF invoice from a project’s billable total, or export a CSV (activity, project, duration, billable flag) for any date range you pick. ### What is the Revenue Leak Finder? It scans your tracked time for billable work that never landed on an invoice: unbilled entries, gaps, projects you forgot, so you can bill the money you already earned. ### Where does my activity go, and who can see it? To your own BillNotch account, over an API key you issue and can revoke. You choose the sync mode per device. Window titles can stay on your machine and never leave it. Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. Built for you, not your boss. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/about > Who builds BillNotch, why it exists, and what it stands for: privacy by default, flat pricing, and software written for the person doing the work. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / About About # Why BillNotch exists. Billing by the hour has a quiet, expensive flaw: the hours you forget to track never get billed. Manual timers depend on perfect memory, and memory fails exactly when the work is most absorbing. BillNotch started from that problem: make tracking automatic, so the number you invoice matches the work you actually did. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [See pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) ## From raw activity to an invoice ### Capture The desktop app records the active window (what you work on, second by second) with no timer to start and nothing to remember. ### Categorize Keyword rules sort that activity into client projects out of the box; optional AI handles the fuzzy cases. Billable is inherited from the project. ### Bill Read your billable total, send a PDF invoice, or export CSV. The Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable time you tracked but never invoiced. ## What we believe - Built for the worker, not the boss: sync window titles or keep them on your machine, per device, with an API key you issue and revoke. - Privacy by default: no screenshots, no keystrokes. Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. - Simple, flat pricing: Pro $9/mo, Team $12/seat/mo, no per-project metering or usage surprises. - One tool for the whole loop: tracking, categorization, invoicing, and leak-finding in one place. - Cross-platform: Windows, macOS, and Linux, because your tools should fit your setup. ## Who it’s for BillNotch is built for people who bill by the hour and lose time to forgotten timers: [freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers), [small agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies), and [consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants). ## Who writes this Adam A. builds BillNotch and writes the guides on this site. The posts on [the blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) come out of working on the same problem the product solves: tracking billable hours without remembering to, and turning them into an invoice. Corrections and disagreements are welcome at [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). ## Get in touch Questions, feedback, or a feature you need? Email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). A real person reads it. --- # Pricing ## Source: https://billnotch.com/pricing > BillNotch pricing: Pro $9/mo for freelancers, Team $12/seat/mo for studios. 14-day free trial, no credit card. Tracking with invoicing built in. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Pricing Pricing # Less than one billable hour a month. Two flat plans, no usage fees. 14 days free to start, no card. Yearly saves two months ### Pro For a freelancer billing by the hour. $9 /mo 1 seat [Start free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) - Automatic desktop tracking - AI categorization - Unlimited history - PDF invoicing - Client & project management ### Team For a studio billing as a team. $12 /seat/mo per seat [Start free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) - Everything in Pro - Team dashboard - Billable rates - Utilization & capacity reports - CSV & data exports Coming from Harvest’s usage-based pricing? See [the Harvest alternative](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) for what replaces each piece, or [how Harvest pricing works in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) for the full cost breakdown. ## What both plans include Both plans run the same tracker. The desktop app records the active window on Windows, macOS and Linux, sorts that activity into your projects, and adds up the billable hours . There is no timer to start and nothing to fill in at the end of the week. [Invoicing](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) is part of it: generate a PDF from a project’s billable total, or export CSV for any date range. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that never made it onto an invoice; the [leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) estimates what that is costing you today. **Pro** is a single seat, sized for a freelancer billing by the hour. **Team** adds what a studio needs on top: a shared dashboard, per-member billable rates, utilization and capacity reporting, exports, and roles that decide who can see whose time. [BillNotch for agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies) walks through how the Team plan works across a studio. ## How the trial works Every new organization starts with 14 days of full access. No credit card, no locked features. The trial is the on-ramp, not a cut-down tier. If it ends without a subscription, the account goes read-only instead of disappearing. Your history, reports, CSV exports and invoice PDFs all keep working; what stops is creating new time entries and syncing from the desktop app. A timer already running can still be stopped, so no elapsed time is lost at the boundary. Subscribe whenever you are ready and tracking picks up where it left off. ## Seats, changes and cancelling Team is billed per active member. Invite someone and the seat count goes up; remove them and it comes back down. The change syncs to your subscription automatically and is prorated, so you never pay for an empty seat or reconcile a seat count by hand. Payments run through Stripe. Change plan, switch between monthly and yearly, update a card or cancel from the billing portal in Settings. Cancelling keeps the plan active until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it does not renew after that; payments are otherwise non-refundable, as set out in the [terms](https://billnotch.com/terms). Yearly billing is two months free: $90/yr on Pro, $120/seat/yr on Team. ## Questions about billing Do I need a credit card to start? No. The 14-day trial opens with your account and asks for nothing else. You enter card details only when you pick a plan. What happens to my data if I never subscribe? It stays. The account turns read-only when the trial ends: reports, CSV exports and invoice PDFs keep working, so you can take everything with you whether or not you come back. Is there a free plan? No. One flat price per seat with no usage limits; the trial is how you evaluate BillNotch, rather than a permanently limited tier. Can I move from Pro to Team later? Yes, from the billing portal. Your tracked history, clients and projects carry over untouched, and the charge is prorated. Do you charge per project, client or invoice? No. Projects, clients, invoices and history are unlimited on both plans. The only thing that changes your bill on Team is the number of people in the org. ## Start with the 14 days. Install the tracker, work a normal day, and see what it caught. Card details only if you stay. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) --- # Use cases ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/accountants > Time tracking software for accountants: passive capture of busy-season hours, split by client and engagement, with invoices synced to QuickBooks or Xero. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For accountants For accountants # Time tracking software for accountants that catches busy-season leakage Time tracking software for accountants earns its keep in one stretch of the year. Busy season is when the hours get worked at 11pm and nobody logs them, and that is exactly the time that turns into a write-down. BillNotch captures it while it happens, so the work becomes billable instead of forgotten. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) BillNotch records your billable hours automatically in the background, attributes them to the right client and engagement, separates billable from non-billable, and turns approved hours into an invoice. It protects realization through 1040 and 1120 season without asking anyone to babysit a stopwatch. ## Why time tracking software for accountants has to survive busy season Realization is billed hours over worked hours, and busy season is where it quietly falls. Not because rates are wrong, but because the worked side is undercounted. The 20 minutes on a client’s question, the second pass on a return, the reconciliation that took longer than the fee assumed: all real, all billable, and all the first thing to go missing when the day ends at midnight and the timesheet is a memory exercise. Multiply a handful of those across a full 1040 and 1120 season, per preparer, and a firm has written off a real week of fees before it ever sends a bill. Unlogged hours turn into write-downs against a fixed fee, or work in progress that never converts, and they distort the one number a firm plans on. A tracker that depends on discipline fails in exactly the weeks discipline runs out. The point of passive capture is that the record does not need you to be organized at 11pm; it is already there when you sit down to bill. ## Passive capture across QuickBooks, Excel, and email The desktop app reads which application is in front and for how long, on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and there is no timer to start. It watches for idle, so a lunch or a long call away from the desk does not land on a client. What reaches the server is the activity and its duration, never a screenshot and never a keystroke log, because screen recording does not exist in the product. Meetings that live only on your calendar are covered separately: [Outlook time tracking](https://billnotch.com/integrations/outlook-calendar) reads two weeks of Microsoft 365 meetings and offers each as an entry you confirm. Privacy is not a footnote for regulated work. Window titles are matched to clients on your own machine, and are never sent to the server as raw text. For a firm bound by client confidentiality, that on-device matching is often the difference between a tool you can adopt and one that IT or a partner will veto. Here is what capture actually sees across a normal day in a firm. ### Ledger and workpapers QuickBooks Online, a Xero session, a return in your tax software, and the Excel workpaper open beside them are all foreground windows, so the time you spend on a client’s books is recorded without a timer running. ### Email and PDFs The reply to a client’s question, the source document in a PDF reader, the engagement letter you are marking up. Coordination work is real billable time, and it lands against the client the same way the workpaper does. ### The browser, domains only The optional browser companion reports the domain of the active tab, not the page, so a portal login or a research lookup attributes to the engagement without carrying a client’s data off your machine. ### Calls on the calendar Connect a Google or Microsoft calendar and the last two weeks of meetings arrive on the review screen as suggested entries, so the planning call and the review meeting become billable lines you accept rather than lose. ## Billable versus non-billable, by client and engagement Model each client, and a project for each engagement under them: the annual return, the monthly bookkeeping, the audit. Captured time files against the engagement by keyword rules, and every entry is billable or non-billable. Reports roll that up per client and per project, so you can see which engagements earn their fee and which run hot. Running a periodic [time audit](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-audit) on that data makes the pattern a habit rather than a year-end surprise. Your unbilled work in progress is just billable time with no invoice against it yet, and the Revenue Leak Finder surfaces exactly that, along with time stuck on no client and hours that never got categorized. It is not a formal WIP subledger, but it is the number that tells you what is sitting there waiting to be billed before it ages into a write-down. A write-down bills the hours at less than they cost; a write-off never bills them at all, and the second is the one passive capture removes, because the time was already recorded whether or not anyone remembered to write it down. ## Fixed-fee engagements still need the hours More firm work is fixed-fee every year, and it is tempting to skip tracking on it since the invoice will not change no matter what you record. That is exactly why the hours matter. On a fixed fee, unlogged time does not cut the bill, it hides the true cost, and a fee that looked fine on paper can be quietly underwater for two seasons before anyone notices. Track the hours and you can see it the first year. Realization on a fixed fee is the fee over the value of the work you actually put in, and when that slips you re-price at renewal instead of eating the write-down again. BillNotch captures fixed-fee time the same way it captures hourly time, so both kinds of engagement carry a real cost you can defend, compare across the client base, and re-quote from next season. ## From work in progress to a paid invoice, synced to your ledger When an engagement is ready to bill, approve the entries and generate the invoice from the same tracked time. Lines group by project, each carries a rate you can set on the client, the member, or the project, and the result is a PDF with your terms and an optional payment link. Send it and it posts to [QuickBooks Online](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) or [Xero](https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero) as an approved sales invoice, and moves to paid in BillNotch when the amount due reaches zero. The sync carries the finished invoice, not raw time entries, so your accounting system stays the record of what was actually billed. ## Built to scale from one preparer to a whole firm When it is more than one preparer, add members on the Team plan and give each their own billable rate, so an invoice built across several people uses the right number on every line instead of one blended rate. Seats follow the roster: invite someone and the count goes up, remove them and it comes back down. Roles decide who sees what. A partner or an admin sees the whole firm’s time and billing, while a plain member sees only their own hours, which is the right default for staff on the review screen. You get per-member realization out of that without turning timekeeping into surveillance, because there is nothing to watch: no screenshots, just durations and the client each hour belonged to. ## What this time tracking software for accountants will not do It is a tracker with invoicing, not practice management. It does not run a tax-return workflow, it does not keep a formal WIP ledger you post from, it does not track a fixed-fee budget and warn you when an engagement crosses it, and there are no timesheet approvals or partner sign-off steps. Retainers and expense tracking are also out of scope. For those, a practice-management suite is the right tool, and BillNotch is happy to sit under it as the thing that actually captures the hours. If your work is closer to advisory than compliance, the [consultants page](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) frames the same capture around client engagements. ## Questions accountants ask How does automatic tracking prevent busy-season revenue leakage? During busy season the hours get worked but never logged. Because BillNotch captures the active window automatically, the time is already recorded. The review screen surfaces uncategorized work, so you can bill it as work in progress instead of writing it down when the month closes. Can I separate billable from non-billable time by client and engagement? Yes. Captured time is attributed to a client and a project you set up per engagement, and every entry carries a billable flag. That gives you the two numbers realization is built from, hours worked and hours you can bill, without reconstructing the week from memory. Do accountants have to run a stopwatch all day? No. Tracking is passive. BillNotch records what you work on in the background, then drafts entries you confirm on a review screen. That fits how a firm actually works during crunch, when nobody is going to remember to start and stop a timer between returns. Is my client data kept private? Yes. Window titles are categorized on your machine with a local matcher and are never sent to the server as raw text, and the optional browser companion reports domains only. There are no screenshots and no keystroke logging anywhere in the product, which matters for regulated client work. Does it sync with QuickBooks or Xero? Yes. When you send an invoice, BillNotch posts it to QuickBooks Online or Xero as an approved sales invoice, then moves it to paid when the client settles. It syncs the finished invoice, not raw time entries, so your ledger stays the record of what was actually billed. Can it create invoices, or only timesheets? Both. Approved billable hours turn into a client invoice as a PDF, grouped by project, with a per-line rate and an optional payment link. You close the time-to-cash cycle in the same tool rather than exporting hours into separate billing software. Is this simpler than a full practice-management suite? Yes. Many firms want reliable timekeeping and billing, not a platform migration. BillNotch does automatic capture, billable reporting, and invoicing. If you also need workflow, document management, or a formal WIP ledger, keep a practice-management system and let BillNotch feed it the hours. What software do most CPAs use? Most firms run QuickBooks or Xero for the ledger, Excel for workpapers, and a practice-management or tax suite for workflow. For timekeeping many bolt on a separate tracker. BillNotch captures time across QuickBooks, Excel and email automatically and posts the finished invoice to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Is Clockify really free? Clockify keeps a free plan but since June 2026 caps it at five users and moves invoicing, exports and billable rates to paid tiers. It is a manual timer, which is easy to forget during busy season. BillNotch captures the active window passively and syncs invoices to QuickBooks or Xero, which the free tier does not do. ## Bill the busy-season hours you used to write down The work is already happening in QuickBooks, your workpapers, and your inbox. BillNotch records it automatically, splits billable from non-billable, and turns approved hours into an invoice that syncs to your ledger, so realization holds instead of leaking at midnight. 14-day trial, no card. See what unlogged hours cost at your rate in the [revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator). [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/agencies > Agency time tracking software that records each person’s work automatically, rolls it into billable totals and utilization, and invoices from it. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For agencies For agencies # Agency time tracking software that bills by the hour. Agency time tracking software should do the one thing your team won’t: remember. Agencies don’t lose money on their rates. They lose it on billable time scattered across a team that never makes it onto an invoice. BillNotch records every person’s work automatically, rolls it up into billable totals and utilization, and turns it into invoices. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [The Harvest alternative](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) ## Every seat tracks itself Each team member installs the desktop app once; it records their active window automatically. No one has to remember a timer, so the hours your studio bills match the hours it actually worked. ## Activity sorts itself by client Keyword rules map domains, apps, and ticket prefixes to the right client and project. Turn on AI categorization for the fuzzy cases. Billable is inherited from the project, across the whole team. ## Utilization you can actually see Roll individual activity up into per-person and per-project billable totals. Utilization stops being a guess. You can see who is over-allocated and which projects are quietly unprofitable. ## Invoices and the leak finder Generate a PDF invoice from a project’s billable total or export CSV. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that never made it onto an invoice, and agencies leak the most, because the time is spread across a team. ## Where agency time tracking software earns its keep One person forgetting half an hour is annoying. Eight people each forgetting half an hour a day is a five-figure hole in a year, and it never shows up as a single missing entry you could go looking for. It arrives as timesheets that come in on Monday for a week nobody remembers clearly, as a project that ran over without anyone noticing until the retro, as the difference between the hours your studio worked and the hours it billed. Automatic capture removes the weekly reconstruction. Everyone’s work is already recorded, so Monday becomes a short confirmation pass instead of an act of memory, and the totals you invoice from are the ones the work actually produced. ## Seats that follow your roster Team is **$12 per active member per month**, or $120 per seat per year, which is two months free. Invite someone and a seat is added; remove them and it is released. The seat count syncs to the subscription on its own and the change is prorated, so you are never reconciling a headcount by hand or paying for a contractor who finished in March. There are no usage fees on top: not per project, not per client, not per invoice, which is the fee layer Harvest added after its 2025 acquisition. If you are moving off it, [the Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers what replaces each piece. The 14-day trial needs no card, and [the pricing page](https://billnotch.com/pricing) shows both plans side by side. Each person installs the desktop app on whatever they run (Windows, macOS or Linux) and pairs it with their own API key, which they or an admin can revoke at any time. A mixed studio does not need a mixed toolchain. ## Who sees whose time Visibility is a permission, not a setting somebody forgets to turn off. BillNotch ships three roles: **owner** and **admin**, who can see and manage the whole organization, and **member**, who sees their own time and nothing else. Reading everyone’s entries is a distinct permission that a member does not hold by default, so a designer cannot browse the studio’s full book of work just by logging in. When those three are not the right shape, build a custom role out of the same permission catalog (creating projects, issuing invoices, viewing all time, managing members) and confine it to specific projects or clients. That is how a freelance collaborator joins for one engagement: a role scoped to the projects they are assigned, invisible to everything else. ## Utilization without the spreadsheet Individual activity rolls up into per-person and per-project billable totals, so utilization and capacity are read off the records people are already producing rather than assembled from submitted timesheets. You can see which project is absorbing more hours than it was scoped for, and who is carrying more than their share, while there is still time to act on it. The arithmetic is in [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate), and turning those hours into a margin per client is [project profitability](https://billnotch.com/blog/project-profitability). Billing runs off the same totals: a PDF invoice from a project’s billable total, or a CSV export for whatever your finance stack is. And because agency time is spread thin across people and projects, the Revenue Leak Finder tends to pay for itself here first. It flags billable work that never reached an invoice, which is exactly what no single person is positioned to notice. When an invoice goes out or a client pays, the [Slack integration](https://billnotch.com/integrations/slack) posts it to a channel, so the whole studio sees the same billing signals. ## Why studios pick BillNotch - Connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke per person, anytime. - Built for the team doing the work: window titles can stay on each machine, per device. - Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. - Team is $12/seat/mo, billed monthly or yearly (two months free). 14-day trial, no card. - Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux: mix whatever your team runs. ## Questions studios ask Can everyone see everyone else’s hours? Not by default. Owners and admins see the whole organization; a plain member sees only their own time. Viewing everyone’s entries is a specific permission, so you grant it deliberately rather than switching it off after the fact. Can a contractor be limited to one client’s projects? Yes. Build a custom role from the permission catalog and confine it to specific projects or clients, and that person only sees and acts on what they are assigned. Freelance collaborators can be on the team without seeing the rest of your book. How is Team billed when someone joins or leaves? Team is $12 per active member per month, or $120 per seat per year. Inviting someone adds a seat and removing them releases it; the change syncs to your subscription automatically and is prorated, so you never pay for an empty seat. Does each person have to remember to start a timer? No, and that is the point. Each member installs the desktop app, pairs it with their own API key, and it records the active window from then on. Manual entries and a manual timer are still there for work that happens away from the screen. ## Bill the hours your whole team actually worked. Utilization is the lever most agencies underuse. See [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) for the math, then let BillNotch measure it for you. Solo? See [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). Running an architecture studio? See [time tracking software for architects](https://billnotch.com/for/architects). [Get started](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/architects > Time tracking software for architects: automatic capture across Revit and AutoCAD, phases as projects, utilization by person, and invoices from hours. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For architects For architects # Time tracking software for architects who bill by phase Time tracking software for architects has to do one thing the generic stopwatch skips: understand that a project is not one number, it is a run of phases, each carrying its own fee and its own margin. BillNotch captures the hours automatically and files them where the money is actually decided. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) BillNotch records your billable hours automatically while you work in Revit, AutoCAD, or a set of drawings, attributes them to the right phase, and turns approved time into a client invoice. No stopwatch, no Friday reconstruction, and phase-level margin without adopting a heavy practice-management suite. ## Why time tracking software for architects has to think in phases Architecture work is rarely billed at one flat rate. Schematic design, design development, construction documents, and construction administration each carry a different slice of the fee, a different staff mix, and a different amount of effort. A fee set as a percentage of construction cost, or a fixed lump split across phases, only tells you what you were paid. It says nothing about what each phase cost you to deliver. Without hours logged against the phase, that gap stays invisible. CD runs three weeks long and swallows a principal’s time, CA drags on with unbilled site coordination, and the fee that looked healthy on the proposal turns out to have been carried by SD. You cannot fix a phase you cannot see. The first job of a tracker built for this work is to attach every hour to the phase it belongs to, so the margin is a number instead of a feeling. Turning those phase hours into a margin per commission is [project profitability](https://billnotch.com/blog/project-profitability). ## One project per phase, sorted by the file you have open The setup is deliberately plain. Create a project for each phase under the client, or one project per commission with a keyword for each phase, and let the keyword rules do the filing. Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino, and SketchUp all show the open file in the window title, so a rule on the model name, the sheet-set prefix, or the project folder attributes that time as you draw. Anything the rules are not sure about waits on the review screen rather than landing in the wrong place. That matters for a small studio where one person moves between three commissions in an afternoon: the record sorts itself while the work happens, and the review is a quick confirmation instead of an end-of-week excavation of your own memory. ## Automatic capture across the whole drawing board Capture is passive. The desktop app reads which application is in front and for how long, on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and there is no timer to start. It watches for idle, so a long lunch or a walk to the plan printer does not quietly become a billable hour. What reaches the server is the activity and its duration, not a screenshot and not a keystroke log, because there is no screen recording anywhere in the product. The grid below is what that capture actually sees across a normal week in a studio. ### The model in the title bar Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino, and SketchUp all put the open file in the window title. A keyword rule on the file name or the project folder files that time against the right project without you touching a timer. ### Markups and sheet sets Bluebeam, InDesign, and a PDF set open in a reader are all foreground windows, so review and issue work is captured the same way the drawing is, instead of vanishing because nobody logged it. ### Email and the browser Coordination email and the research tab count too. The optional browser companion reports the domain of the active tab only, so a consultant portal or a code lookup lands against the project without exposing the page. ### Site visits and calls Connect a Google or Microsoft calendar and the last two weeks of meetings show up on the review screen as suggested entries, so a site visit or a client call becomes a billable line you accept rather than one you forget. ## Utilization by person, and the additional services no one billed Every entry is billable or non-billable, and the reports roll that up per project and per member. That is your utilization in raw form: how much of each person’s week turned into fee, and how much went to internal reviews, software fights, and admin. You manage staffing and the next proposal on those numbers, not on a guess about who was busy. A studio does not need a formal utilization target wired into the software to use this. The billable share per person over a month is the figure principals already run staffing on, and now it comes from a record instead of a hunch. Additional services are where the fee leaks hardest, because the extra round, the code variance, the client’s third revision all get done before anyone decides to bill them. Charging for that expansion instead of absorbing it is the subject of [billing for scope creep](https://billnotch.com/blog/scope-creep-billing). The Revenue Leak Finder rolls up billable time that has no invoice against it, along with hours stuck on no client and time that never got categorized, so the work you actually did shows up as a number you can go collect. ## From phase hours to a client invoice When a phase closes, you approve the entries and generate the invoice from the same tracked time. Lines are grouped by project, so a phase reads as its own block, and each line carries an hourly rate you can set on the client, the member, or the project. The result is a PDF with your terms and an optional payment link, in a single currency per invoice. If your books live elsewhere, the finished invoice pushes to [QuickBooks Online](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) or [Xero](https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero) as an approved sales invoice, and the paid status flows back when the client settles. [How invoicing works](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) covers the full path from tracked hours to a sent document. ## The phase numbers price your next fee A fee, whether it is a percentage of construction cost or a lump sum split across the phases, is a bet on how many hours the work will take. Recording the actual hours against each phase turns every finished project into evidence for the next proposal. You stop guessing that DD usually runs long and start quoting from what DD actually took on three jobs like this one. That is the quiet compounding win. Unlogged hours do not only cost you this invoice; on the next fixed fee they cost you three, because you re-quote a shape that lost money as though it made some. Passive capture keeps the hours honest without anyone maintaining a timesheet, so the number you carry into the next fee negotiation is a real one and not a hopeful memory of how the last job felt. ## What this time tracking software for architects will not do It is a tracker with invoicing, not a practice-management platform, and the honest edges matter. It does not hold a fee as a percentage of construction cost, it does not carry a budget per phase and warn you when you burn through it, and it does not do resource scheduling, forecasting, or staffing plans. There are no retainers, no expense tracking, and no timesheet approvals. It records your own team’s hours, so a subconsultant’s fee, a reimbursable, or a percentage-of-cost budget line is not something it carries; those belong in your accounting or project-accounting tool. If you need firm-wide project accounting, Deltek and Monograph are built for exactly that and do it well. BillNotch sits under them, or on its own for a studio that mostly needs the hours captured, sorted by phase, and turned into an invoice. Running a larger practice with shared clients? The [agencies page](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies) covers the team side. ## Questions architects ask Can I track time by project phase (SD, DD, CD, CA)? Yes. Set up each phase as its own project under the client, and BillNotch attributes captured hours to it. You get hours and billable totals per phase, so you can see where the effort actually went and which phases are earning their fee rather than quietly eating it. Do architects have to run a timer all day? No. BillNotch records the active window in the background, so working in Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino, or a drawing set is enough. You review a timeline of suggested entries and confirm them, instead of remembering to start and stop a stopwatch between coordination calls. Which design apps does automatic capture see? Any application in the foreground. Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Rhino, Bluebeam, and InDesign are all recorded by active-window tracking and can be attributed to the right project and phase during review. There is no per-app plugin to install; it reads the window title the operating system already reports. How does it help recover leaked billable hours? A firm leaks fee whenever real work never reaches a timesheet, and additional services are the usual casualty. Because capture is passive, the hours are already there. The Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable time that has no invoice against it, so an extra design round gets billed instead of absorbed. Can I separate billable and non-billable time by person? Yes. Every entry carries a billable flag, and reports break down the billable share per project and per member. That gives you the raw utilization numbers, how much of a person’s week turned into fee, without asking anyone to keep a timesheet by hand. Does it handle invoicing, or just timesheets? Both. Approved phase hours turn into a client invoice as a PDF, grouped by project, with a per-line rate and an optional payment link. You can push the finished invoice to QuickBooks Online or Xero, so tracked time reaches the ledger without a second tool in between. Is this lighter than a full practice-management suite? Yes, and it is meant to be. Suites like Deltek and Monograph carry project accounting, resource scheduling, and fee budgets that a small studio may not want to adopt. BillNotch does capture, phase reporting, and invoicing, and hands the heavier accounting off to whatever you already run. What software do most architects use? For design, most architects work in Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino, SketchUp, Bluebeam and InDesign. For time and fees, small firms use general tools while larger practices run Deltek or Monograph. BillNotch reads whichever design app is in the foreground by its window title and attributes the time to the right project and phase. Is Clockify really free? Clockify keeps a free plan but since June 2026 caps it at five users and moves invoicing and billable rates to paid tiers. It is a manual timer, so architects still have to start and stop it. BillNotch captures the active design app automatically and turns phase hours into an invoice, which the free tier does not do. ## Stop losing the phase fee to hours no one logged The hours are already happening in Revit, AutoCAD, and your drawings. BillNotch records them automatically, sorts them by phase, and hands you an invoice, so an extra design round gets billed instead of quietly delivered for free. 14-day trial, no card. What forgotten hours cost at your rate is one number away in the [revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator). [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/consultants > Time tracking for consultants that captures every billable hour without a timer, keeps defensible records by client, and invoices straight from it. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For consultants For consultants # Time tracking for consultants who bill for their time. Time tracking for consultants has one job: catch the hours you'd never time yourself. At a consultant’s rate, a forgotten hour is expensive, and consulting is full of the exact work that never gets timed: calls, prep, and thinking. BillNotch captures it automatically, keeps a defensible record by client, and turns it into an invoice. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [Compare to Timely](https://billnotch.com/compare/timely) ## Capture without breaking flow Consulting is calls, prep, and deep thinking: exactly the work you forget to time. BillNotch records the active window in the background, so the hour you spent in a strategy doc is logged whether or not you remembered to start anything. ## Defensible records by client Activity sorts itself into the right engagement by keyword rules, with AI for the fuzzy cases. When a client asks what a line item covers, you have a concrete, timestamped record, not a reconstruction from memory. ## Privacy for sensitive work Your work touches confidential material. Keep window titles on your machine, per device, so only durations and the minimal billing metadata sync. Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. ## From hours to a sent invoice Read the billable total, generate a PDF invoice, or export CSV for any client and period. The Revenue Leak Finder catches billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the prep and follow-ups that quietly go unbilled. ## The hours consultants never time Consulting work resists timing. The engagement is not a block of production hours; it is a call that ran twenty minutes long, the reading you did to prepare for it, the note you wrote afterwards, the follow-up question answered three days later. None of them feels big enough to open a timer for, and together they are a meaningful slice of the month. At $150 or $250 an hour the arithmetic is unforgiving: four untracked hours is most of a day’s revenue, gone because nobody wrote it down. Passive capture changes what you have to remember: the record is already there when you sit down to bill, so the question shifts from “what did I do on Tuesday?” to “is this right?”. The [revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) works out what the gap is worth at your rate. ## Meetings, travel, and the work off the screen An honest limit first: BillNotch records what happens on your machine. A call taken on your phone in a taxi, a whiteboard session on a client’s site, a flight spent reading a brief on paper. None of that is on screen, and the tracker will not pretend otherwise. Add those as manual entries, or start the manual timer for the session; the point of automatic capture is that it covers everything else, so the handful of entries you make by hand are the only ones you have to think about. The screen work around a meeting is where the recovery is. Prep, the deck you revised the night before, the shared doc open during the call, the write-up afterwards. All of it is captured against the engagement without a decision from you. And the tracker watches for idle, so a long lunch does not quietly become a billable hour. ## A record you can put in front of a client Disputes are usually not about the rate; they are about what a line said. Every entry carries a timestamp, a duration, the project and client it belongs to, and whether it is billable, so an invoice line traces back to dated activity instead of a reconstruction you wrote on Friday. Keyword rules (a client domain, a shared drive, a ticket prefix) file activity into the right engagement as it happens, and anything ambiguous waits on the review screen rather than being assigned silently. When an engagement quietly grew past its agreed scope, that dated record is what lets you bill the difference: [billing for scope creep](https://billnotch.com/blog/scope-creep-billing) covers making the case. When it is time to bill, generate a PDF invoice from a client’s billable total with your logo and payment terms, or export the same rows as CSV for a bookkeeper. You see the invoice before your client does. Nothing is sent automatically. Read [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) for turning that total into a document that gets paid. If you round to quarter hours, the [billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) shows what each duration bills. ## Confidential work stays confidential Consulting means other people’s sensitive material on your screen, so the capture is deliberately narrow: no screenshots, no keystroke logging, no page contents: the application in front and how long you stayed there. You choose per device whether window titles sync at all, and each device connects with an API key you issue and revoke. AI categorization is off unless you turn it on, so the default is a deterministic keyword matcher and nothing about your work reaches a third-party model. Data is processed on EU servers and never sold; the [privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) is specific about all of it. Billing inside a specific profession? BillNotch has dedicated pages for [time tracking software for architects](https://billnotch.com/for/architects), [accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants), and [lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers). ## Why consultants pick BillNotch - No timer to start mid-meeting: tracking runs in the background. - Window titles can stay on your device; connect each one with an API key you revoke anytime. - A high billable rate makes every forgotten hour expensive. Capture them all. - Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. 14-day trial, no card. - Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. ## Questions consultants ask What about a call I take away from my laptop? Add it as a manual entry, or run the manual timer on the dashboard. BillNotch records what happens on the machine and does not invent the rest. Automatic capture covers the desk work so the handful of off-screen hours are the only ones you enter yourself. Does it bill time when I step away? No. The tracker watches for idle and stops counting when you leave the machine, so lunch does not land on a client’s invoice. Nothing reaches an invoice until you generate one anyway. Every entry is yours to edit, mark non-billable, or delete first. Can I show a client what a line item covers? Yes. Every entry is timestamped and attached to a client and project, so a line item on a PDF invoice traces back to dated activity. Export the same rows as CSV (activity, project, duration, billable flag) for any client and period. Is confidential client work exposed? You decide per device whether window titles sync at all, and the browser extension records only the domain of the active tab unless you opt into more. There are no screenshots and no keystroke logging, AI categorization is off by default, and data is processed on EU servers and never sold. ## Capture every hour you can bill. Not sure what counts at a consultant’s desk? See [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). Then let BillNotch track it for you. Independent rather than firm-based? See [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). At your rate, what do forgotten hours cost per year? The [Revenue Leak Calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) gives you the number, free, no signup. Still setting that rate? The [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) works it out from your income goal and real utilization. [Get started](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers > Automatic time tracking for freelancers: BillNotch records your work, sorts it into client projects, and turns billable hours into a PDF invoice. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For freelancers For freelancers # Time tracking for freelancers: every hour billed, no timer to watch. Time tracking for freelancers fails at the same spot every time: the timer. Freelancers rarely lose money on their rate. They lose it on hours they forget to log. The quick call, the late fix, the context switch that never made it onto an invoice. BillNotch tracks your work automatically and adds it up, so the hours you bill match the hours you actually worked. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [The Toggl alternative](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) ## It tracks while you work Install the desktop app once. It records the active window second by second: no timer to start, nothing to reconstruct at the end of the week. ## It sorts itself by client Keyword rules map domains, apps, and ticket prefixes to the right client and project. Turn on AI categorization for the fuzzy cases; billable is inherited from the project. ## It turns hours into an invoice Read the billable total, generate a PDF invoice, or export CSV for any date range. Your invoice writes itself from the hours you already tracked. ## It catches what you forgot to bill The Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable work that never landed on an invoice: the unbilled entries and forgotten projects that quietly cost you money. ## Where a freelance week actually leaks The hours that go missing are rarely the big blocks of work. They are the ten minutes on a client’s bug before lunch, the call you took on the way somewhere, the “quick look” at a repo that ran to forty minutes. Each one is too small to write down and too frequent to remember, and at the end of the month the invoice is short by a day you genuinely worked. A timer cannot fix that, because the timer depends on the same memory that just failed you. Passive capture inverts the order: the record exists first, so Friday becomes confirming what was caught instead of reconstructing what you did. The [revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) puts a number on your own gap before you install anything. ## How passive capture becomes billable hours The desktop app records the active application and window title, how long you stayed there, and when. Projects carry keywords you define: a client domain, an app name, a ticket prefix like **ACME-**, and activity that matches lands in that project, inheriting whether the project is billable and at what rate. Anything the matcher is unsure about is held as a suggestion rather than written into your timesheet behind your back. You confirm or reject those on the review screen (a two-minute pass) and your corrections become rules, so the same activity files itself correctly next time. The wider routine, from capture to a paid invoice, is walked through in [time tracking for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-freelancers). ## Tracking built for you, not about you Automatic tracking has an obvious objection: it sounds like surveillance software. The difference here is who it answers to. You install it on your own machine, you issue the API key that connects it, and you revoke that key whenever you like. There are no screenshots, no keystroke logging, and no idea what you were typing: only which application was in front and for how long. You also choose, per device, whether window titles sync to your account or never leave the machine. The optional browser extension records the **domain** of the active tab and nothing else; full URLs and tab titles stay off unless you switch each one on yourself. AI categorization is off by default, so a deterministic keyword matcher does the sorting and no activity text reaches a third-party model. Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. The [privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) is specific about all of it. ## Linux is a first-class target If you work on Linux you know the routine: the automatic tracker you want ships for Windows and macOS, and you get the web timer. BillNotch ships a native Linux tracker in the same release as the other two, from the same code, compiled and tested on all three before it goes out. The state of the field is in [the best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux). ## From tracked hours to a sent invoice Invoicing is part of the same tool, not a second subscription. Choose a client and a period and BillNotch renders a PDF from the billable total it already has, with your logo and terms on it; the same rows export as CSV for an accountant. You see the invoice before anyone else does. Nothing is emailed to a client on its own. And the Revenue Leak Finder does the pass you would never do by hand, flagging billable time that never reached any invoice. Prefer to start from a blank document? The [freelance invoice template](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template) lays out the lines a client expects. ## Why freelancers pick BillNotch - Your activity stays yours: sync window titles or keep them on your machine, per device. - Connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke anytime. - Data is processed on EU servers and never sold. - 14-day free trial, no credit card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. - Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. ## Questions freelancers ask Do I have to start and stop a timer? No. The desktop app records the active window on its own, so a session you forget to start is still tracked. A manual timer and manual entries are there on the dashboard for work that happens away from the screen. What happens to my window titles? You choose per device whether titles sync to your account or stay on that machine. There are no screenshots and no keystroke logging, and with AI categorization off (the default) none of your activity is sent to a third-party model. Can I invoice a client straight from the tracked hours? Yes. Pick the client and date range, and BillNotch builds a PDF invoice from the billable total, or exports the same rows as CSV. You review the invoice before it goes anywhere; nothing is sent to a client automatically. What happens to my data if I never subscribe? It stays. When the 14-day trial ends without a plan, the account turns read-only rather than locked: you can still read your entries, run reports, and export CSV or a PDF invoice. Nothing is deleted for not paying. ## Start tracking the hours you can bill. New to automatic time tracking? Read [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). Then let BillNotch do it for you. Curious what those forgotten hours cost? The [Revenue Leak Calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) puts a number on it, free, no signup. Working with a team? BillNotch is also [for agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies) and [for consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants). [Get started](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers > Time tracking software for lawyers: contemporaneous capture of every matter, decimal hours you bill in tenths, no block billing, and no screenshots. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / For lawyers For lawyers # Time tracking software for lawyers who bill in tenths of an hour Time tracking software for lawyers has one job most trackers get wrong: catch the billable minute the moment it happens, so the day is recorded as you work each matter instead of reconstructed from memory after it. BillNotch captures it automatically and hands you clean entries to bill in tenths. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) BillNotch records the matter you are working on automatically, attributes the time to the right client and matter, and turns approved hours into a professional invoice. It is built for solo attorneys and small firms who bill hourly and lose real money to entries they never wrote down. ## Why time tracking software for lawyers has to be contemporaneous Bar guidance has said the same thing for years: record time as you work it, not from memory at the end of the week. The reason is arithmetic as much as ethics. Reconstruction systematically undercounts the short work, the six-minute call, the quick email, the re-reading of a thread, and that short work is a large share of a real matter. Bill from memory and you bill less than you did. Contemporaneous timekeeping is hard because it competes with the actual work. Nobody wants to stop drafting to start a timer, so the timer does not get started, and the time is gone. Passive capture removes the choice: the record is being made while you work the matter, and the only thing left for you to do is confirm it. That is the difference between a defensible record and a Friday-afternoon guess, and over a month of matters the guess is almost always the one that costs you, because the work you forget is the short work, and the short work is most of the day. ## Capture the matter, not a timer The desktop app reads which application is in front and for how long, on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Set up each matter as a project under its client, and keyword rules on the file name or the matter reference file the time as you work. It is the same idea as a passive tool detecting a matter ID from a document name, and anything the rules are unsure about waits on review rather than landing on the wrong client. It watches for idle, so a lunch or a walk down the hall does not become billable time, and there is no screenshot and no keystroke log behind any of it. Here is what passive capture records across a normal day on a matter. ### The matter document A brief in Word, a contract in a PDF reader, the deposition summary you are drafting. Each is a foreground window with the file name in its title, so a keyword rule on the matter files that time against the matter as you work it. ### Email and correspondence The reply to opposing counsel, the client update, the thread you re-read to see what changed. Correspondence is billable work, and it lands against the matter the same way the pleading does instead of slipping through. ### Research, domains only The optional browser companion reports the domain of the active tab, not the page or the query, so time in a research service or a court portal attributes to the matter without recording what you looked up. ### Calls on the calendar Connect a Google or Microsoft calendar and recent meetings arrive on the review screen as suggested entries, so a client call or a hearing becomes a billable line you accept rather than one you meant to note and did not. ## Recording in tenths, honestly A straight answer, because this is where trackers oversell. BillNotch records each entry to the second and shows the total in decimal hours. It does not have a rounding setting and does not silently push every entry up to the next tenth. The tenth-of-an-hour convention is yours to apply: when you review the day, you set each billable entry to the increment you are charging, and the invoice then shows those tenths. If you want the minutes-to-tenths chart, the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) has it, and the printable [billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) lays the tenths out minute by minute. One thing capture gives you for free: the record arrives itemized by activity, so a matter reads as discrete entries rather than one lumped block. Bar guidance discourages block billing, and an itemized record is the natural starting point for an invoice that does not look like one. ## A record you can defend The other reason to capture contemporaneously is what happens when a bill gets questioned. A vague entry reconstructed on Friday invites a write-down or a fee dispute, because there is nothing behind it. An entry captured the moment the work happened, timestamped and tied to the matter, is a record you can stand behind line by line. Because capture arrives itemized by activity, the narrative practically writes itself: reviewed the contract, drafted the response, called the client, each already a discrete entry rather than a lump you unpack after the fact. For a solo or a small firm, fewer written-down hours and fewer disputed invoices is the same thing as a better realization rate, without adding a compliance system to get there. ## Invoices for a solo or a small firm Approve the entries and generate the invoice from the same tracked time. Lines group by matter, each carries a rate you can set on the client or the matter, and the result is a clean PDF with your terms and an optional payment link, in a single currency per invoice. You review it before the client does, and nothing is sent until you send it. That closes the loop in one tool: capture the matter, confirm the entries, bill in tenths, send the invoice, take the payment. No export to separate billing software, and no second system to keep in step for a solo who mostly needs the hours caught and the invoice out. ## Privacy for privileged work Privilege is a real constraint, and the capture is built to respect it. Window titles are matched to matters on your own machine with a local matcher, and are never sent to the server as raw text. The browser companion is optional and reports the domain of the active tab only. There are no screenshots, ever, and no keystroke logging, so the tool that records your day is not a tool that records your clients. ## For the firm: associates, paralegals, and who sees what A small firm is rarely one timekeeper. Add associates and paralegals on the Team plan, each with their own billable rate, and an invoice that spans several people bills each line at the right rate rather than flattening everyone to one number. Seats track the roster, so the plan matches who is actually working. Roles keep the view honest. A partner or an administrator sees the whole firm’s time and billing, while an associate sees only their own matters on the review screen, which is the sensible default for staff timekeeping. That gives a firm per-timekeeper realization and a clean partner-level picture without a heavy permissions setup, and without a single screenshot behind any of it. ## What this time tracking software for lawyers will not do The honest scope: BillNotch does not output LEDES or UTBMS billing codes, it does not do trust or IOLTA accounting, and it does not manage matter-number e-billing compliance for corporate clients. Those are real requirements for firms that have them, and a tracker with invoicing is the wrong place to fake them. If you need coded e-billing, trust accounting, or full matter management, Clio and MyCase are built for exactly that, and BillNotch can sit alongside as the thing that actually captures the billable time. For a solo or small firm billing hourly, that capture is usually the piece that was missing. ## Questions lawyers ask Does BillNotch capture billable time contemporaneously? Yes. It records the active window automatically as you work, so time on a matter document, an email, or research is captured the moment it happens rather than reconstructed from memory later. You confirm the drafted entries on a review screen before any of them reach an invoice. Can it track time by matter and client? Yes. Set up each matter as a project under its client, and BillNotch attributes captured time by keyword rules on the file and window titles. On the review screen you can reassign any entry, similar to how passive tools detect matters from document names before you bill. Can I bill in six-minute increments? BillNotch records each entry to the second and shows totals in decimal hours. There is no automatic rounding setting. When you review the day you set each billable entry to the tenth you are charging, since 0.1 hour is six minutes, and the invoice shows those tenths. The billable-hours calculator has the minutes-to-tenths chart. Does it support LEDES or UTBMS billing codes? No. BillNotch does not output LEDES or UTBMS codes. It is built for solos and small firms who bill hourly and want simple invoices. If you serve corporate clients that require coded e-billing, pair BillNotch with a practice-management tool that produces LEDES files. Does it do trust or IOLTA accounting? No. BillNotch handles time capture and invoicing, not trust accounting. Firms that need IOLTA compliance should keep a dedicated trust-accounting or practice-management system for that function, and use BillNotch for the timekeeping and the hourly billing on top. Is my privileged work kept private? Yes. Window titles are categorized on your machine with a local matcher and are never sent to the server as raw text, and the optional browser companion reports domains only. There are no screenshots and no keystroke logging anywhere, which gives attorneys a concrete privacy story for confidential matters. Who is this best for? Solo attorneys and small firms who bill hourly, lose time to entries they never wrote down, and want automatic capture plus a straightforward invoice. Large firms with corporate e-billing, LEDES, and trust requirements will still need a full practice-management platform alongside it. What software do most law firms use? Most firms run a practice-management platform such as Clio, MyCase or a legal-billing suite for matters, trust accounting and LEDES e-billing. For the timekeeping itself, many still type entries by hand. BillNotch captures the active window automatically and invoices hourly work, and hands LEDES and IOLTA to the practice-management system it sits beside. What is the best time tracking software for attorneys? For solos and small firms who bill hourly, the best fit is a tool that captures time contemporaneously and bills in tenths without a stopwatch. BillNotch records the active window and sets each entry to the tenth you charge. Firms needing LEDES e-billing or trust accounting should pair it with a practice-management platform. ## Stop reconstructing the day from memory The billable minutes are already happening in your documents, your inbox, and your research. BillNotch records them against the matter as you work, so you bill in tenths from a real record instead of a Friday guess, and the short work stops falling through. 14-day trial, no card. Handling confidential matters? See [time tracking without screenshots](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots). [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) --- # Integrations ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Chrome extension # A Chrome time tracking extension that only learns which domain you were on > A Chrome time tracking extension that reports active-tab domains, never page content, so BillNotch sorts tracked time by project. URLs and titles opt-in. Installing a time-tracking extension is a real decision, and most of them do not deserve the yes. This one exists for a single narrow reason: when the desktop tracker records forty minutes of “Chrome”, that is a useless label, and knowing the forty minutes were on your client’s Jira makes the difference between an entry that sorts itself and one you have to sort by hand. Domains are enough for that. So domains are all it takes. Manifest V3 · domains only · URLs and titles opt-in [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What does it actually capture? ### The domain, and the clock github.com, and the seconds you were on it. Not the path, not the query string, not the fragment. The hostname is lowercased and everything after it is thrown away before the segment is even written down. ### No ability to read a page The extension ships no content scripts and asks for no host permission on any site you visit. It physically cannot see text, forms, keystrokes, screenshots or anything else on a page. The capability is absent, not merely unused. ### Only the tab in front of you The active tab of the focused window, and only while you are actually at the machine. After a minute of no input the open stretch is closed and capture stops until you come back. ### Nothing under five seconds A tab you passed through on the way somewhere else is not a fact worth keeping, so short stretches are discarded on your machine and never reach the network. Anything that is not an ordinary web page is invisible to it. Browser settings pages, local files, other extensions’ pages and internal URLs produce no segment at all, because the capture starts by asking whether the address is `http` or `https` and gives up if it is not. ## The permissions it asks Chrome for Four, and you can check them on the store listing before you install: `tabs`, `storage`, `alarms` and `idle`. The host permissions list two entries and both are BillNotch’s own API: `https://api.billnotch.com/*` and `http://localhost:3001/*`, the second only so a developer can point a local build at a local server. Not one site you browse is in that list. There is no ``, no `scripting`, no `activeTab` and no content script anywhere in the bundle. That combination is the whole privacy argument, and it is checkable rather than promised: an extension with no host access to the sites you visit cannot read them, whatever its description says. If you turn on URL or title capture in the popup, it starts sending the full URL and the tab title, which is a much larger thing to consent to, which is why it is two separate switches you have to find. ## How you install and connect it Install it from the Chrome Web Store and pin it. In BillNotch, the connect card generates a personal API key: the same kind the desktop app uses, prefixed `tt_`, issued by you and revocable by you. Paste it into the extension popup and press Test: it will tell you which workspace it reached, or say plainly that the key works but the workspace is locked, which is the failure people otherwise spend an afternoon on. Settings then shows what has actually arrived (segments, total seconds and your top domains over the last day) so you can confirm it is working without taking anyone’s word for it. Every member connects their own key; nobody sees anybody else’s browsing, and no admin has to approve it. ## What happens to a domain once it arrives One thing, and it is worth being precise about it. When BillNotch is about to categorize a stretch of tracked time that has no project yet, it looks for browsing that overlapped that exact window, adds up the overlapping seconds per domain, keeps the top three, and hands them to the categorizer as hints alongside the activity itself. That is the entire use. A domain like `notion.so` is what lets an afternoon of browser work sort itself onto the right client, which is the whole basis of [measuring your Notion time](https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion). It does not appear in reports, on invoices, in analytics, on the leaks screen or in a CSV export. It is not a productivity score and nobody is ranked by it. If the lookup fails for any reason the categorization simply runs without the hints, because an enrichment that can break the thing it enriches is not worth having. Uploads are batched roughly once a minute, deduplicated by an identifier derived from the domain and the exact timestamps, and queued locally when the network is gone: up to a few thousand stretches, oldest dropped first. Segments are kept for as long as your account exists; deleting the account or the workspace deletes them with it. ## What it will not do It is not a tracker. It creates no time entries, so with the extension installed and nothing else you would have zero tracked hours and nothing to bill. It cannot replace [the desktop app](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), which is the thing that actually records your work; it makes that record easier to sort. It also does not block sites, score your focus, categorize domains as productive or distracting, or notify anyone about anything. And it is Chrome and its relatives only. Firefox and Safari have no build, and the API address is fixed when the extension is built, so a self-hosted deployment would need its own. ## Common questions Does it record the pages I visit? Not by default. It records the domain of the active tab and how long you were there. Full URLs and tab titles each have their own switch in the extension popup, both off until you turn them on, and with them off those fields are not merely blanked. They are absent from the request entirely. Does it work in incognito? No, unless you go out of your way. The extension declares no incognito access, so Chrome disables it in private windows until you explicitly allow it in the extensions page. Can it track my time without the desktop app? No. It never creates a time entry. Its data exists only to improve how existing untracked entries get sorted into projects, so on its own it produces nothing you can bill or report on. Which browsers can install it? Chrome and Chromium browsers (Edge, Brave, Arc) from the Chrome Web Store. It is a Manifest V3 extension. There is no Firefox or Safari build. ## Add it once the tracking is already running Start with a 14-day trial and the desktop app; the extension is worth adding the first time a browser-heavy afternoon lands on the Review screen with no project on it. [How the capture works](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) explains the part that does the tracking, [the privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) states the same limits in binding language, [tracking without screenshots](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots) covers the same promise across the whole product, and [calendar sync](https://billnotch.com/integrations/google-calendar) covers the hours that happen away from the screen entirely. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/google-calendar [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Google Calendar # Google Calendar time tracking for the hours you forget to bill > BillNotch reads 14 days of your Google Calendar read-only and turns the meetings you actually attended into time entries you confirm one at a time. Google Calendar time tracking covers the hours your desktop tracker can’t see. An automatic tracker watches the machine in front of you, which means the ninety minutes you spent on a client call with your laptop shut are invisible to it. Your calendar knows about those ninety minutes. Connect it and BillNotch reads the last two weeks of meetings, throws away everything that was not real work, and offers you the rest on the Review screen to accept or wave away. calendar.events.readonly · past 14 days · primary calendar [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## The one request BillNotch makes to Google It is worth stating precisely, because a calendar is a private thing and “we integrate with Google Calendar” tells you nothing. There is exactly one endpoint in the code: `calendars/primary/events`, asked for a window that starts fourteen days ago and ends now. Nothing in the future is requested. No other calendar id is ever substituted for `primary`. The request sets `singleEvents=true`, which is Google’s instruction to expand a recurring series into its individual occurrences. That is why a daily standup arrives as ten separate suggestions you can accept and dismiss one by one, rather than one series you would have to reason about. Results come back ordered by start time, 250 at a time, and BillNotch follows the page tokens until Google stops handing them out. ## Google’s own fields decide what survives No heuristics, no title parsing, no guessing from who was invited. Four fields on the event as Google returns it do the whole job, which means you can predict the outcome from inside Google Calendar before you ever open BillNotch. transparency ### Anything marked “show as free” is dropped Google records that choice as transparency: transparent on the event. BillNotch reads exactly that field, which makes “show as free” the one lever you already have for keeping a slot out of the list. start.date ### All-day events never arrive Google gives an all-day event a start.date and no start.dateTime. That missing timestamp is what identifies it, so holidays, conference markers and birthdays are discarded before anything is stored. attendees\[\].self ### Your own response, and only yours The attendee list is scanned for the one entry Google flags as self, to see whether your responseStatus was declined. Everybody else on the invitation is read past and never written down. status ### Cancelled occurrences disappear A cancelled instance of a recurring meeting comes back from the API as a tombstone. It is thrown away rather than offered to you as an hour you might have worked. Two more rules run after those. Anything shorter than five minutes or longer than twelve hours is treated as something other than a meeting and discarded. And a meeting whose slot already overlaps time you tracked is never offered at all, so the desktop app and the calendar can never both claim the same hour. If you sat in a video call with the tracker running, the calendar has nothing to add. ## The consent screen, and what Workspace admins control Open **Settings → Calendar** and press _Connect Google Calendar_. Google shows you the account picker and then one consent screen listing read-only access to calendar events and your email address. The authorisation request asks for offline access and forces the consent prompt, which is the part that makes Google issue a refresh token. Without it the connection would quietly stop working after an hour and you would have no idea why. On a Google Workspace domain, whether that consent screen appears at all is your administrator’s call: Workspace can restrict which third-party apps may hold calendar scopes. That is a Google Admin console setting, not a BillNotch permission, and there is nothing to request on our side. Inside BillNotch the connection is personal. Every member connects their own account, nobody sees anybody else’s meetings, and no admin role is involved. ## What accepting a meeting actually does It creates a real time entry (not a draft) whose description is the meeting title and whose start and end are the meeting’s own. You can pick a project on the row before you accept. The entry is created **non-billable**, so putting it on an invoice is a second, conscious decision; a calendar is not evidence of billable work and BillNotch does not pretend otherwise. Dismissing a meeting removes it from the list permanently and does nothing to your calendar. The accept itself is guarded, so two tabs cannot both turn one meeting into two entries; the loser of that race has its duplicate entry rolled back rather than left behind. ## When it reads, and what it keeps Only when you look. Opening the Review screen triggers a sync, and pressing Sync now forces one, but a connection will not re-read Google more than once every fifteen minutes. There is no background job polling your calendar overnight and no push channel subscribed to it: if you never open BillNotch, BillNotch never reads your calendar. Four fields per meeting are stored: Google’s event id, the title, the start and the end. Descriptions, locations, attendee lists, organisers and Meet links are not requested and not kept. Of the credentials, only the refresh token is written down, encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a key derived for that single purpose; the short-lived access token is never persisted at all. Revoke access from your Google Account and the Calendar card says so plainly and offers Reconnect, rather than showing a healthy connection that has silently stopped returning meetings. ## What it will not do It will not write a single character back to Google, will not read your upcoming week, and will not touch a calendar other than your primary one. It does not detect Meet or Zoom links, does not know who else was in the room, and does not guess a client from an attendee’s email domain. The AI categorizer does not run on accepted meetings either: a meeting with no project chosen stays without one until you say. The provider list is short. [Outlook and Microsoft 365](https://billnotch.com/integrations/outlook-calendar) are the only alternative; Apple Calendar, CalDAV and subscribed ICS feeds are not supported. ## Common questions Which Google scope does BillNotch ask for? calendar.events.readonly, plus openid and email so the connection can be labelled with the account it belongs to. There is no write scope anywhere in the request, so the consent you give cannot be widened without Google asking you again. Which calendars does it read? The primary calendar of the account you connected, and nothing else. The request goes to a single endpoint, calendars/primary/events. Secondary calendars, calendars shared with you and subscribed feeds are never touched. Can my Google Workspace administrator block this? Yes, and that is Google’s design working as intended. Workspace admins can restrict which third-party apps may hold calendar scopes. If your organisation does, the consent screen refuses before BillNotch is ever involved, and the fix is a Google Admin console setting rather than anything on our side. How do I revoke it? Disconnect in BillNotch, or remove BillNotch from the third-party access list in your Google Account at any time. Either way the pending suggestions go with it; entries you already accepted stay, because by then they are ordinary time entries with no link back to Google. Are meetings turned into billable time automatically? No, twice over. Nothing becomes a time entry until you click on it, and an accepted meeting is created non-billable with no project unless you choose one on the row. Marking it billable is a deliberate act, never a default. ## Recover a fortnight of meetings in one sitting A 14-day trial, no card, and the connection is read-only. [The Outlook version](https://billnotch.com/integrations/outlook-calendar) works against Microsoft Graph instead, [the automatic tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) covers everything that does happen at the keyboard, and [BillNotch for consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) is written for the people whose week is mostly calls. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/jira [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Jira # Jira time tracking: worklogs filled in from time you never had to log > Track time automatically and write it back to Jira as worklogs. Issue keys come from your own activity, mapped per project, confirmed before logging. Logging work in Jira is a chore that survives every process improvement, because it asks you to remember on Friday what you were doing on Tuesday. BillNotch already knows: the desktop tracker recorded the window, the issue key was sitting in the title of the tab or the branch you had open, and the only thing left is for you to agree with it. Jira Cloud · OAuth · worklogs out, issues in [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What Jira time tracking sends between the two systems ### Jira projects come in The projects on your site are imported so you can map each one to a BillNotch project. Nothing matches until you have drawn that line yourself; there is no guessing by name. ### Issue keys and summaries come in For mapped projects only, BillNotch keeps a local index of issue keys, summaries and their last-updated stamps, pulled incrementally so a large site does not re-download itself every time. ### Worklogs go out A confirmed entry becomes a Jira worklog carrying two fields: the start time and the seconds spent. It is written once, claimed against a link row so a retry can never log the same hour twice. ### Nothing else crosses No status transitions, no comments, no assignees, no issue creation. BillNotch reads two things and writes one, and the boundary is deliberately that narrow. ## How does a tracked hour find its issue? By reading the text the capture already produced. An issue key has a shape: `PROJ-482`, uppercase letters, a hyphen, digits, and that shape turns up constantly in the things you actually have open: the Jira tab itself, a pull request title, a branch name in your editor’s window bar, a Figma frame someone named after the ticket. For a developer that key is usually already in the VS Code title bar, which is the whole premise of [developer time tracking by window title](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-developers). BillNotch pulls every key it finds in a stretch of activity, looks each one up in its local issue index, and takes the first one that belongs to a Jira project you have mapped to a BillNotch project. That match is strong evidence, so it arrives on the Review screen as a high-confidence suggestion, but a rule you taught the categorizer yourself still outranks it, because your correction is worth more than an inferred key. The mapping is the part you have to do by hand, once. An unmapped Jira project matches nothing, on purpose: a key like `OPS-1` passing through a support tab should not quietly redirect a billable afternoon. ## How you connect it In **Settings → Integrations**, press Connect on the Jira row. Atlassian asks you to approve access to Jira work and users on your site, and returns you to Settings. Import your projects, map the ones you bill against, and turn on _Sync worklogs to Jira_ if you want time written back. That switch is off until you set it, so connecting alone never writes anything to your tracker. One Atlassian site per connection: if your account can reach several, BillNotch binds to the first and stays there. Connecting requires the `integrations.manage` permission, which owners and admins hold and ordinary members do not. ## What a worklog contains A start timestamp and a number of seconds. There is no comment on the request, and that is an invariant rather than a default someone might loosen later: window titles are the most sensitive thing an automatic tracker holds, and a Jira worklog is visible to everyone who can see the issue. Entries under a minute and entries with no project are skipped entirely. Each write is claimed against a link row keyed to the entry, so the same hour cannot be logged twice however many times the sync runs. A failed write is retried a handful of times and then given up on and marked skipped, rather than sitting in a queue forever attempting to reach an issue somebody deleted. ## When does the sync run? Issues refresh in the background when you open the Review screen, and on demand when you press Sync now. Each run picks up only what changed since the last one, and repeated runs inside a quarter of an hour are ignored, so a busy team does not hammer the Jira API. There is no scheduler: if nobody opens BillNotch, nothing syncs, which is the honest shape of a product that does not want to be running jobs against your tracker at three in the morning. Worklogs go the other way at a single moment: when you confirm entries on Review. Nothing the tracker captured reaches Jira before a person has agreed with it. That confirm step is the whole discipline of Jira time tracking here: no hour is logged that you have not seen. ## Why issue summaries never reach an AI model Imported issue summaries do help categorization: they are keywords, and keywords are exactly what a deterministic matcher wants. But they are used only by the matcher that runs on BillNotch’s own servers. When the optional AI categorizer is enabled, the prompt it builds deliberately excludes them. Your ticket titles are your company’s roadmap, and they do not get shipped to a model provider to save someone a few lines of code. ## What it will not do It will not move an issue through your workflow, comment on it, create it, assign it or read its status. It will not update or delete a worklog it already wrote, so editing an entry in BillNotch after the fact leaves Jira as it was. It does not import worklogs the other way, and it does not map projects for you. And it is Jira alone. Linear, Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Trello, GitHub Issues and Notion are not built. If your tickets live in one of those, the tracker still captures the work and the categorizer still sorts it, you simply do not get worklogs written back. Jira time tracking in BillNotch is scoped to worklogs on purpose, so it stays a timekeeper and never becomes a second project manager. ## Common questions Does BillNotch work with Jira Server or Data Center? No. The integration uses Atlassian OAuth and the Jira Cloud REST API, so it is Cloud only. A self-hosted Jira has no supported path here, and there is no API-token fallback. Does the window title I was tracking end up in Jira? No. A worklog carries the start time and the number of seconds and nothing else. There is no comment field on the request at all. The window title is used locally to find the issue key and stays on the BillNotch side. What if two issue keys appear in the same tracked window? BillNotch takes the first key in the text that resolves to an issue in a mapped project, and when the entry already belongs to a project, the first key that belongs to that same project. Keys from unmapped Jira projects are skipped rather than guessed at. Can I log time to Jira without confirming it in BillNotch first? No, and that is intentional. Worklogs are written only when you confirm entries on the Review screen, so nothing reaches your team’s issue tracker until a person has looked at it. ## Stop reconstructing your week for the tracker A 14-day trial, no card, and the mapping takes one sitting. [How the capture works](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) explains where the issue keys come from in the first place, [the Slack integration](https://billnotch.com/integrations/slack) announces the confirmed day in a channel, and [BillNotch for agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies) covers the team side of the same loop. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Notion # Notion time tracking that runs while you write > Notion time tracking three ways: templates, browser timer buttons, and passive capture that logs your Notion time per client. What each can and cannot do. Notion time tracking is manual by default. You either build a database with start and end times and a formula, or bolt on a browser extension that adds a timer button to a Notion page. BillNotch takes a third path: it records the time you spend in Notion automatically, no clicks, then turns those hours into an invoice. Read this before you install anything, because it is the honest part. BillNotch has **no Notion API integration** and **no button inside Notion**. It cannot start a timer on a specific task or write hours back to a Notion row. What it does instead is measure how much time you actually spend in Notion, per client, and bill it. If you need a per-task button, this is not that; the section below names the tools that are. passive capture · no button · per-client, billed [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Three ways to do Notion time tracking Notion has no automatic tracking of its own, so every method is a workaround. There are three real ones, and they answer different questions. The first two tie time to a specific task; the third tells you how long you were in Notion at all. ### A Notion database with formulas Build a table with start and end time properties and a formula that subtracts one from the other. Free, native, and entirely manual. You type or click a button property every time you switch tasks, and the accuracy is only as good as your memory. ### A browser-extension timer button TMetric, Clockify and TrackingTime each ship a browser extension that injects a start-timer button onto Notion pages. One click starts a timer tied to that task, and the time syncs to their app for reports and billing. Still a click, and still a habit to keep. ### Passive desktop capture A desktop app records the active window on its own, so the time you spend in Notion is measured with no timer to start. This is how BillNotch works. It answers how long, not which row, and it is the only one of the three that forgets nothing. The template route is well supported: Notion’s own [time-tracking template gallery](https://www.notion.com/templates/category/time-tracking) lists hundreds of them. The button route is the one most “Notion time tracking” searchers land on, and TMetric, Clockify and TrackingTime all do it competently. Both share the same failure the whole category has: [they depend on you remembering to click](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers). The passive route removes the click, and trades it for a review step. ## How BillNotch does Notion time tracking Two signals, one of them optional. The desktop tracker records the active window, and when Notion is in front of you that window carries a title like the page name followed by `Notion`. That stretch of seconds is captured on its own, with nothing to start. Separately, the [Chrome extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) reports `notion.so` as a domain when you work in Notion in the browser, purely as a hint for categorization. Those raw stretches become client time through your own rules. A project carries a list of keywords, so adding `Notion`, a workspace name, or a client name as a keyword makes matching activity land on that project automatically. Whatever the rules cannot place with confidence waits on the Review screen as a draft you confirm, correct or reject, and every correction becomes a rule that handles the next occurrence on its own. Nothing is written onto an entry silently. Privacy is a per-device choice. In the default Smart mode, a title that matched a project keyword is redacted to that keyword before it is ever uploaded, so the title of your Acme roadmap page in Notion leaves your machine as just the project it matched. Full mode keeps the raw title; LocalOnly keeps titles on the device entirely. [The no-screenshots page](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots) covers exactly what leaves and what stays. ## Setting it up Three steps, and none of them touch Notion’s settings, because there is nothing to install on the Notion side. 1. 01 ### Install and connect the desktop app Install it on Windows, macOS or Linux and sign the device in with an API key you issue under Settings. It starts recording the active window immediately, so time in the Notion desktop app is captured from that point on. 2. 02 ### Add a keyword to a project Create a client project and add Notion, the workspace name, or the client name to its keyword list, so matching activity sorts itself. Optionally install the Chrome extension so notion.so browsing counts as a hint too. 3. 03 ### Clear the Review screen Each day, confirm the drafts the rules were unsure about. Confirmed time becomes billable entries, and the running total is ready to send as a PDF invoice or export as CSV. ## Notion time in the context of your whole day A button extension tells you the time you spent on the Notion tasks you remembered to time. A passive tracker tells you the time you spent in Notion against everything else you did, the coding, the docs, the meetings, without you deciding in advance that this block counted. For a freelancer running client work partly out of Notion, that is the more useful number, because it is the one you were going to under-report. And it is the number that becomes money. Approved Notion hours sit in the same billable total as the rest of the project, so [the invoice](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) comes out of the tracked time directly rather than being retyped from a report the button tools hand off elsewhere. The [automatic tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) is the piece doing the capture across every app, not just Notion. ## The Notion time tracking template, and when it is enough A manual Notion database is genuinely fine for some people, and it costs nothing. If your work is one client at a time in long, deliberate blocks, if you already live in Notion all day, and if you are disciplined about starting and stopping, a start-time and end-time database with a duration formula will hold up. It keeps everything in one tool, and there is nothing to trust with your activity data. It stops being enough at the exact points passive capture is built for: fragmented days across several clients, the fifteen-minute jobs you never open the database for, and the jump from a filled-in table to an actual invoice. If you keep finding gaps between what you did in Notion and what you billed, the template is the thing leaking, not you. [The freelancer workflow](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) walks through where those gaps hide. ## What it will not do The honest boundary, stated plainly. BillNotch does not add a timer button to a Notion page, because it has no Notion API integration and no in-Notion interface at all. It cannot log time against a specific Notion database row, cannot read a task’s properties, and cannot write a duration back into Notion. If per-row task timers synced to a database are the requirement, TMetric, Clockify or TrackingTime fit that shape and this does not. The rest of the list: there is no mobile app, so Notion time on your phone is not seen; the tracker only measures the machine it is installed on; and it sees the Notion window, not the content of the page, which is the privacy point rather than a shortcoming. It measures your Notion time and bills it. It is not a plugin that lives inside Notion. ## Common questions Does Notion have built-in automatic time tracking? No. Notion itself only supports manual tracking, usually a database with start and end times and a formula to calculate hours, or a button property you click. To capture time automatically you need an external tool, either a browser-extension timer or a passive tracker like BillNotch. Can BillNotch track time on individual Notion tasks? Not per row. BillNotch does not add a timer button inside Notion or write back to a Notion database. It measures the time you spend in the Notion app and on notion.so automatically. If you need each Notion task timed and synced to a database, a button integration is the better fit. How does BillNotch measure my Notion time then? It records the active window, so time in the Notion desktop app is captured automatically, and the optional Chrome extension logs only the Notion domain (notion.so or notion.com). You get a real figure for time spent in Notion without clicking start or filling in a database. Can I bill clients for Notion project work? Yes. If you run client projects in Notion, the captured hours become billable entries you confirm, and approved time turns into a PDF invoice with an optional payment link, which the Notion button integrations do not do on their own. Do I have to remember to start a timer in Notion? No, that is the point. Manual databases and button extensions both depend on you remembering to log or click. BillNotch captures Notion time passively in the background, so nothing is forgotten and the small tasks land in the log like everything else. Is my Notion content sent anywhere? No page content leaves your device. Keyword matching runs on your device, and in the default Smart mode a matched title is redacted to its project keyword before upload; the Chrome extension records only the Notion domain (notion.so or notion.com), not the pages you view or what is on them. The privacy policy covers how categorization handles anything unmatched. Can you provide a clock widget for Notion? Notion has no built-in clock widget; people embed a third-party clock or use a database button with a formula to time tasks. For actual billable hours, BillNotch measures time in the Notion app and on notion.so automatically, so you get a real figure without embedding a widget or clicking a timer. ## See your real Notion hours, then bill them Let the tracker record a normal week and look at how much of it was actually Notion, per client, with nothing clicked. 14 days, no card, then $9 a month for Pro. The [Chrome extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) sharpens the browser side, and [time tracking for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-freelancers) covers the whole capture-to-invoice loop. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/outlook-calendar [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Outlook calendar # Outlook time tracking, your week read back as the entries you never made > Outlook time tracking from your calendar: BillNotch reads 14 days of Microsoft 365 meetings read-only and offers the rest as entries you confirm yourself. Outlook time tracking should start from the calendar you already keep. If your work lives in Microsoft 365, your calendar is the most accurate record of your week that exists, and the least likely to end up on an invoice. BillNotch signs in through Microsoft, reads the past fortnight of your default calendar, and hands you back the meetings that look like work so you can turn them into entries one row at a time. Calendars.Read · Microsoft 365 · Outlook.com [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Work account or personal, the same door In **Settings → Calendar**, press _Connect Outlook_. Sign-in is against Microsoft’s `common` authority rather than a single tenant, which is the reason a work or school account on Microsoft 365 and a personal Outlook.com account both authorise the same way, and the reason a contractor with one of each can connect whichever calendar the client’s work actually lives in. The consent lists `Calendars.Read` and `offline_access`, and there is no ReadWrite anywhere in the request. Connections are per person: every member of a workspace can connect their own account without an administrator granting anything in BillNotch, and no member can see another’s meetings. If your tenant restricts third-party app consent, that is the one place an admin has to be involved, and it is a Microsoft setting rather than a BillNotch one. ## How Outlook’s “show as” decides what you see This is the part worth reading. Outlook’s `showAs` field carries five values, not two, and BillNotch takes the generous reading of every one of them except free, which is exactly inverted from how most tools handle a status they do not recognise. ### Busy: suggested The ordinary case. A booked slot on your default calendar that you did not decline becomes a candidate entry. ### Tentative: suggested You never got round to accepting, but you turned up. Outlook’s maybe is treated as attendance, on the theory that a meeting you sat through is a meeting you worked. ### Out of office or working elsewhere: suggested These read as free in some tools and vanish. Here they survive the filter, because a client visit and a day at a customer site are exactly the hours people forget to bill. ### Free: ignored The only status that disqualifies a meeting outright. Mark a slot free and it never reaches the Review screen, which makes it the lever you use for your own placeholders. Around that sit four blunter rules: all-day events are dropped, a meeting whose responseStatus records that you declined is dropped, anything under five minutes or over twelve hours is dropped, and a slot already covered by time you tracked never appears. The desktop app and the calendar cannot both bill the same hour. The read itself goes to `/me/calendarView`, which is the Graph endpoint that returns a series already expanded into its occurrences, so a weekly project sync arrives as two separate rows rather than one recurrence you would have to unpick. Times come back pinned to UTC by an explicit header, because Graph will otherwise hand you naive datetimes and let you guess the zone. ## What Outlook time tracking puts on the Review screen A “Meetings” list, grouped with the day you are reviewing, holding only what survived those filters. Accepting one creates a time entry with the meeting’s subject as its description and the meeting’s exact start and end as its span. Pick a project on the row if you know it. The entry is non-billable until you decide otherwise, and the flip from suggestion to entry is guarded so it can only happen once. [The Review screen](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) is the same place the tracker’s own suggestions land, so this is one pass over the day rather than two. ## Teams calls are just meetings here On a Microsoft 365 team most of the week is Teams calls, and that is precisely the time an activity tracker records worst: the window is Teams whether you were in a client workshop or an internal retro, and half the calls happen with the laptop lid down or on a phone in a taxi. The calendar is the only honest record of them. So BillNotch treats a Teams meeting as an ordinary calendar entry and nothing more. It does not read the join link, does not know whether the call actually took place, does not know who dialled in or for how long, and asks Graph for none of it. Nothing about Teams presence, chat or call records is requested. A meeting you skipped is a meeting you should dismiss, which takes one click and is the honest version of a feature that would otherwise need far more access to your workplace than a timesheet deserves. ## Where a Microsoft 365 connection tends to break Microsoft hands back a new refresh token every time the old one is used, which is a good security property and a reliable way to lose a connection if you are careless with it. BillNotch stores the replacement before it does anything else with the session, so a sync that fails halfway leaves the connection intact rather than orphaned. When access is genuinely gone (revoked, expired, a password changed under a policy) the Calendar settings card says so plainly and offers Reconnect, rather than showing a healthy connection that has quietly stopped returning meetings. Only the refresh token is kept, and it is encrypted at rest; the short-lived access token is never stored. Syncs run when you open the Review screen or press Sync now, at most once every fifteen minutes per connection, so nothing reads your mailbox while you are asleep. ## What is stored, and what is never asked for Four fields per meeting: an identifier, the subject, the start and the end. Bodies, locations, attendee lists, organisers and join links are not requested from Microsoft Graph and are not stored, which matters more on a work calendar than a personal one, where the body of a meeting invite is frequently the most confidential text in the company. That narrow field set is the whole point of Outlook time tracking done from the calendar: enough to rebuild the entry, and nothing that would leak the meeting itself. ## What it will not do No writing to your calendar, no upcoming meetings, no shared or secondary calendars, no room mailboxes, and no automatic entry creation. It will not infer a client from who was invited, will not mark a meeting billable for you, and will not run the AI categorizer over an accepted meeting. Outlook and [Google Calendar](https://billnotch.com/integrations/google-calendar) are the two providers that exist. Apple Calendar, CalDAV and subscribed ICS feeds are not supported, and Exchange on-premises without Microsoft 365 has no path here. ## Common questions Does this work with a personal Outlook.com account? Sign-in goes through the common Microsoft endpoint, so both work or school accounts on Microsoft 365 and personal Microsoft accounts can authorise it. Whether a work account can is finally your tenant administrator’s decision, not BillNotch’s. Which Graph permission does it request? Calendars.Read, plus offline\_access so the connection survives without you signing in again, and openid and email to label the connection with the account it belongs to. Calendars.ReadWrite is not requested, so approving the consent gives BillNotch no way to alter anything in Outlook. Which calendar does it read? Your default calendar, through the /me/calendarView endpoint. Additional calendars you have created, calendars shared with you by colleagues, and room or resource mailboxes are outside the request entirely. How far back does it look? The past fourteen days, and nothing in the future. It is a recovery tool for meetings you already attended, not a planner, and it never reads next week. Does accepting a meeting make it billable? No. The entry is created non-billable with whatever project you picked on the row, or none. Making it billable is something you do afterwards, deliberately. ## Bill the meetings, not just the typing A 14-day trial, no card, and read-only access you can revoke from Microsoft at any time. [The Google Calendar version](https://billnotch.com/integrations/google-calendar) covers the other half of most teams, [the Jira integration](https://billnotch.com/integrations/jira) writes the confirmed result back as worklogs, and [invoicing](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) is what the recovered hours are for. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / QuickBooks # QuickBooks time tracking, from tracked hours to a sent invoice > QuickBooks time tracking that invoices for you: track hours automatically, send from BillNotch, and it lands in QuickBooks Online with paid status back. QuickBooks time tracking should mean your hours become an invoice without anyone retyping them. The gap between a time tracker and a ledger is usually a person with a spreadsheet. You export hours, you total them, you open QuickBooks, you build the invoice a second time, and somewhere in there a rate is wrong. BillNotch closes that gap in one direction and is honest about the other: the invoice you send is created in QuickBooks for you, and the only thing that comes back is whether it has been paid. QuickBooks Online · invoice out · paid status in [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What QuickBooks time tracking does when you send an invoice ### You send the invoice Nothing syncs on a draft. The push is triggered by the same click that sends the invoice to your client, so what lands in QuickBooks is exactly what the client received. ### The customer is found or made BillNotch looks for a QuickBooks customer whose display name matches the client on the invoice, and creates one if there is none. Intuit’s duplicate-name fault is handled by reusing the existing record rather than failing. ### The invoice is created once Your invoice number becomes the DocNumber, the issue and due dates carry over, and every line arrives as its own line with description, hours and rate. A request id keyed to the invoice makes a retry return the original rather than a duplicate. ### Payment comes back When the balance in QuickBooks reaches zero, BillNotch moves the invoice from sent to paid. The transition is guarded, so a payment can only be applied once no matter how many times it is seen. ## How you connect it In **Settings → Integrations**, press Connect on the QuickBooks row. Intuit asks you to approve accounting access and to pick the company file; BillNotch keeps the company id and the tokens, encrypted, and returns you to Settings. A _Push sent invoices_ switch on the connection lets you keep the link and pause the pushing, which is the setting you want during a month-end you would rather not disturb. Connecting needs the `integrations.manage` permission: owners and admins by default, and any custom role you grant it to. The desktop app’s API key cannot touch integrations at all, by design. ## What it writes into your books Your accountant deserves the specifics before you connect anything to a ledger, so: the invoice carries your invoice number as its document number, its issue and due dates, its currency, and one line per BillNotch line with the description, the hours and the rate. Two objects may be created in your file if they are not already there. A **customer**, matched by exact display name against the client on the invoice. And a single service **item named “Services”**, booked to the first income account in your chart. QuickBooks will not accept a bare description line, so every line rides on that one item. If you keep several income accounts and care which one gets credited, set that up on the QuickBooks side before you send the first invoice. ## What about sales tax? Tax is not pushed. If a BillNotch invoice has a tax rate on it, the QuickBooks invoice will show the pre-tax total and you will apply tax there. That is a real limitation and worth knowing on day one rather than at the end of a quarter. Tax handling differs enough between jurisdictions that guessing at it in a sync is worse than leaving it to the tool that actually knows your registrations. ## How payment status finds its way back BillNotch asks QuickBooks what changed since it last looked, using Intuit’s change feed while the gap is short enough and falling back to a direct lookup of the invoices it is tracking when it is not. An outstanding balance of zero means paid, and the invoice moves from sent to paid on the BillNotch side. That check runs when you open the invoices list and at most once every fifteen minutes, or on demand from Sync now. It is not instant and there are no webhooks. Partial payments do nothing: an invoice is paid or it is not, and a half-settled balance leaves the BillNotch status where it was. ## Why it cannot bill you twice Double-created invoices are the classic accounting-sync failure, so there are two locks. A claim row keyed to the invoice and the connection is taken before anything is sent, and the create itself carries a request id derived from the invoice’s own identifier rather than its number. Free-text invoice numbers collide once you strip and truncate them, and Intuit would happily link two different invoices as one. When a push fails the claim is released so the next attempt runs clean. ## What it will not do No expenses, no bills, no purchase orders, no payroll, no bank feeds, no journal entries, no chart-of-accounts sync. Nothing is backfilled: invoices you sent before connecting stay where they are. An invoice edited in QuickBooks does not update BillNotch, and one voided in BillNotch is not voided in QuickBooks. If you kill an invoice, kill it in both places. The PDF is not attached, and there is no deep link from the BillNotch invoice into QuickBooks. Nor is it every ledger. QuickBooks Online and [Xero](https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero) are the two that exist; FreshBooks, Wave, Sage and Zoho Books are not built. And BillNotch is not itself an accounting package. It [produces the invoice](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), your ledger keeps the books. QuickBooks time tracking here is one job done well: hours in BillNotch become the invoice, and the paid flag is the only thing that returns. ## Common questions Is this a two-way sync? No, and describing it as one would be dishonest. BillNotch pushes a sent invoice into QuickBooks and reads one thing back: whether the balance has reached zero. Editing an invoice inside QuickBooks changes nothing on the BillNotch side. Does it push sales tax? No. Line descriptions, quantities and rates cross; tax does not. If your BillNotch invoice carries a tax rate, the QuickBooks total will be the pre-tax total and you will need to apply tax in QuickBooks. This is the one place the two documents can legitimately disagree. How quickly does a paid invoice show as paid? Not instantly. There are no webhooks. Payment status refreshes when you open the invoices list, at most once every fifteen minutes per connection, or immediately when you press Sync now in Settings. Does it work with QuickBooks Desktop? No. The integration speaks the QuickBooks Online API only. QuickBooks Desktop, Self-Employed and the older Intuit products have no supported path here. ## Let the hours reach the ledger by themselves A 14-day trial, no card, and the connection takes a minute. [The Xero sync](https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero) works the same way with a couple of real differences, [Slack](https://billnotch.com/integrations/slack) announces the send and the payment in a channel, and [the automatic tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) is where the hours on the invoice came from. For a firm keeping client books, [time tracking software for accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants) is the workflow this sync closes. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/slack [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Slack # Slack time tracking: four messages, and that is the whole feature > Post four events to one Slack channel: invoice sent, invoice paid, timer stopped, suggestions confirmed. Outbound only, with a switch for each one. Most time trackers arrive in Slack as a bot that wants to be a second product: reminders, nudges, a slash command for starting a timer you were supposed to have started. BillNotch does the opposite. It posts to one channel when something happens that involves money or a confirmed day of work, and it never reads a word from your workspace. invoice.sent · invoice.paid · timer.stopped · entry.confirmed [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What Slack time tracking actually sends Slack time tracking in BillNotch is a notifier, not a bot. Four events, each a single line of plain text with no attachments and no link back. The exact strings, so you can decide before you install anything whether you want them in a channel other people can read. ### An invoice went out Invoice sent to Northwind: $2,400.00 Fires the moment an invoice leaves draft and is actually sent to the client. Nothing is sent on your behalf before that, so this message is the receipt for a decision you made. ### An invoice was paid Invoice paid by Northwind: $2,400.00 Fires whether you marked it paid by hand or Stripe confirmed the payment. For most freelancers this is the only notification that genuinely deserves to interrupt anything. ### A timer stopped 1h 45m tracked on Redesign Only for the timer you stop in the dashboard, and only above a minute. A stray thirty-second start never reaches the channel. Entries with no project drop the trailing clause. ### Suggestions were confirmed 12 suggested entries confirmed Fires when you clear the Review screen and turn the day’s drafts into real entries. A count, not a list: no project names, no window titles, no descriptions. ## How you connect it Open **Settings → Integrations** in the dashboard and press Connect on the Slack row. Slack asks you to approve three scopes: `chat:write`, `chat:write.public` and `channels:read`, and hands you back to Settings. You then pick the destination channel from a list of your public, unarchived channels. Nothing is posted until that channel is chosen; a connected workspace with no channel set is simply silent. The read scope exists for one purpose, filling that dropdown. BillNotch never lists your members, reads a message, or watches a reaction. ## Turning individual events off All four are on when you connect, and each has its own switch under _Notify on_. Teams usually keep the two invoice events and drop the timer one within a week, which is the correct instinct: a channel that announces every stopped timer stops being read. Turn all four off and the connection stays, quiet, until you want it back. ## What leaves BillNotch, and what never does A client name, a project name, a total, a duration and a count. That is the complete list. Window titles, entry descriptions, the applications you had open, member names and invoice numbers are not in any of the four messages, because the messages are hard-coded rather than templated. There is no field for you to accidentally widen. That matters more than it sounds. A Slack channel is a durable, searchable, widely-shared log, and plenty of trackers pipe raw activity into one. [What the tracker records](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) explains where the detailed capture actually lives, which is your account and not your workspace. ## What happens when a message fails Notifications are dispatched outside the request that triggered them, so a Slack failure can never break the thing that caused it. An invoice still sends, a timer still stops, the day still confirms. The connection then shows **Degraded** and heals itself on the next successful delivery. If Slack reports the token revoked or the workspace inactive it shows **Revoked** and offers a Reconnect button instead. The trade in that design is honest: a dropped message is dropped. There is no retry queue and no dead-letter list, because a notification that arrives forty minutes late is worse than one that never arrives. ## What it will not do There are no slash commands, so you cannot start or stop a timer from Slack. There is no interactivity: the messages carry no buttons and BillNotch has no endpoint listening for your clicks. It never mentions a person, never opens a DM, and never threads a reply. The only destination it knows is the one channel you saved. There is no test-send button, so the first message you see will be a real one, and there is no delivery history beyond a last-activity timestamp on the connection. It is also Slack only. Microsoft Teams, Discord and generic outgoing webhooks are not built, and nothing here is a status bot: BillNotch will not report who is working, who is idle, or how anyone’s day is going. That narrowness is the point: Slack time tracking that only echoes money events stays quiet enough to leave in a channel other people read. ## Common questions Can I run BillNotch commands from Slack? No. The integration is outbound only. There are no slash commands, no buttons, no message actions, and BillNotch never reads anything from your workspace. It posts to one channel you choose and does nothing else. Can it post to a private channel or a DM? The picker lists public, unarchived channels only, so that is what you will normally choose. The scope BillNotch asks for is chat:write, which posts to any conversation the bot is a member of, and the destination is stored as a plain channel ID, so a private channel the bot has been invited to works too. It never opens a DM and never picks a room on its own. What happens if Slack is unreachable when an event fires? The message is lost and the product action is unaffected. Notifications are dispatched outside the request that triggered them, so a Slack outage can never fail an invoice send or a timer stop. There is no retry queue: delivery is best effort, at most once. Who in my organization can connect Slack? Anyone holding the integrations.manage permission, which owners and admins have by default and plain members do not. You can grant it to a custom role in Team settings if you want someone else to own the wiring. ## Get the invoice notifications, at least A 14-day trial, no card, and Slack takes about a minute once you are in. If the money side is what you came for, [the QuickBooks sync](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) pushes the invoice itself rather than an announcement of it, and [the Jira integration](https://billnotch.com/integrations/jira) writes tracked time back as worklogs. [How invoicing works](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) covers what the two invoice events are actually reporting on, and [Notion time tracking](https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion) covers measuring the hours that feed those invoices in the first place. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/integrations/xero [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Xero # Xero time tracking, from tracked hours to an approved invoice > Xero time tracking that invoices for you: send in BillNotch and it lands in Xero as an approved invoice, contact created, paid status flowing back. Xero time tracking should end with the invoice already sitting in your ledger. Xero is where the money is accounted for and BillNotch is where the hours came from, and keeping the two in step is normally a monthly job somebody dreads. Connect them once and the invoice you already decided to send writes itself into your ledger: the same number, the same dates, the same lines, and tells BillNotch when the client has paid. ACCREC · authorised · account code 200 by default [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What is different about Xero time tracking ### It arrives approved, not as a draft The invoice is created as an authorised accounts-receivable invoice, because you already made the decision to send it. There is no second approval step waiting for you in Xero. ### You choose the sales account Every line posts to one account code, defaulting to 200 and editable per connection in Settings. If your revenue lives somewhere else in your chart, change it once and every future invoice follows. ### The contact is matched by name BillNotch searches your Xero contacts for the client’s exact name and creates one if it finds nothing. Rename a client on one side only and you will end up with two contacts, so keep the names in step. ### You get a link back Xero returns the online invoice URL and BillNotch stores it against the invoice, so the ledger copy is one click away from the BillNotch one. ## How you connect it **Settings → Integrations**, Connect on the Xero row. Xero asks for access to your transactions and contacts, plus offline access so the connection survives without you signing in again, and hands you back to Settings. Set the sales account code if 200 is not where your revenue belongs, and leave _Push sent invoices_ on. Xero rotates its refresh token on a sliding window, so BillNotch stores the new one before it does anything else with a refreshed session. A connection that genuinely goes stale is marked revoked in Settings with a Reconnect button, rather than failing quietly for a month. ## What crosses, field by field The invoice number, the issue date, the due date, the currency, and one Xero line item per BillNotch line carrying the description, the hours as quantity and the rate as unit amount. Money is held as whole cents on the BillNotch side and converted per value rather than accumulated, so nothing drifts by a penny across a long invoice. Tax does not cross. Every line is sent with a tax type of NONE, which means a BillNotch invoice carrying a tax rate will show its pre-tax total in Xero. That is deliberate rather than unfinished: Xero knows your tax registrations and rates and BillNotch does not, and a sync that guesses at tax is worse than one that declines to. ## How paid status comes back BillNotch asks Xero for invoices modified since it last looked, and when the amount due on a tracked invoice reaches zero it moves that invoice from sent to paid. If nothing has changed Xero says so and the cursor stays put, so a quiet week costs nothing and does not mark a healthy connection as broken. The check happens when you open the invoices list, no more than once every fifteen minutes, or immediately when you press Sync now. There are no webhooks and this is not live: if you need to know the second a client pays, [the payment link on the invoice itself](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) is the faster path. ## Sending the same invoice twice It cannot produce two invoices in Xero. A claim is taken locally against the invoice and the connection before anything is sent, and the request carries an idempotency key derived from the invoice’s own identifier rather than its number. Two invoices sharing a number would otherwise be collapsed into one on Xero’s side, which is the more dangerous failure of the two. If the push errors, the claim is released so a later attempt starts clean. ## What it will not do It does not touch bills, purchase orders, expenses, bank feeds, manual journals or tracking categories, and it does not create credit notes. It will not update a Xero invoice after the fact: edit or void in BillNotch and the Xero copy stays as it was, so a cancelled invoice has to be cancelled in both places. Nothing edited in Xero flows back except the amount due. Disconnecting removes the link on the BillNotch side but does not revoke the app inside Xero, which you can do from your Xero connected-apps screen. And it will not pick your Xero organisation for you, split lines across account codes, or push time entries as billable time. It sends finished invoices and reads whether they are settled. Xero time tracking here stops at the finished invoice on purpose: BillNotch owns the hours, and Xero keeps the ledger. ## Common questions Which Xero organisation does it connect to? The first one your account authorises. There is no organisation picker, so if you manage several Xero organisations, connect from an account whose first organisation is the one you want. Does it push tax? No. Every line is sent with a tax type of NONE, and the tax amount on a BillNotch invoice is not carried across. On a taxed invoice the Xero total will be the pre-tax total, and tax is yours to apply in Xero. What does BillNotch read back from Xero? One thing: whether the amount due has reached zero. When it has, the invoice moves from sent to paid in BillNotch. No other field is read, and nothing you change in Xero flows back. Can I sync invoices I sent before connecting? No. The push is triggered by the act of sending, so it only ever applies to invoices sent after the connection exists. Historical invoices stay where they are and there is no backfill. ## One less thing to reconcile A 14-day trial, no card, and no data leaves BillNotch until you send an invoice. If you keep your books elsewhere, [the QuickBooks Online sync](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) is the same shape with its own quirks; [how invoicing works](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) covers what BillNotch does before Xero ever sees it, and [BillNotch for consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) is the case this was built for. If you keep the books for clients, [time tracking software for accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants) covers the firm workflow that ends in this sync. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) --- # Comparisons ## Source: https://billnotch.com/compare/timely > A Timely alternative, feature by feature: both track automatically, but BillNotch adds unbilled-time alerts, Linux and flat $9/mo against $11 to $28/user. [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / BillNotch vs Timely Comparison # BillNotch vs Timely: flat pricing, Linux and unbilled-time alerts Looking for a Timely alternative? Timely is the closest tool to BillNotch on the market. Both record what you work on in the background, both draft the timesheet for you to confirm, and both invoice from it. The gap is in everything around the tracking. Timely prices every plan per user, caps its cheapest one at 20 projects and five people, builds its invoicing around a QuickBooks Online sync that starts on Premium, and has no Linux build. BillNotch is $9/mo flat for one person and $12/seat for a team, renders a PDF invoice on every plan, ships a native Linux tracker, and runs a Revenue Leak Finder over your hours to catch billable work that never reached an invoice. Here is the side-by-side. | Feature | BillNotch | Timely | | --- | --- | --- | | Automatic background tracking records the active window, no timer to start | Yes | Yes Memory tracker | | Drafts you confirm before they count nothing is written onto a project silently | Yes Review screen | Yes AI timesheets | | Rule-based categorization, AI optional deterministic keyword matching is the default | Yes | No AI timesheets are the core workflow | | Built-in invoicing bill straight from tracked hours | Yes PDF on every plan | Yes Invoice tab, built around QuickBooks | | Accounting integrations | No | Yes QuickBooks Online, Premium and up | | Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time that never reached an invoice | Yes | No “Mark as billed” only | | Linux desktop app | Yes | No Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android | | Windows & macOS desktop apps | Yes | Yes | | iOS & Android apps | No | Yes incl. GPS location tracking | | No screenshots or keystroke logging | Yes | Yes anti-surveillance policy | | Window titles can stay on your machine per-device sync mode | Yes | No Memory syncs to Timely’s cloud | | Data processed in the EU | Yes Hetzner, Germany | Yes AWS, EU | | Capacity & resource planning | No | Yes Premium and up | | Budgets, cost rates & project health | Partial utilization reports on Team | Yes | | Projects on the entry plan | Yes unlimited | Partial 20 on Starter | | Team size on the entry plan | Yes Pro is 1 seat, Team adds seats | Partial max 5 users on Starter | | Flat price as the team grows no jump to a higher per-user tier | Yes $9 Pro, $12/seat Team | No $11 → $20 → $28 per user | | No paid add-ons on top of the plan | Yes | No Tasks from $5/person | | Free to try | Yes 14 days, no card | Yes 14 days | Timely details are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of September 5, 2026. Check [timely.com](https://www.timely.com/pricing/) for current pricing and features. ## Moving over from Timely? There is nothing to migrate mid-month. Export your Timely history to PDF, CSV or XLS, install the BillNotch desktop app on Windows, macOS or Linux, and add your clients and projects. Tracking starts on its own, so there is no habit to relearn. Run both side by side for a week if you want the overlap: the 14-day trial is full access and needs no card. [Start your free trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) [First, see what your unbilled hours cost](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) ## When BillNotch fits better You bill by the hour and want the invoice to come out of the same tool that recorded the work, a Revenue Leak Finder over unbilled hours, a native Linux tracker, per-device control over whether window titles ever leave your machine, or a flat price that does not climb into a $16 to $22/user tier as the team grows. ## When Timely might fit better You need mobile apps and GPS-tagged time, capacity and resource planning, internal cost rates and project-health dashboards, or a QuickBooks Online sync: all things Timely has and BillNotch does not. Timely is also cheaper for a small team that fits inside Starter: five users at $11/user is $55/mo against $60/mo on BillNotch Team. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does Timely cost, and how does BillNotch compare? Timely prices every plan per user, solo included. Starter is $11/user/mo month-to-month or $9 billed yearly, capped at 20 projects and five users; Premium is $20/user/mo, or $16 billed yearly; Unlimited is $28/user/mo, or $22 billed yearly. A Tasks add-on starts at around $5 per person on top of any plan. BillNotch is $9/mo flat for a single seat on Pro ($90/yr) and $12/seat/mo on Team ($120/seat/yr), with projects, clients, invoices and history unlimited on both plans. Figures checked against timely.com/pricing on September 5, 2026. ### Does Timely do invoicing? Yes. Timely has an Invoice tab that produces branded invoices from tracked hours, and its own feature page builds that workflow around a QuickBooks Online sync for payments and financial records. Two caveats worth knowing: the accounting integration sits on Premium and above rather than Starter, and QuickBooks Online is Timely’s only true accounting integration. Xero, FreshBooks, Wave and Stripe appear on its integrations page as apps the Memory tracker recognises, not as integrations. BillNotch renders a PDF invoice from a project’s billable total on every plan, with no second subscription in the chain. ### Does Timely run on Linux? No. Timely’s own software schema lists its supported platforms as Web, Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, and there is no Linux build of the Memory tracker. BillNotch ships a native desktop tracker for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the tracker core’s tests run on all three in continuous integration. For people who work on Linux this is usually the line that settles the choice. ### Does Timely take screenshots or monitor employees? No, and it says so plainly: no screenshots, no mouse tracking, no bossware, and your memories stay private to you until you choose to log them. BillNotch captures no screenshots and no keystrokes either. The real difference is where the raw record lives. Timely’s Memory data syncs to Timely’s cloud; BillNotch lets you choose per device whether window titles sync at all or never leave that machine, and AI categorization is off unless you turn it on. Both process data on EU servers. ### BillNotch or Timely for a solo freelancer? BillNotch, in most cases. Month to month it is $9 flat against Timely’s $11/user, and $90/yr against $108/yr on the yearly plans. You also get PDF invoicing without an accounting subscription behind it, and a Revenue Leak Finder that scans tracked hours for billable work that never made it onto an invoice. Timely is the better pick if you want a phone app, or you already run QuickBooks Online and want the hours to land there. ### BillNotch or Timely for a team of five to ten? Under six people, Timely Starter is genuinely cheaper: five users at $11/user is $55/mo against $60/mo on BillNotch Team, though Starter caps you at 20 projects with no accounting integration and no team management. At six people Starter runs out and Premium takes over at $20/user: $120/mo, or $96/mo billed yearly, against $72/mo on BillNotch Team ($60/mo billed yearly). The gap widens with every seat you add. ### What does Timely do that BillNotch does not? A fair list: iOS and Android apps with GPS location tracking, capacity and resource planning, internal cost rates and project-health dashboards, a QuickBooks Online sync, around twenty first-party integrations (Zapier included), and a longer track record. Timely is a Norwegian company serving over 5,000 businesses across 160 countries, rated 4.8 out of 5 on G2. If those are the things you are buying, Timely is the more complete product and this comparison should send you there. ### How hard is it to switch from Timely to BillNotch? Not very. Export your history out of Timely first (its report exports come as PDF, CSV or XLS) then install the BillNotch desktop app on Windows, macOS or Linux, add your clients and projects, and let it track. There is no timer habit to transfer, because neither tool uses one, and past invoices stay wherever you raised them. Running both for a week is the usual approach: the BillNotch trial is 14 days of full access with no card, and if you stop, the account turns read-only with reports, CSV exports and invoice PDFs still working. ## Try automatic time tracking free. 14 days of full access, no credit card. Compare [plans and pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing), or see BillNotch [for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). Not sure switching is worth it? The [Revenue Leak Calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) estimates what your untracked hours cost, free, no signup. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) --- # Help ## Source: https://billnotch.com/help # Help & FAQ > Answers for BillNotch: installing past the security warning, what’s tracked, billing and cancellation, refunds, and exporting your data. The quick answers to the questions we hear most. Still stuck? Email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com) and a human will get back to you. ## Getting started ### What is BillNotch? BillNotch is an automatic, passive time tracker. The desktop app records which application and window you are working in and for how long; the web dashboard turns that into projects, reports, and invoice-ready totals. You do not start and stop timers by hand. ### How do I connect the desktop app to my account? Sign in to the web dashboard, open Settings, and generate an API key (it starts with tt\_). Paste that key into the desktop app’s connect screen. The key is stored in your operating system’s keychain (never in plaintext) and you can revoke it anytime. Open the dashboard at [your BillNotch account](https://app.billnotch.com/login). ## Install & the security warning ### macOS says the app “can’t be opened” or is from an unidentified developer. What do I do? Right-click (or Control-click) the BillNotch app and choose Open, then confirm Open in the dialog. If macOS still blocks it, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click “Open Anyway” next to the BillNotch message. You only need to do this once. This warning appears because installers during early access may not yet be fully notarized. ### Windows shows “Windows protected your PC” (SmartScreen). Click “More info”, then “Run anyway”. SmartScreen flags newer apps that have not yet built up download reputation; it does not mean the file is unsafe. ### How do I install on Linux? Download the AppImage, make it executable (chmod +x), and run it, or install the .deb package through your package manager. No signing prompt applies on Linux. Active-window capture works on X11 and on most Wayland sessions: Sway, Hyprland, KDE Plasma, and other wlroots compositors (river, Wayfire, labwc). The GNOME default on recent Ubuntu and Fedora doesn’t expose the active window yet, so on GNOME pick an “Xorg”/“X11” session from the gear menu on the login screen until native GNOME support lands. The [Linux time tracker page](https://billnotch.com/linux) lists what each compositor supports. ## Privacy & what’s tracked ### What data does BillNotch track? From the desktop app: the active application name, the window title, timestamps, and how long you spend. That is grouped into the projects you configure. Account data (your email and an Argon2id password hash) and standard server logs are also stored. Full detail is in the [Privacy Policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy). ### Can I stop window titles from leaving my machine? Yes. Each device has a sync mode. Choose “Keep titles local” and only durations and the minimal metadata needed for billing are synced. The text of what you were doing never leaves your device. The default mode syncs full titles so categorization and reports can use them. ### Is my activity sent to any AI service? Only if you turn on AI categorization. By default, BillNotch sorts your activity into projects with a deterministic rule-based matcher and none of it is sent to any third-party AI provider. Turn on AI categorization and the activity text being categorized is sent to DeepSeek to classify. ## Billing & cancellation ### Is there a free trial? Yes. Every new organization starts with a 14-day free trial. No credit card is required to start. ### What happens when the trial or subscription ends? Write features (tracking ingest, edits) pause until you subscribe, but your data is never deleted: reports, CSV export, and invoice PDFs stay fully available so you can always get your data out. ### How do I cancel? Open Settings → Billing in the dashboard and manage your subscription. When you cancel, your plan stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it does not renew after that. ### Do you offer refunds? Payments are non-refundable except where a refund is required by law, and we do not prorate partial periods. You can cancel anytime to stop future charges. If you were charged in error, email support and we will make it right. See the billing terms in our [Terms of Service](https://billnotch.com/terms). ### How is the Team plan billed? Team is billed per active member seat, monthly or annually. Your seat count adjusts automatically as you add or remove members, and changes are prorated. ## Export & backup ### How do I export my data? From the dashboard, export time entries and reports as CSV, and download any invoice as a PDF. These export options stay available even if your trial or subscription has ended. ### Can I delete my account and all my data? Yes. You can delete individual time entries and projects anytime in the dashboard. To delete your whole account, email support from your account address and we will action it, as described in the Privacy Policy. Email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). --- # Tools ## Source: https://billnotch.com/military-time-converter [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Military time converter # Military time converter > Convert military time to standard time and back as you type. The full 24-hour chart, every hour both directions, how each is spoken, and the +12 rule. Military time is the 24-hour clock: the day runs 0000 to 2359 with no AM or PM. Before noon the hour is unchanged, so 9:00 AM is 0900. From 1 PM on, add 12 to the hour: 7:00 PM is 1900. Minutes never change. Convert either way 12-hour time Type it however you write it: 7:45 PM, 745pm, 8 pm. 24-hour (military) time Four digits, with or without the colon: 1945, 19:45, 0630. Result 7:45 PM \= 1945 Written 19:45 outside the US military. Spoken as nineteen forty-five. Common lookups ## The military time conversion rule 0000 to 1159 → same hour, AM. 0900 = 9:00 AM 1200 to 2359 → subtract 12, PM. 1900 = 19 − 12 = 7:00 PM AM to military → keep the hour, pad to four digits. 9 AM = 0900 PM to military → add 12 to the hour. 7 PM = 7 + 12 = 1900 minutes are identical on both clocks. 7:45 PM = 1945 ## Military time chart: all 24 hours Read it either way. Find 1900 in the first column to get 7:00 PM, or find 7:00 PM in the second to get 1900. The third column is how the time is said out loud, which is the part the chart is usually needed for. Every hour from 0000 to 2300 in military time, the 12-hour standard time it equals, and how each is spoken | Military time | 12-hour time | Spoken as | | --- | --- | --- | | 0000 | 12:00 AM | zero hundred (midnight) | | 0100 | 1:00 AM | zero one hundred | | 0200 | 2:00 AM | zero two hundred | | 0300 | 3:00 AM | zero three hundred | | 0400 | 4:00 AM | zero four hundred | | 0500 | 5:00 AM | zero five hundred | | 0600 | 6:00 AM | zero six hundred | | 0700 | 7:00 AM | zero seven hundred | | 0800 | 8:00 AM | zero eight hundred | | 0900 | 9:00 AM | zero nine hundred | | 1000 | 10:00 AM | ten hundred | | 1100 | 11:00 AM | eleven hundred | | 1200 | 12:00 PM | twelve hundred (noon) | | 1300 | 1:00 PM | thirteen hundred | | 1400 | 2:00 PM | fourteen hundred | | 1500 | 3:00 PM | fifteen hundred | | 1600 | 4:00 PM | sixteen hundred | | 1700 | 5:00 PM | seventeen hundred | | 1800 | 6:00 PM | eighteen hundred | | 1900 | 7:00 PM | nineteen hundred | | 2000 | 8:00 PM | twenty hundred | | 2100 | 9:00 PM | twenty-one hundred | | 2200 | 10:00 PM | twenty-two hundred | | 2300 | 11:00 PM | twenty-three hundred | Minutes carry across unchanged, so 1945 is 7:45 PM and 0615 is 6:15 AM. 1000 is usually said ten hundred, though one thousand is heard in the US Navy. Outside the US military the same clock is written with a colon, so 1900 becomes 19:00. ## What time is 1900? 1900 is **7:00 PM**. The hour is 19, which is past 12, so subtract 12: 19 − 12 = 7, and anything from 1200 up is in the afternoon or evening half of the day. Spoken as nineteen hundred. The same subtraction handles the rest of the evening: 2000 is 8:00 PM, 2100 is 9:00 PM, 2200 is 10:00 PM. ## What time is 1800? 1800 is **6:00 PM**: 18 − 12 = 6. Spoken as eighteen hundred, and written 18:00 wherever the 24-hour clock is civilian rather than military. It sits with 1700 and 1900 among the most looked-up conversions there are, because the evening is where a 24-hour time stops being guessable from the 12-hour one. ## What is 8 PM in military time? 8 PM is **2000**. Add 12 to the hour: 8 + 12 = 20, then write it as four digits. Going this direction the only thing to remember is the padding: 8 AM is 0800, not 800, because military time is always four digits. ## Is midnight 0000 or 2400? Both name the same instant, and which you write depends on whether you mean the start or the end of a day. A day begins at 0000 and its last minute is 2359. 2400 appears on timesheets and duty rosters to mean the closing boundary of that day, which is the same moment as 0000 on the next one. This converter normalizes 2400 to 0000, the way most software does. Noon is the other trap. Noon is **1200**, never 0000, and midnight in 12-hour writing is 12:00 AM while noon is 12:00 PM. That pair is exactly the ambiguity the 24-hour clock exists to remove: 0000 and 1200 cannot be confused with each other, and neither needs a suffix to be read correctly. ## Why timesheets and invoices use 24-hour time A 12-hour time is only unambiguous while its AM or PM survives. On a timesheet it often does not: a start typed as 6:30 and read back a week later is a twelve-hour question, and on a billable line a twelve-hour question is an argument with a client. Written 0630 or 1830, there is nothing left to interpret. Sorting improves too: 24-hour times order correctly as plain text, where 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM do not. A shift that crosses midnight still needs its date to subtract correctly, in either system, which is the other half of the same problem. That is why the [free timesheet templates](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) use plain start and end columns, and why every entry BillNotch records carries a real dated start and end timestamp rather than a remembered one. Reconstructing yesterday from memory is where both the AM/PM slips and the missing hours come from; [automatic time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) removes the reconstruction step entirely. ## Turning 24-hour times into billable hours One more conversion sits between a pair of military times and an invoice. 1730 to 1945 is 2 hours 15 minutes, not 215 minutes, and an invoice line wants that as **2.25 hours**. That is the base-60 problem the [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) handles. Convert to the 24-hour clock to record a time; convert to decimal hours to bill it. ## Related tools - [Time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) , the hours between any two times, overnight included - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) , a week of clock times with breaks and overtime - [Work hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year) , work days, weeks and billable hours for a year - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) , turn 1h 45m into 1.75 for an invoice line - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) , hours and your rate into what the time is worth ## The clock you never have to read BillNotch records your working day in the background with exact start and end timestamps, sums each project, and carries the total straight onto a PDF invoice. Nothing to type, no AM/PM to remember, no shift that has to be reconstructed on Friday afternoon. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No times are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator Free calculator · No signup # Utilization rate calculator > A free utilization rate calculator: turn billable and worked hours into your billable share, effective rate, and the yearly cost of untracked time. This utilization rate calculator turns your billable and worked hours into the share you actually bill and the effective rate you keep once the leak is counted. Drag the slider to watch what the untracked hours cost across a year, then let BillNotch catch them automatically. Your numbers Hourly rate $ Billable hours / week Untracked hours / week 5 hrs Quick calls, scope creep, context-switching: the work that never makes the invoice. Weeks worked / year I run a team Multiply the leak across freelancers. You're leaking $20,400 / year in billable work that never lands on an invoice, ~18% of what you bill. Per week $425 Per month $1,700 Per year $20,400 Billable share (utilization) 85% Effective rate $72/hr 28 of 33 worked hours bill, so your $85/hr rate really pays $72/hr. [BillNotch catches this: start your 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) Passive tracking. No credit card. Cancel anytime. Shareable result Download the card and post your number. Misery loves an audience. ‖ BillNotch I'm leaking $20,400/year in unbilled work I never invoiced. Found my leak with BillNotch billnotch.com ## How to calculate your utilization rate Your utilization rate is billable hours divided by total hours worked, times 100. If you work 33 hours in a week and bill 28, that is 28 / 33, or 85%. The effective rate is your billed revenue divided by every hour worked, which is always lower than your nominal rate. ## The utilization rate formula utilization = billable hours / hours worked × 100 effective rate = billable revenue / hours worked example: 28 billable of 33 worked = 85% utilization example: 28 × $85 = $2,380, over 33 h = $72/hr effective ## What a good utilization rate is There is no universal target, and no study measures freelancers on their own. Most solo service work lands in a 60 to 75% band once sales, admin, and learning are counted, and a number near 100% almost always means the non-billable hours simply are not being tracked. The [billable utilization rate guide](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) has the firm benchmarks and the full method. ## Where the unbilled hours go The gap between worked and billed is rarely one big block. It is the quick call taken between two tasks, the two-minute fix, the context switch back into a client file, the scope creep nobody re-quoted. Each one feels too small to log, and reconstructed on invoice day they vanish entirely, always in the client’s favour. That is the difference between the rate you quote and the rate you keep. [Passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records the whole day so the leak is on the record before you invoice, and BillNotch’s Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that was tracked but never billed. A periodic [time audit](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-audit) on those records shows exactly where the hours went. ## Related tools - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) totals a week of entries and prices them at your rate. - [Consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) works the rate to charge from a target income and utilization. - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) turns 7:30 into 7.5 for billing math. - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) adds clock-in and clock-out times into a weekly total. ## Frequently asked questions What is a good utilization rate? There is no universal target, and no study measures freelancers on their own. Most solo service work sits in a 60 to 75% band once sales, admin, and learning are counted. A number near 100% usually means non-billable time is not being tracked, not that it does not exist. How do I calculate my utilization rate? Divide the hours you can bill by the total hours you worked, then multiply by 100. If you worked 33 hours and 28 were billable, that is 28 / 33, or 85%. Use hours actually worked, not a nominal 40-hour week, so the number reflects the real day. What is the difference between utilization rate and effective rate? Utilization is the share of your hours that are billable. Your effective rate is billable revenue divided by every hour worked, billable and non-billable. At $85 an hour with 85% utilization, the effective rate is about $72, because the unpaid hours still take real time. Why is my utilization lower than I expected? Because the non-billable hours are easy to undercount and the billable ones are easy to forget. Admin, sales, invoicing, and email rarely get logged, and short client tasks slip past on busy days. Tracking the whole day, not just billable time, is the only way to get an honest number. How do I improve my utilization rate? Raise it by capturing every billable minute and cutting or batching the biggest non-billable buckets. Automate invoicing and status updates, qualify leads faster, and reconcile tracked time before you invoice so nothing billable leaks. Improving utilization lifts income without a single rate conversation. Everything runs in your browser. No numbers are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Time Duration Calculator # Time duration calculator > Free time duration calculator: hours, minutes and decimal hours between two times or two dates. Handles overnight spans. No signup, runs in your browser. Enter a start and an end time to get the duration in hours and minutes, in decimal hours and in total minutes. Overnight spans are counted properly (10:00 PM to 6:00 AM is 8 hours) and adding dates measures a span that runs across several days. It calculates as you type, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no signup. Span Start time Start date (optional) End time End date (optional) Leave the dates empty for a single shift. An end time earlier in the day than the start is then read as the next morning. For a span across more than one day, fill both dates. One date on its own leaves nothing to measure between. Duration 8 h 30 m \= 8.50 h 510 minutes in total ## The formula same day: duration = end − start example: 17:30 − 9:00 = 8 h 30 m = 8.50 h over midnight: duration = (end + 24 h) − start example: (6:00 + 24 h) − 22:00 = 8 h 00 m = 8.00 h across dates: duration = (whole days between × 24 h) + end − start ## Common shift spans, already worked out These are the spans people look up most often. They are unpaid-break-free: subtract the break yourself, or use the [timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) which takes breaks off each day for you. Duration of common shift spans in hours and minutes and in decimal hours | Span | Duration | Decimal hours | | --- | --- | --- | | 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM | 8 h 00 m | 8.00 | | 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM | 8 h 30 m | 8.50 | | 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM | 9 h 00 m | 9.00 | | 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM | 8 h 00 m | 8.00 | | 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM | 8 h 30 m | 8.50 | | 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM | 8 h 00 m | 8.00 | | 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM | 8 h 00 m | 8.00 | | 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM | 8 h 00 m | 8.00 | | 11:30 PM to 8:00 AM | 8 h 30 m | 8.50 | Overnight rows are counted across midnight: 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM is eight hours. ## How many hours is 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM? Eight and a half hours: **8 h 30 m**, or 8.50 in decimal hours. Both times fall on the same day, so it is a plain subtraction: 17:30 minus 9:00. The minutes are the part people get wrong. 17:30 − 9:00 is 8 hours and 30 minutes, which is 8.5 hours, not 8.30 hours. Minutes are sixtieths, not hundredths. If half an hour of that was an unpaid lunch, the paid duration is 8 h 00 m. A duration calculator measures the span; whether the whole span is paid or billable is a separate decision, and it is the one that decides what goes on the invoice. ## How many hours is 10 PM to 6 AM? Eight hours. Subtracting straight across gives 6:00 − 22:00 = −16 hours, which is the classic overnight mistake. The end time belongs to the next day, so add 24 hours to it first: (6:00 + 24 h) − 22:00 = 8 h 00 m. The calculator above does this automatically whenever the end time is earlier in the day than the start, so a night shift needs no special handling. ## How do you calculate a duration across two dates? Count the whole days between the dates, multiply by 24 hours, then add the difference between the two clock times. A job that starts at 08:00 on 3 March and finishes at 12:15 on 5 March spans two whole days (48 hours) plus 4 h 15 m between 08:00 and 12:15. That is **52 h 15 m**, or 52.25 hours, or 3,135 minutes. Fill both date fields above and it is worked out for you. One thing worth knowing: the days are counted on the calendar, not on the clock. A span that crosses a daylight-saving change is still counted as whole calendar days, which is how payroll and timesheets treat it too. ## Which unit should you actually use? Keep minutes underneath and convert at the end. Hours and minutes are readable but base-60, so they are painful to add: a column of 1:20, 0:35 and 2:50 does not sum without carrying. Decimal hours multiply cleanly against a rate but hide the original figure. Total minutes are exact and never round. The safe habit is to hold every entry in whole minutes, add them up, and convert once, at the line that goes on the invoice. Converting is one division: [hours to decimal hours](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) divides the minutes by 60. What that decimal is worth at your rate is what the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) answers. ## Durations are what a billable entry is made of Every line on an hourly invoice is a duration with a name on it. The arithmetic on this page is the easy half. The hard half is remembering the spans: the twenty minutes on a client call before the meeting officially started, the file you reopened after dinner, the fix you shipped on a Sunday. Those spans are real work and they are the ones that never make it onto a timesheet, because writing them down means interrupting them. That is the gap this calculator cannot close, and it is worth being straight about: no amount of clock arithmetic recovers a span nobody wrote down. ## Related tools - [Military time converter](https://billnotch.com/military-time-converter) , 24-hour and standard time, both directions - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) , a week of clock times with breaks and overtime - [Work hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year) , work days, weeks and billable hours for a year - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) , turn 1h 45m into 1.75 for an invoice line - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) , hours and your rate into what the time is worth ## The spans you forget are the ones that cost you BillNotch records your working day in the background: start and end times captured as they happen, grouped per project, already summed. You review what it found instead of reconstructing yesterday from memory, and the total is invoice-ready when you are. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No times are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Timecard Calculator # Timecard calculator with breaks and overtime > Free weekly timecard calculator: clock in and out, deduct unpaid breaks, get daily and weekly hours plus overtime pay at time and a half. No signup. Enter clock-in and clock-out times for each day, take off unpaid breaks, and get daily totals, a weekly total in hours and minutes and in decimal hours, and the pay that follows: regular hours, overtime hours and time and a half priced separately. It calculates as you type, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no signup. The week Monday 8 h 00 m Monday Clock in Monday Clock out Monday Unpaid break (min) Tuesday 8 h 00 m Tuesday Clock in Tuesday Clock out Tuesday Unpaid break (min) Wednesday 8 h 00 m Wednesday Clock in Wednesday Clock out Wednesday Unpaid break (min) Thursday 8 h 00 m Thursday Clock in Thursday Clock out Thursday Unpaid break (min) Friday 8 h 00 m Friday Clock in Friday Clock out Friday Unpaid break (min) Saturday \- Saturday Clock in Saturday Clock out Saturday Unpaid break (min) Sunday \- Sunday Clock in Sunday Clock out Sunday Unpaid break (min) Week total 40 h 00 m \= 40.00 h 2,400 paid minutes, breaks already deducted Pay Hourly rate $ Overtime after h / wk Overtime rate × Regular pay $800.00 40.00 h at $20.00/h Overtime pay $0.00 0.00 h at $30.00/h Gross pay $800.00 Before tax and deductions Overtime past 40 hours a week at 1.5× is the United States federal default under the FLSA. It is not universal: California and a few other states add daily overtime, some roles are exempt, and other countries set their own rules. Change the threshold and the multiplier above to match the rule you are actually paid under. This is a calculator, not legal or payroll advice. Pay is worked out from whole minutes and rounded to the nearest cent. ## The overtime formula day total = clock out − clock in − unpaid break week total = the sum of the seven day totals regular = min(week total, overtime threshold) overtime = week total − regular time and a half = hourly rate × 1.5 gross pay = (regular × rate) + (overtime × rate × 1.5) example: 45 h at $20 → (40 × 20) + (5 × 30) = $800 + $150 = $950 ## What is a timecard? A timecard is the record of when someone started work, when they stopped, and what came off in between. One row per day, a clock-in, a clock-out, any unpaid break, and a total. Add the seven days together and you have the week that payroll gets paid from and that an hourly invoice is built out of. It has one job: to be the agreed record of hours. That is why the arithmetic matters more than it looks. A timecard that is five minutes out every day is a little over two hours a month, and it is always the same person who absorbs it. ## What is time and a half? Time and a half is an hourly rate multiplied by 1.5, paid on hours that qualify as overtime. At $20 an hour, time and a half is **$30 an hour**. The name is literal: you are paid the hour, plus half the hour again. Under the US Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees are owed at least time and a half for every hour past 40 in a workweek. It is a weekly test, not a daily one. A twelve-hour Tuesday does not create overtime by itself if the week still lands under 40. Some states go further, some roles are exempt, and other countries work differently, so treat 40 and 1.5× as the default rather than the rule. ## How do you calculate time and a half? Three steps, and the first one is where the mistakes happen. 1. Total the week from the paid minutes: clock-out minus clock-in, minus unpaid breaks. Say it comes to 45 hours. 2. Split it at the threshold. The first 40 hours are regular, the remaining 5 are overtime. 3. Price each part. Regular: 40 × $20 = $800. Overtime: 5 × $30 = $150, because $20 × 1.5 is $30. Gross pay is **$950**. The common error is multiplying the whole week by 1.5. Only the hours past the threshold earn the premium; the first 40 stay at the plain rate. The other one is rounding hours to the nearest quarter before the split, which quietly moves hours across the 40-hour line. Total the minutes first, split second, round last. ## Do unpaid breaks come off the total? An unpaid meal break does, and it is entered per day above so it comes off before anything else is worked out. Under federal rules a genuine meal break of about 30 minutes or more, where the person is actually relieved of duty, can be unpaid. Short rest breaks (roughly 5 to 20 minutes) are generally counted as paid time and should not be deducted at all. The test is whether the person is free of the work, not whether they left the building. Eating at a desk while still answering the phone is not an unpaid break, and deducting it is the most common way a timecard ends up short. ## Reading the result The weekly total is given in hours and minutes and in decimal hours because the two are used in different places. Payroll and invoices want the decimal: 8 h 30 m is 8.5 hours, never 8.30. If you need that conversion on its own, the [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) does it in both directions, and the [time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) handles a single span, including one that runs past midnight. Want a blank week to fill in instead? The [timesheet templates](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) are free CSV files with the columns already set up. ## Where a timecard stops working A timecard is only as good as the memory that fills it. Filled in at the end of the week, it is a reconstruction: the day gets rounded to the nearest half hour, the twenty minutes on a call before lunch is gone, and the evening spent fixing something is remembered as an hour when it was closer to two. The arithmetic on this page is exact. The inputs usually are not, and that is the part no calculator can fix. If the week is being reconstructed from memory more often than not, the fix is to stop reconstructing it. An [automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records the start and end times as they happen, so the timecard is already filled when you go to check it. ## Related tools - [Military time converter](https://billnotch.com/military-time-converter) , 24-hour and standard time, both directions - [Time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) , the hours between any two times, overnight included - [Work hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year) , work days, weeks and billable hours for a year - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) , turn 1h 45m into 1.75 for an invoice line - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) , hours and your rate into what the time is worth - [Billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) , billed hours per minute at 6, 10, 15 or 30 minute rounding ## A timecard that fills itself in BillNotch records your working day in the background and groups it per project, so the week is already totalled when you sit down to check it. You review what it found, correct anything it got wrong, and send the invoice from the same total. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No hours or pay figures are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Timesheet templates # Free timesheet template, four CSV downloads > Four free timesheet templates in plain CSV: freelance hourly, weekly, biweekly and consultant. Columns explained, no signup, opens in any spreadsheet. Pick the timesheet template that matches how you report hours, download it, open it in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice or Google Sheets. No signup, no email, no macros. They are CSV rather than XLSX on purpose: a CSV opens everywhere, survives being emailed to a client, and carries no formulas you have to trust, which also means the Amount column is yours to fill or to make a formula out of. All four share the same core columns: date, client, project, description, hours, a billable flag, rate and amount, so a row moved between them still makes sense, and any of them can be pasted into the same invoice. ## Which timesheet template do you need? ### Freelance hourly timesheet One row per stretch of work, with start and end times. Date · Client · Project · Task / Description · Start · End · Hours · Billable (Y/N) · Rate (USD) · Amount (USD) The default for hourly freelance work. Start and End make each row auditable when a client queries a line, Hours is what your invoice sums, and the Billable flag keeps admin on the sheet without it reaching the bill. Amount is Hours × Rate, so one formula fills the column. [Download CSV](https://billnotch.com/freelance-timesheet-template.csv) ### Weekly timesheet Seven dated rows for one week, Monday to Sunday. Week Starting · Date · Day · Client · Project · Task / Description · Hours · Billable (Y/N) · Rate (USD) · Amount (USD) The dates and weekday names are already filled in, which is the point: an empty row for Thursday is a visible gap rather than a day you forgot existed. Duplicate the sheet each week and change Week Starting. Use this one if you report hours weekly or work to a weekly cap. [Download CSV](https://billnotch.com/weekly-timesheet-template.csv) ### Biweekly timesheet Fourteen dated rows for a two-week pay period. Pay Period · Date · Day · Client · Project · Task / Description · Hours · Billable (Y/N) · Rate (USD) · Amount (USD) Same shape as the weekly sheet across a full pay period, so the total you hand over matches the period a contractor invoice or a payroll run is cut on. The Pay Period column repeats on every row, which keeps the sheet sortable when several periods end up in one file. [Download CSV](https://billnotch.com/biweekly-timesheet-template.csv) ### Consultant timesheet Per client, per engagement, per phase. Date · Client · Engagement · Project · Phase · Task / Description · Hours · Billable (Y/N) · Rate (USD) · Amount (USD) For consulting work where one client runs several engagements at different rates. Engagement holds the contract or SOW reference, Phase splits discovery from delivery, and Rate varies by row rather than by person. Filter on Engagement and you have the backup for a single statement of work. [Download CSV](https://billnotch.com/consultant-timesheet-template.csv) ## What is a timesheet? A timesheet is a record of the hours a person worked, broken down by day and usually by client, project or task. It exists to turn time into money: payroll runs on it, hourly invoices are built from it, and it is the evidence when a client asks what a line on the bill actually covers. Every timesheet carries the same core: a date, what was worked on, and how long it took. Past that the columns follow the money: a client and project so hours can be split across bills, a billable flag so unpaid admin stays visible without reaching the invoice, and a rate and amount so the sheet totals to a figure you can send. If your hours are written as 7:45 rather than 7.75, the [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) converts the column before it is multiplied by a rate. A timecard is the narrower relative. It records clock-in and clock-out times for attendance and payroll, when someone was at work. A timesheet records what the time went on, which is what billing needs. Plenty of hourly workers fill in both, and outside payroll software the two words get used interchangeably. If clock times are what you actually have, the [timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) turns a week of them into daily and weekly totals, breaks deducted and overtime split out. ## How to fill one in without losing hours A timesheet template is only as good as the moment you write in it. The hours that go missing are never the four-hour block you spent on the main task; they are the twenty minutes on a client email, the call that ran long, the fix you shipped between two other things. Fill the row when the work ends, not on invoice day. Reconstructing a week from memory reliably undercounts it, and [the research on time tracking](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics) puts a number on the shortfall: the average lawyer records 2.9 billable hours in an 8-hour day, and collects $910 of every $1,000 billed. Two habits make the sheets pay for themselves. Keep non-billable work on the sheet with the flag set to N, so you can see what the business costs you rather than pretending it is free. And write descriptions a client could read without a translation: “homepage wireframes” settles a query, “design” starts one. [What a freelance timesheet needs](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-timesheet) covers the reasoning behind each column. ## What a template cannot do for you Worth being straight about, since we sell the alternative. A spreadsheet does not know you started working. It will not notice that you spent forty minutes in a client’s repo this morning, it will not remind you at six that Wednesday is blank, and it cannot tell you which of last month’s rows never made it onto an invoice. Every one of those is your memory doing a job software could do. It also stops at the total. Turning the billable column into a document a client can pay means retyping it somewhere else, and the retyping is where the transcription errors live. A timesheet template is the right tool when your week is simple, your clients are few, and you would rather own the file than the subscription. Past that, the manual approach quietly costs more than it saves. If that is the wall you have hit, [the automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records the working day without a timer to start, and [freelance invoicing software](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) explains how those hours become a PDF invoice without a second document. ## Or stop filling the sheet in BillNotch records which application and window you worked in, sorts it into your projects, and adds up the billable total for you. Fourteen days, no card. The templates stay free either way. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Billable Hours Calculator # Billable hours calculator > Free billable hours calculator: enter hours and rate for revenue, apply 6 or 15 minute billing increments, and see your effective rate and utilization. This billable hours calculator turns your entries and hourly rate into billable revenue, applies a 6 or 15 minute billing increment, and shows your effective rate and utilization. Add a row per task, everything runs in your browser, no signup. ## Billable hours calculator Default rate $ Enter each task’s time as decimal (2.5), h:mm (2:30) or a range (9:00-11:30). Leave a row’s rate blank to use the default. - Task Time Rate ($/h) 6.50 h raw · 6.50 h billed $585.00 - Task Time Rate ($/h) 0.75 h raw · 0.75 h billed $67.50 - Task Time Rate ($/h) 1.25 h raw · 1.25 h billed $112.50 Billable hours 8.50 h 8.50 h before rounding Blended rate $90.00/h Billable revenue $765.00 Billing increment Pick 6, 10, 15 or 30 minutes to see what rounding adds to this set of entries. Utilization and effective rate Hours worked this week (billable + non-billable) Everything the week actually took: admin, sales and email included. Monthly revenue target (optional) $ Utilization 21% 8.5 of 40 h Effective rate $19.13/h revenue / all hours Billable hours / week needed 20.51 h to hit $8,000.00/mo At your blended rate $90.00/h revenue / billable hours ## How to calculate billable hours To calculate billable hours, total the time you spent on work a client agreed to pay for and multiply by your hourly rate. Ten billable hours at $80 is $800. For legal work, round each entry to the nearest 6 minutes (0.1 hour) first, and subtract non-billable time to find your real effective rate. billable value = billable hours × hourly rate example: 6.5 + 0.75 + 1.25 = 8.5 h, then 8.5 × $90 = $765 utilization = billable hours / hours worked effective rate = revenue / hours worked ## Billing increment chart: 6-minute and 15-minute rounding Round each entry up to the next block, then sum the rounded entries. The tenths column is the 6-minute rule (1 to 6 minutes is 0.1, 7 to 12 is 0.2), the common legal convention. The quarter column is the 15-minute rule. This is a professional convention, not a law, so put the increment you use in your contract. [Download the chart as PNG](https://billnotch.com/charts/billing-increment-chart.png) | Min | Tenths | Quarters | | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 2 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 3 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 4 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 5 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 6 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 7 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 8 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 9 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 10 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 11 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 12 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 13 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 14 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 15 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 16 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 17 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 18 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 19 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 20 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 21 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 22 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 23 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 24 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 25 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 26 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 27 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 28 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 29 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 30 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | Min | Tenths | Quarters | | --- | --- | --- | | 31 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 32 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 33 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 34 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 35 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 36 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 37 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 38 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 39 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 40 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 41 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 42 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 43 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 44 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 45 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 46 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 47 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 48 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 49 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 50 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 51 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 52 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 53 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 54 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 55 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 56 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 57 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 58 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 59 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 60 | 1.00 | 1.00 | ## Billable vs non-billable hours Billable hours are the ones a client pays for: project work, calls, in-scope revisions. Non-billable hours keep the business running but reach no invoice: admin, sales, invoicing, learning. Both are real work, and the ratio between them is what your utilization measures. [Billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) covers where the line usually falls and the grey areas to settle up front. ## Utilization and effective hourly rate Utilization is billable hours divided by hours worked, and your effective rate is total revenue divided by all hours worked. They are the reason a $90 quoted rate can pay like $55: the non-billable time is unpaid but still real. Track both monthly, because a rate rise means nothing if utilization is quietly falling. [Billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) has the full method and the sources, and the [utilization rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) turns your billable and worked hours into the share and the effective rate in one step. ## Where billable hours go missing This calculator can only price the hours you remembered to enter. The ones that leak are the short, scattered tasks: the quick call, the two-minute fix, the context switch back into a client file. Reconstructed on invoice day, a week always comes up short, and every omission is in the client’s favour. [The revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) models the gap across a year, and [how to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) covers the habits that close it. ## Billable hours that record themselves BillNotch records the active window as you work and sorts it into client projects, so the billable total is a sum the software keeps for you, not a figure you rebuild from memory. The scattered entries you would have forgotten are already on the sheet when it is time to invoice, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that was tracked but never billed. It totals your time in decimal hours and leaves the rounding to you at invoice time. There is no built-in billing increment, so you apply your own 6-minute or 15-minute rule the way your contract sets it. ## Related tools - [Hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) turns 7:30 into 7.5 so the total drops onto an invoice. - [Consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) works out the hourly rate to charge from your income goal. - [Revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) models the billable hours that go missing across a year. - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) adds clock-in and clock-out times into a weekly total. ## Cite or embed this calculator Free to reference or embed on your own site. A link back to this page is all we ask. Plain-text citation `Billable Hours Calculator, BillNotch, billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator` Embed on your site

Billable Hours Calculator by BillNotch
Billing increment chart: minutes to tenths and quarter hours

The reference chart is free to reuse on your own site, with a link back to this page. ## Frequently asked questions What does 0.1 mean in billing? In tenth-of-an-hour billing, 0.1 equals 6 minutes, because 6 divided by 60 is 0.1. Lawyers and accountants log time in these blocks: 0.1 is 6 minutes, 0.2 is 12 minutes, 0.5 is 30 minutes, and 1.0 is a full hour. Each task is rounded up to the next tenth before it is billed. What is the difference between billable and non-billable hours? Billable hours are time a client pays for, such as project work, calls, and deliverables. Non-billable hours are time you cannot charge, such as admin, invoicing, marketing, and training. Both are real work, but only billable hours generate revenue, so tracking the split shows your true earning efficiency. What is a good billable utilization rate? Utilization is the share of your working hours that are billable. In common practice many freelancers bill roughly half to two-thirds of their time, with the rest going to admin, sales, and learning. A higher rate means more of your day earns money, but very high rates can signal overwork or under-pricing. What is an effective hourly rate? Your effective rate is total revenue divided by all hours worked, billable and non-billable. If you earn $800 from 10 billable hours but worked 16 hours in total, your effective rate is 800 divided by 16, or $50, not $80. It reveals how much unpaid time is quietly lowering your real earnings. How many billable hours a week is realistic? A common planning range is 20 to 30 billable hours out of a 40-hour week, a 50 to 75% utilization rate. No study measures freelancers specifically, but professional-services firms measured by SPI Research averaged 66.4% billable utilization in 2025. Treat it as a sanity check, not a target you must hit. How do I round time to billing increments? Pick an increment and round each entry to it. For 6-minute (0.1 hour) billing, a 4-minute call rounds up to 0.1 and a 7-minute call to 0.2. For 15-minute (0.25 hour) billing, work rounds to the next quarter hour. Rounding is applied per entry, then the rounded entries are summed. Can billable hours apply to salaried or full-time jobs? Yes. Salaried staff at agencies and firms often track billable hours so the employer can bill clients and measure utilization, even though the person is paid a fixed salary. The billable total drives client invoices and profitability, while the employee pay stays the same regardless of the hours logged. How much is 20 minutes in billable time? 20 minutes is 0.33 billable hours, because 20 divided by 60 is 0.333. Under six-minute (tenth) billing it rounds to 0.3 or the next tenth per your rule; under 15-minute billing it rounds to 0.25 or 0.5. Multiply the decimal by your hourly rate to price the entry. How many hours a week is 3,000 billable hours? Spread over a 50-week year, 3,000 billable hours is 60 billable hours a week, because 3,000 divided by 50 is 60. That is well above the 20 to 30 billable hours a week most freelancers manage, so a 3,000-hour year usually assumes long weeks or very high utilization. How many hours per day are 2000 billable hours? Across about 250 working days a year, 2,000 billable hours is 8 billable hours a day, because 2,000 divided by 250 is 8. Since billable time is only part of a working day, hitting 8 billed hours daily means a longer total day once admin and non-billable work are added. ## Stop pricing only the hours you remember This calculator prices the hours you remembered to enter. BillNotch captures the ones you would have forgotten, totals them in decimal, and leaves the rounding to you, so invoice day starts from a complete record instead of your memory. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No numbers are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Billing Increment Chart # Billing increment chart > Free, printable billing increment chart for 6, 10, 15 and 30 minute rounding. Look up billed hours per minute in tenths or quarter hours, or download it. A billing increment chart shows how each minute rounds to the unit you bill in: tenths of an hour for 6 minute increments, quarter hours for 15 minutes, or 10 and 30 minute blocks. Tenths keep short entries visible; quarters are simpler to read. Use the selector below, then print or download the chart. ## Billing increment chart Pick an increment and a rounding rule, then read down to the minute you worked. The selected column is highlighted in the decimal hours chart below, and the same rule drives the single duration converter. Everything runs in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere. Increment Rounding Convert one duration Minutes worked min Type the raw minutes; the billed value uses the rule you picked above. 0.70 h 37 min bills as 42 min (7 × 6 min blocks), rounded up [Download printable PNG chart](https://billnotch.com/charts/billing-increment-chart.png) Billed hours for every minute from 1 to 60 under 6, 10, 15 and 30 minute increments, rounded up to the next block. Change the rule with the selector above. The 6 minute column is highlighted. | Minutes | Decimal | 6 min0.1 h | 10 min | 15 min0.25 h | 30 min0.5 h | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | 0.02 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 2 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 3 | 0.05 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 4 | 0.07 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 5 | 0.08 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 6 | 0.10 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 7 | 0.12 | 0.20 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 8 | 0.13 | 0.20 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 9 | 0.15 | 0.20 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 10 | 0.17 | 0.20 | 0.17 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 11 | 0.18 | 0.20 | 0.33 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 12 | 0.20 | 0.20 | 0.33 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 13 | 0.22 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 14 | 0.23 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 15 | 0.25 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.25 | 0.50 | | 16 | 0.27 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 17 | 0.28 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 18 | 0.30 | 0.30 | 0.33 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 19 | 0.32 | 0.40 | 0.33 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 20 | 0.33 | 0.40 | 0.33 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 21 | 0.35 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 22 | 0.37 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 23 | 0.38 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 24 | 0.40 | 0.40 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 25 | 0.42 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 26 | 0.43 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 27 | 0.45 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 28 | 0.47 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 29 | 0.48 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 30 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 31 | 0.52 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 32 | 0.53 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 33 | 0.55 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 34 | 0.57 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 35 | 0.58 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 36 | 0.60 | 0.60 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 37 | 0.62 | 0.70 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 38 | 0.63 | 0.70 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 39 | 0.65 | 0.70 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 40 | 0.67 | 0.70 | 0.67 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 41 | 0.68 | 0.70 | 0.83 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 42 | 0.70 | 0.70 | 0.83 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 43 | 0.72 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 44 | 0.73 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 45 | 0.75 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 0.75 | 1.00 | | 46 | 0.77 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 47 | 0.78 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 48 | 0.80 | 0.80 | 0.83 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 49 | 0.82 | 0.90 | 0.83 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 50 | 0.83 | 0.90 | 0.83 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 51 | 0.85 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 52 | 0.87 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 53 | 0.88 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 54 | 0.90 | 0.90 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 55 | 0.92 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 56 | 0.93 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 57 | 0.95 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 58 | 0.97 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 59 | 0.98 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 60 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | ## How the 6 minute increment works The 6 minute increment bills in tenths of an hour, because 6 minutes is 0.1 of an hour. A task rounds up to the next tenth, so 1 to 6 minutes is 0.1, 7 to 12 minutes is 0.2, and so on to 1.0 at a full hour. A 6 minute increments chart is the fastest way to read these off: log the minutes, look up the tenth. Lawyers and accountants use tenths because they multiply cleanly by a rate and keep a two minute call from disappearing. ## 15 minute increments and quarter hours The 15 minute increment bills in quarter hours, so every entry lands on 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 or 1.0. It is the common freelance and agency choice because the values are easy to read on a billable hours chart and easy to explain to a client. The tradeoff is coarser rounding: a 16 minute task rounded up to 30 minutes is 0.5 hours, which is worth checking before you send it. ## Round up or round to nearest Round to the nearest increment unless your contract says otherwise. Always rounding up quietly adds time to every line, and professional conduct rules generally expect a bill to reflect the time actually spent, so rounding that inflates a bill is a real risk. Always rounding down is a discount you never meant to give, repeated on every entry. The honest version is simple: pick one rule, name the increment in your engagement letter, and keep the exact minutes underneath so any line can be reconciled. The selector above lets you compare the same duration under round up and nearest, which is the quickest way to see what a rule costs across a day. ## Billing increment chart for lawyers, consultants and agencies Who uses which rule tends to follow the profession. Lawyers and accountants bill in tenths, so the 6 minute column is theirs; see how it plays out for [lawyers who bill in tenths](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers). Independent [consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) and [agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies) more often bill in quarter hours, where the 15 minute column applies. Whatever the unit, a billing increment chart keeps every line on the same grid so a timesheet reconciles. ## Minutes to hundredths for payroll Payroll does not round to billing blocks; it converts minutes to hundredths of an hour. The Decimal column is exactly that: a minutes to hundredths chart, where 39 minutes is 0.65 and 21 minutes is 0.35. It is the same decimal hours chart a timesheet uses, just read without a rounding rule. The [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) converts a single value either way if you need one number rather than the whole table. ## What BillNotch does with increments BillNotch records the time you work to the second and keeps every total in decimal hours, so nothing is rounded behind your back. It does not apply a billing increment for you. Instead the raw minutes stay underneath, and you choose the rule when you review an entry, the way this chart lets you compare rules before you commit. That keeps the invoice honest: the client sees decimal hours that trace back to real work, and you apply tenths or quarters at review if your agreement calls for them. To see what a set of rounded entries adds up to at a rate, run them through the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator). ## Related tools - [Hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) converts hours and minutes to decimal hours and back. - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) turns a table of entries into billable revenue at your rate. - [Consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) sets an hourly and day rate from a target income. - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) adds a week of clock times with breaks and overtime. ## Frequently asked questions What is a billing increment chart? A billing increment chart lists each minute from 1 to 60 and the hours you would bill for it under a rounding rule. The common rules are 6 minute increments (tenths of an hour), 10 minute blocks, 15 minute increments (quarter hours) and 30 minute half hours. You read down to the minute you worked and copy across the billed figure. What is 0.1 of an hour? 0.1 of an hour is 6 minutes, because 0.1 times 60 is 6. This is why time billed in tenths uses a 6 minute increment: each block is one tenth of an hour. 0.2 is 12 minutes, 0.25 is 15 minutes, and 0.5 is 30 minutes. Is 6 minute billing required? No. Billing in 6 minute increments is a convention, not a legal requirement. Many law firms and accountants use it because tenths of an hour multiply cleanly by a rate and keep short tasks from vanishing. You can bill in 10, 15 or 30 minute blocks, or to the exact minute, as long as your engagement letter says which. How do I round 7 minutes? Under a 6 minute increment rounded up, 7 minutes becomes 12 minutes, which is 0.2 hours, because it crosses into the second tenth. Rounded to the nearest 6 minutes, 7 is closer to 6 than to 12, so it becomes 6 minutes, or 0.1 hours. The selector above shows both, so you can see the difference before you pick a rule. What is the difference between 6 minute and 15 minute increments? A 6 minute increment bills in tenths of an hour, so the smallest unit you can charge is 0.1 hours. A 15 minute increment bills in quarter hours, so the smallest unit is 0.25 hours. Tenths keep short entries visible and are common in law and accounting; quarter hours are simpler to read and common for freelancers and agencies. Should I round up or to the nearest increment? Round to the nearest increment unless your contract says otherwise. Always rounding up adds a little to every line, which reads as padding if the client was not told, and always rounding down is a discount you never meant to give. Whichever you choose, state it in writing and keep the exact minutes underneath so any line can be checked. ## Stop rounding by hand BillNotch records the hours as you work and keeps them in decimal, so the increment is a choice you make at review, not arithmetic you repeat on every invoice. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No numbers are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Consulting rate calculator # Consulting rate calculator > Free consulting rate calculator. Enter target income, weeks off, billable hours and overhead to get the hourly, day and retainer rate you should charge. This free consulting rate calculator turns a target income into the hourly, day and retainer rate you should charge. Enter your income goal, time off, billable hours and overhead, or switch to salary mode to convert a salary into a contract rate. It updates as you type, and nothing is sent anywhere. Your targets Target take-home income / year $ What you want to keep after business costs, before your own income tax. Weeks off / year Public holidays days Working hours / week Billable utilization 60% The share of working hours a client actually pays for. Most consultants land between 50 and 70 percent once admin, sales and downtime come off. Annual overhead $ Software, insurance, hardware, accounting, memberships: the yearly cost of running the business. Tax / benefits % Estimate. Check your own rate. Profit margin % Hours / day What to charge $157 / hr recommended hourly, from 1104 h billable a year at 60% utilization. Break-even hourly $114 covers income and overhead only Day rate $1,255 at 8 h a day Weekly rate $3,766 billable hours in a week Monthly retainer $14,438 full-utilization equivalent Recommended rate by utilization 50% billable $188 60% billable $157 70% billable $135 The same income target needs a higher rate when fewer of your hours are billable. This is the number people guess, and guess high. ## How the consulting rate calculator works billable hours / year = working hours per week × working weeks × utilization break-even hourly = (target income + annual overhead) ÷ billable hours recommended hourly = break-even × (1 + tax buffer) × (1 + profit margin) day rate = recommended hourly × hours per day example: $120,000 target, 1,000 billable hours → $120 break-even, then buffers on top ## How to calculate a consulting rate Add your target annual income and yearly business expenses, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year. If you want $120,000 and can bill 1,000 hours, your break-even rate is $120 an hour. Add a buffer for taxes and a margin for profit, then round to a confident number. The break-even is the floor: the rate that only covers your income and overhead, with nothing left for tax or profit. Charging the break-even means working for a wash the moment a tax bill or a slow month arrives. The recommended rate above marks the break-even up by a tax buffer and a profit margin you set, so the number you quote is the number that keeps the business running. ## Salary to contract rate conversion Going independent, the instinct is to divide a salary by 2,080 hours and quote that. It is always too low. A salary hid the cost of the benefits and the employer payroll taxes your employer paid on top, and it assumed you were paid 52 weeks a year with none of the gaps contract work has. The conversion mode above loads the salary with those costs, then divides by the hours you actually expect to bill, which is the honest equivalent. It is also the answer to the reverse question, an hourly rate to salary calculator run backwards: a contract rate has to out-earn the salary it replaces, not match it, because you now carry what the employer used to. ## Utilization: the number everyone gets wrong Utilization is the share of your working hours that a client actually pays for. It is the single input that moves the rate most, and almost everyone sets it too high. A 40-hour week is not 40 billable hours: sales calls, proposals, admin, invoicing, bookkeeping and learning all take real time that no client is billed for. Plan from somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent band unless you have measured otherwise. [Billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) has the full working and the sources, and [how many billable hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) turns a utilization figure into the annual hours this calculator divides by. Set it from a real measurement, not a hope, or every rate below it is wrong. ## Hourly, day rate or retainer The calculator gives you all three because they suit different work. An hourly rate fits short or open-ended tasks where the scope is not fixed. A day rate fits work booked in whole days, and it stops you nickel-and-diming half hours. A monthly retainer fits an ongoing relationship: the client buys a block of your time each month, and you get predictable income instead of chasing new work every few weeks. Whatever you quote, it should trace back to the same annual number. The retainer above is simply your recommended rate times the billable hours a month, so a discount on the retainer is a discount on the rate, made visible. ## Know your real utilization before you set the rate Every rate on this page hangs off one number you have to measure rather than guess: how much of your week is actually billable. BillNotch records your working day in the background and sorts it into client projects, so the billable share is a figure you read off, not one you hope is right. After a month you can compare the utilization you assumed here against the utilization you actually hit, and reset the rate on real data. [BillNotch for consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) covers how passive capture, per-project rates and the revenue leak finder fit an independent practice. ## Related tools - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) shows what your billable hours are worth once you have a rate. - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) turns 7:30 into 7.5 for billing math. - [Invoice generator](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) puts the rate onto a downloadable invoice PDF. - [Revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) models the billable time that never gets billed. ## Cite or embed this calculator Free to reference or embed on your own site. A link back to this page is all we ask. Plain-text citation `Consulting Rate Calculator, BillNotch, billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator` Embed on your site

Consulting Rate Calculator by BillNotch

This tool is free to link to from anywhere, with attribution to BillNotch. ## Consulting rate calculator FAQ How do I calculate my consulting rate? Add your target annual income and yearly business expenses, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year. If you want $100,000, have $20,000 in expenses, and bill 1,000 hours, your rate is 120,000 divided by 1,000, which is $120 an hour. Add a buffer for taxes and profit. How many hours a year can a consultant bill? Fewer than a full-time schedule suggests. After vacation, holidays, sick days, admin, sales, and marketing, many consultants bill only about half to two-thirds of their working hours. If you work 2,000 hours but bill 60 percent, that is 1,200 billable hours, and your rate must cover the whole year from those hours. How do I convert a salary to a contract rate? Start with the salary, add the costs an employer used to cover, health insurance, retirement, and payroll taxes, then divide by the hours you expect to bill in a year. Contract work has gaps, so use billable weeks and a realistic utilization, not a full 2,080 hours. The result is your target contract rate. Should my consulting rate include taxes? Yes. As a contractor you pay self-employment tax and income tax yourself, and no employer withholds them. Build these into the rate rather than treating your quote as take-home pay. A common approach is to calculate a break-even rate, then add a margin that covers taxes and leaves real profit. What is the difference between hourly and project pricing? Hourly pricing charges for time spent, so income depends on hours logged. Project or value-based pricing charges a fixed fee for an outcome, regardless of hours. Project pricing rewards efficiency and can raise earnings, but it needs a clear scope. Many consultants start hourly and move to project fees as they gain confidence. What overhead should I factor into my rate? Include every cost of running the business: software, hardware, insurance, healthcare, office or home-office rent, memberships, training, accounting and legal fees, marketing, and supplies. Total these for the year and add them to your income goal before dividing by billable hours, so your rate actually covers your costs. Why do consultants undercharge? Many set rates by copying a peer or converting a salary straight to an hourly number, without accounting for non-billable time, overhead, and taxes. That leaves the rate too low to sustain the business. Calculating from a target income, real billable hours, and full costs usually produces a higher, more accurate rate. How much to charge for consulting per hour? Work it out from your own numbers rather than a market figure. Add your target annual income and yearly expenses, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year, and add a margin for taxes and profit. A consultant wanting $120,000 over 1,000 billable hours needs about $120 an hour before that margin. ## Set the rate on measured hours, not a guess BillNotch tracks your working day, sorts it into projects, and shows the billable share you actually hit, so the next rate you quote is built on real utilization instead of an optimistic one. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No figures are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Hours to Decimal Calculator # Hours to decimal calculator > Convert hours and minutes to decimal hours instantly, or decimal back to h:mm. Free 1 to 60 minute chart plus 6 and 15 minute billing rounding. This hours to decimal calculator converts hours and minutes to decimal hours, and decimal hours back to hours and minutes, the instant you type. Both sides stay in sync, everything runs in your browser, and there is no signup. ## Hours to decimal calculator Time to decimal Hours Minutes Or paste a time (7:45) Have it as h:mm? Type it here and the hours and minutes fill in. Decimal to time Decimal hours h Start here to go the other way: 8.35 comes back as 8 h 21 m. Result 7 h 45 m \= 7.75 h 7.7500 to four places, 465 minutes in total Round to a billing increment No rounding applied. Pick 6, 15 or 30 minutes to see the raw and rounded value side by side. What it pays Hourly rate $ 7.75 h × $90.00 = $697.50 ## How to convert hours to decimal (the formula) To convert time to decimal hours, divide the minutes by 60 and add the whole hours. 8 hours 30 minutes is 8 plus 30 divided by 60, which is 8.5. To go back, keep the whole number as the hours and multiply the decimal part by 60: 6.4 hours is 6 hours and 24 minutes. decimal hours = hours + (minutes / 60) example: 7 h 45 m becomes 7 + (45 / 60) = 7.75 minutes = (decimal hours minus whole hours) × 60 example: 8.35 h becomes 0.35 × 60 = 21 min, so 8:21 ### How to convert hours to decimals? Divide the minutes by 60 and add the whole hours. 8 hours 30 minutes is 8 plus 30 divided by 60, which is 8.5. If you have seconds too, divide them by 3600 and add that. The result is the whole span written as one decimal number, ready to multiply by a rate. ### What is 0.10 of an hour? 0.10 of an hour is 6 minutes, because 0.10 times 60 is 6. This is why professional time is billed in tenths: each 6-minute block is one tenth of an hour. 0.2 is 12 minutes, 0.3 is 18 minutes, and so on up to 1.0 at a full 60 minutes. ### What is 2.5 hours in decimal? 2.5 hours is already in decimal form. It means 2 hours and 30 minutes, because 0.5 of an hour is 30 minutes (0.5 times 60). Written on a clock it is 2:30. Written as decimal hours for payroll or an invoice it stays 2.5, and you multiply it by the rate as it is. ### What is .65 of an hour? 0.65 of an hour is 39 minutes, because 0.65 times 60 is 39. To go the other way, divide the minutes by 60: 39 divided by 60 is 0.65. So a timesheet entry of 39 minutes is recorded as 0.65 decimal hours, and 0.65 hours reads back as 39 minutes. ## Minutes to decimal chart (1 to 60) Every minute from 1 to 60 as a decimal hour, so the values that come up most on a timesheet are a lookup rather than a sum. Decimal hours equals minutes divided by 60. The last two columns round each minute up to the next 6-minute (0.1 h) and 15-minute (0.25 h) billing increment, the way a legal or consulting bill does. [Download the chart as PNG](https://billnotch.com/charts/minutes-to-decimal.png) | Min | Decimal | 6 min | 15 min | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | 0.02 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 2 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 3 | 0.05 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 4 | 0.07 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 5 | 0.08 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 6 | 0.10 | 0.10 | 0.25 | | 7 | 0.12 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 8 | 0.13 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 9 | 0.15 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 10 | 0.17 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 11 | 0.18 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 12 | 0.20 | 0.20 | 0.25 | | 13 | 0.22 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 14 | 0.23 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 15 | 0.25 | 0.30 | 0.25 | | 16 | 0.27 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 17 | 0.28 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 18 | 0.30 | 0.30 | 0.50 | | 19 | 0.32 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 20 | 0.33 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 21 | 0.35 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 22 | 0.37 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 23 | 0.38 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 24 | 0.40 | 0.40 | 0.50 | | 25 | 0.42 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 26 | 0.43 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 27 | 0.45 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 28 | 0.47 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 29 | 0.48 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | 30 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.50 | | Min | Decimal | 6 min | 15 min | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 31 | 0.52 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 32 | 0.53 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 33 | 0.55 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 34 | 0.57 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 35 | 0.58 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 36 | 0.60 | 0.60 | 0.75 | | 37 | 0.62 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 38 | 0.63 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 39 | 0.65 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 40 | 0.67 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 41 | 0.68 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 42 | 0.70 | 0.70 | 0.75 | | 43 | 0.72 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 44 | 0.73 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 45 | 0.75 | 0.80 | 0.75 | | 46 | 0.77 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 47 | 0.78 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 48 | 0.80 | 0.80 | 1.00 | | 49 | 0.82 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 50 | 0.83 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 51 | 0.85 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 52 | 0.87 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 53 | 0.88 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 54 | 0.90 | 0.90 | 1.00 | | 55 | 0.92 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 56 | 0.93 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 57 | 0.95 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 58 | 0.97 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 59 | 0.98 | 1.00 | 1.00 | | 60 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | Quarter hours (15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes) are set in bold, because most rounded entries land on them. ## Billing increments: 6-minute and 15-minute rounding Two conventions cover almost every hourly bill. The 6-minute increment bills in tenths of an hour (0.1 h), so a task rounds up to the next 6-minute block. Lawyers and accountants use it because it keeps a two-minute call from disappearing and keeps every line on the same unit. The 15-minute increment bills in quarter hours (0.25 h) and is the common freelance and agency choice. Round to the nearest unit unless your contract says otherwise. Always rounding up is a small premium you can charge only if the client agreed to it in writing, and always rounding down is a discount you never meant to give, repeated on every line. Say which increment you use in the agreement, then run the totals through the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) to see what the rounding adds across a week, or read how it plays out for [lawyers who bill in tenths](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers). ## Decimal hours for payroll and invoices Once your hours are decimal, pay is one multiplication: decimal hours times the rate. 10 hours 45 minutes is 10.75, so at $90 an hour that is 10.75 times 90, or $967.50. A spreadsheet adds a column of decimals cleanly, where a column of h:mm times has to be carried by hand. If what you have is clock-in and clock-out times, the [timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) turns a week of them into daily and weekly totals first, then the decimal drops straight into the pay math above. ## Track hours without converting anything You only convert minutes because a timer produced them. BillNotch records the active window as you work, sorts it into client projects, and keeps a running total in decimal hours, so the number that lands on the invoice is the number you worked. No stopwatch, no timesheet arithmetic, no rounding you have to remember. It also keeps the raw minutes underneath, so you can apply your own increment at invoice time and still show a client how a line was reached. The conversion this page does by hand is the one step it removes for good. ## Related tools - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) adds up a week of clock times with breaks and overtime. - [Time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) finds the hours between any two times, overnight included. - [Military time converter](https://billnotch.com/military-time-converter) converts 24-hour and standard time, both directions. - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) shows what your billable hours are worth once you have a rate. - [Work hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year) counts the working hours left in a year after time off. ## Cite or embed this calculator Free to reference or embed on your own site. A link back to this page is all we ask. Plain-text citation `Hours to Decimal Calculator, BillNotch, billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal` Embed on your site

Hours to Decimal Calculator by BillNotch
Minutes to decimal hours chart, 1 to 60

The reference chart is free to reuse on your own site, with a link back to this page. ## Frequently asked questions What is 15 minutes in decimal hours? 15 minutes is 0.25 decimal hours, because 15 divided by 60 is 0.25. The quarter-hour marks are the ones worth memorizing: 15 minutes is 0.25, 30 minutes is 0.5, and 45 minutes is 0.75. Most 15-minute billing rounds land on exactly these three values. What is 45 minutes in decimal hours? 45 minutes is 0.75 decimal hours, because 45 divided by 60 is 0.75. It is three quarters of an hour, so 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75, not 7.45. Writing 7.45 when you mean 7:45 is the most common way an hour gets mispriced on an invoice. How do you convert decimal hours back to hours and minutes? Keep the whole number as the hours and multiply the decimal part by 60 to get the minutes. For 6.25 hours, 0.25 times 60 is 15, so 6.25 is 6 hours 15 minutes. For 8.35 hours, 0.35 times 60 is 21, giving 8 hours 21 minutes. The decimal-to-time side of the tool does this for you. Why do payroll and invoices use decimal hours? Decimal hours multiply cleanly by a rate, and clock time does not. You cannot multiply 7:45 by $90 without converting it first, and you cannot add a column of times like 1:20 and 2:50 without carrying minutes by hand. 7.75 times $90 is one multiplication, which is why every payroll run and hourly invoice uses decimals. What is a 6-minute billing increment? A 6-minute increment bills time in tenths of an hour, because 6 minutes is 0.1 of an hour. Lawyers and accountants log work this way: a task is rounded up to the next tenth, so 4 minutes becomes 0.1 and 7 minutes becomes 0.2. It keeps short entries from vanishing and keeps every line on the same unit. Should I round each entry or only the invoice total? Round each entry to your billing increment, then add the rounded entries. Rounding only the final total hides how each line was reached, and a client who queries one line cannot see your working. Round per entry, keep the raw minutes underneath, and state the increment in your contract so the rounding is never a surprise. Is 7.45 the same as 7 hours 45 minutes? No. 7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 decimal hours, because 45 divided by 60 is 0.75. 7.45 would be 7 hours and 27 minutes, since 0.45 times 60 is 27. Mixing the two is a real billing error: at $90 an hour the gap between 7.45 and 7.75 is $27 on a single entry. What is 0.20 of an hour? 0.20 of an hour is 12 minutes, because 0.20 times 60 is 12. It is the second six-minute billing block, so time logged in tenths shows 12 minutes as 0.2 hours. That sits just under 0.25 of an hour, which is 15 minutes, one of the quarter-hour marks worth memorizing. What is .41 of an hour? 0.41 of an hour is about 25 minutes, because 0.41 times 60 is 24.6, which rounds to 25. To turn any decimal back into minutes, multiply the decimal part by 60. So 0.41 hours is 24.6 minutes, just past the 0.4 mark, which is 24 minutes in tenth-of-an-hour billing. ## Stop converting by hand You only convert minutes because a timer produced them. BillNotch records the hours as you work and totals them in decimal on the invoice, so the conversion is already done when it is time to bill. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No numbers are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Invoice generator # Free hourly and contractor invoice template > Free hourly and contractor invoice template you fill in the browser: line items, hours times rate, tax, payment terms, then download the PDF. No signup. This free hourly invoice template and contractor invoice template fills in from your browser: add line items, multiply hours by your rate, apply tax, then download a clean PDF. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no signup. From Business name Address 123 Main Street City, ST 00000 Email Phone (optional) Tax / VAT ID (optional) Add it if your client needs it for 1099 or VAT reporting. Bill to Client name Address 456 Client Ave City, ST 00000 Client email Invoice details Invoice number Currency USD, US dollar EUR, euro GBP, pound CAD, Canadian dollar AUD, Australian dollar Issue date Payment terms Due on receipt Net 7 Net 14 Net 30 Custom date Due date Set an issue date Line items Hours accept a decimal (7.5) or an h:mm time (7:30). Amount is hours times rate. Line 1 description Line 1 hours Line 1 rate Line 2 description Line 2 hours Line 2 rate Discount, tax and notes Discount % $ Tax label Rate Notes / payment instructions Payment by bank transfer. Thank you for your business. Late fee note (optional) A short line stating any late penalty, if you have agreed one. Your Business LLC 123 Main Street City, ST 00000 you@yourbusiness.com INVOICE INV-0001 Bill to Client Name 456 Client Ave City, ST 00000 billing@clientcompany.com Issued \- Due \- Terms Net 14 | Description | Hours | Rate | Amount | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Homepage design | 8 | $85.00 | $680.00 | | Client meeting | 1.5 | $85.00 | $127.50 | Subtotal $807.50 Total due $807.50 Payment by bank transfer. Thank you for your business. This template lives in your browser and exports a PDF. There is no Word or Excel file to open, and your draft is saved on this device only. ## What an hourly invoice template must include An hourly invoice bills a client for time at an agreed rate. List each task, the hours, and the hourly rate, then multiply for each line. Add your details and the client’s, a unique number, the issue and due dates, tax if it applies, and how to pay. That is the whole document. The checklist - Your legal name and contact details, and a logo if you have one - The client name and contact details - A unique invoice number that you never reuse - The issue date and a due date - Line items: task, hours, rate and the line amount - Subtotal, any tax, any discount, and the total due - Payment terms and accepted methods - A late fee, only if you have agreed one - Your tax or VAT ID, where the client or jurisdiction requires it ## How the total is worked out line amount = hours worked × hourly rate subtotal = the sum of every line amount discount = subtotal × percent, or a fixed amount tax = (subtotal − discount) × tax rate total due = subtotal − discount + tax example: 4 h at $50 + 2 h at $60 = $200 + $120 = $320 subtotal ## Contractor invoice template vs employee timesheet An invoice is a bill from one business to another. An independent contractor sends an invoice; an employee submits a timesheet and gets paid through payroll. The difference is not cosmetic. An invoice sets your own terms, carries your own number series, and shows tax the way your work is taxed, which is why a contractor uses one and an employee does not. For a freelance-specific layout, the [freelance invoice template](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template) sets out every line a client expects. In the US, contractors are usually paid as 1099 workers, so no tax is withheld and you account for it yourself. That is why the tax ID field matters and why the invoice, not a pay stub, is the record. This is general information, not tax or legal advice: rules vary by country and by state, so check your own. If you also keep a running record of hours, the [timesheet templates](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) feed straight into the line items here. ## Payment terms that get you paid Terms say when payment is due and how. Due on receipt, Net 7, Net 14 and Net 30 are the common choices, and the number is the days you allow. Shorter terms collect faster; Net 14 is a sensible default for freelance work and new clients. Put an explicit calendar due date on the invoice, not just the words, so there is no argument about when “soon” is. State the accepted methods and any late fee in the notes. [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) decodes Net 15, 2/10 Net 30 and the rest, and [the invoice follow-up email](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-follow-up-email) covers what to send when a due date passes and the money has not arrived. ## Filling an hourly invoice from tracked time The arithmetic on this page is the easy half. The hard half is the hours themselves. Filled in on invoice day from memory, the total is always low, because the short interruptions are the first thing you forget and they add up. The twenty-minute call, the fix shipped between two other things, the file reopened after dinner: real billable work that never reaches a timer never reaches this invoice. Keep the record as the work happens rather than reconstructing it later, and the line items fill themselves. [Freelance invoicing software](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) covers the move from a template you retype to a bill that starts from your own hours. ## Invoices that start from your hours BillNotch records your working day in the background and sorts it into client projects, so the billable total is already added up when you go to bill. You review what it found, correct anything it got wrong, and the hours become an invoice PDF with per-project line items and per-line rates, no retyping. From there the invoice can go out with a Stripe payment link so the client pays by card, and the same invoice can push to QuickBooks or Xero if you keep your books there. One currency per invoice, a due date and terms, tax, notes and a theme: the fields on this page, filled from time you already tracked. ## Related tools - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) turns 7:30 into 7.5 before it hits a rate. - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) shows what your billable hours are worth a year. - [Consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) sets the hourly rate you put on each line. - [Freelance invoicing software](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) bills from tracked time with no retyping. ## Cite or embed this template Free to reference or embed on your own site. A link back to this page is all we ask. Plain-text citation `Invoice Generator, BillNotch, billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator` Embed on your site

Invoice Generator by BillNotch

This tool is free to link to from anywhere, with attribution to BillNotch. ## Frequently asked questions What should an hourly or contractor invoice include? Include your business name and contact details, the client details, a unique invoice number, the issue and due dates, line items showing task, hours, and rate, the subtotal and total due, any tax, and payment terms. Add your tax ID if the client needs it for 1099 or VAT reporting. How do I calculate the total on an hourly invoice? For each line, multiply the hours worked by the hourly rate to get the line total. Add all line totals for the subtotal, apply any tax or discount, and the result is the amount due. Four hours at $50 plus two hours at $60 is $200 plus $120, which is $320. What format should I send an invoice in? Send the final invoice as a PDF, because it looks consistent and cannot be edited by accident. This generator exports one. Keep an editable copy of your figures too, which is what the CSV line-item download is for, so you can reuse the numbers on the next job. Do I need an invoice number? Yes. Every invoice should carry a unique invoice number so you and your client can track payments and keep clean records for tax time. Numbers are usually sequential, such as 0001, 0002, 0003, or coded by client and date. Never reuse a number on two invoices. Should I attach a timesheet to an hourly invoice? It is optional but often helpful. A timesheet or line-by-line breakdown of tasks and hours reassures the client that the total is accurate and reduces payment disputes. Many freelancers list each task with its hours on the invoice itself, so a separate timesheet is not always necessary. What payment terms should a contractor use? State when payment is due and how. Common terms are due on receipt, Net 7, Net 14, or Net 30, meaning payment is expected within that many days. Include accepted payment methods and any late fee. Clear terms set expectations and help you get paid on time. Do I charge tax on a contractor invoice? It depends on your location and services. Some contractors must add sales tax, VAT, or GST, while others do not. If tax applies, show it as a separate line so the client sees the rate and amount. When unsure, check local rules or ask an accountant. How to create an invoice for a contractor? Start from a template, add your business and client details and a unique invoice number, then list each task with its hours and rate. Multiply hours by rate for each line, sum the lines, add any tax, and set payment terms. Export it as a PDF and send it. This generator fills the totals from your tracked hours. Where can I get a free invoice template? This page is a free hourly and contractor invoice template you fill in and export, with no signup. It calculates each line from hours and rate, totals the invoice, and downloads a PDF plus a CSV of the line items, so you can reuse the figures on your next job. Can I download a free invoice template in Word? This generator exports a finished PDF and a CSV of the line items, not a Word file. PDF keeps the layout fixed so it cannot be edited by accident, and the CSV lets you reuse the numbers in a spreadsheet. If you specifically need a Word document, a word-processor template is the better route. ## Stop retyping the hours onto the invoice BillNotch tracks the work as it happens, groups it per project, and turns the billable total into a PDF invoice with a payment link. The hours you would have forgotten are already on the sheet. [Start the 14-day trial](https://app.billnotch.com/register) No credit card. Cancel anytime. Everything runs in your browser. No invoice details are sent anywhere, no account required. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Work hours in a year # How many work hours are in a year? > A work year is 2,080 hours, a work month about 173, a work week 40. Full 2026 and 2027 tables: weekdays, working days, holidays and billable hours. A standard full-time year is **2,080 hours**: 52 weeks at 40 hours, which works out to about **173** hours a month. Against the real calendar the year lands slightly lower: 2026 and 2027 each hold **261** weekdays, and subtracting the 11 US federal holidays leaves **250** working days, or **2,000 hours**. What you can actually bill is lower still. The three numbers do different jobs. 2,080 is the payroll convention, the divisor that turns a salary into an hourly equivalent. 2,000 is the calendar answer for a specific year. And the number a freelancer needs, the one that decides whether a rate covers the bills, is neither of them. The week and month figures, and the 2026 month-by-month table, are further down. On this page - [How many hours are in a year?](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#hours-in-a-year) - [Where 2,080 comes from](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#the-2080-figure) - [How many hours are in a week?](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#hours-in-a-week) - [How many work hours in a month?](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#hours-in-a-month) - [Work days and weekdays in a year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#work-days-in-a-year) - [How many work weeks in a year?](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#work-weeks) - [Part-time hours per year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#part-time) - [Billable hours per year](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#billable-hours) - [The assumptions behind the numbers](https://billnotch.com/work-hours-in-a-year#assumptions) ## How many hours are in a year? A calendar year holds **8,760** hours (365 days at 24) and a leap year holds 8,784. A full-time _work_ year is 2,080 of them, which is under a quarter. The rest of this page is about the second number, because it is the one that prices work. ## Where does the 2,080-hour figure come from? 52 weeks × 40 hours = 2,080. It is arithmetic on a nominal year rather than a real one, and it drifts in two directions at once. A year is 52.14 weeks, not 52, so 52 × 5 gives 260 weekdays where 2026 actually has 261. In the other direction, 2,080 assumes you work every weekday of the year, holidays included. The two errors do not cancel. Counted properly, 2026 has **2,088** weekday hours before holidays and **2,000** after them. Use 2,080 where the convention is the point; use the calendar tables below when you need to know how many days are actually available. For a single day rather than a year, the [time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) gives the hours between a start and a finish, overnight shifts included. ## How many hours are in a week? A week holds **168** hours, and no calendar changes that: seven days at 24 hours each. A standard full-time **work** week is **40** of those hours, five 8-hour days, which is under a quarter of the week. The distinction matters more than it sounds, because the two numbers get quoted for each other. 168 is what you have; 40 is what a full-time job claims of it; and if lunch is half an hour and unpaid, the paid figure is 37.5. Where a week is a set of clock-in and clock-out times rather than a flat 40, the [timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) totals it with the unpaid breaks already taken off, and splits anything past the overtime threshold. Hours in a week, by what the span covers | Span | Hours | What it counts | | --- | --- | --- | | Calendar week | 168 | Seven days at 24 hours: the literal answer | | Monday to Friday | 120 | Five days at 24 hours, the weekend removed | | Full-time work week | 40 | Five 8-hour days, the payroll standard | | Work week after unpaid lunch | 37.5 | 7.5 paid hours a day, where lunch is half an hour and unpaid | Multiplying up: 40 hours a week is 2,080 a year on the nominal 52-week basis, which is where the standard year figure comes from in the first place. ## How many work hours are in a month? There is no fixed answer, because months are not the same length. The working average is **173.33** hours (2,080 ÷ 12) on the payroll convention, or **166.67** (2,000 ÷ 12) against 2026’s actual working days. Individual months in 2026 run from **152** hours to **176**, a spread of three working days. Use 173.33 for a salary-to-hourly conversion or a retainer that has to mean the same thing every month. Use the table below for capacity planning, because February and November really do hold less time than March. Working days and hours in each month of 2026, after US federal holidays | Month | Weekdays | Holidays | Working days | Hours at 8 h | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | January | 22 | 2 | 20 | 160 | | February | 20 | 1 | 19 | 152 | | March | 22 | 0 | 22 | 176 | | April | 22 | 0 | 22 | 176 | | May | 21 | 1 | 20 | 160 | | June | 22 | 1 | 21 | 168 | | July | 23 | 1 | 22 | 176 | | August | 21 | 0 | 21 | 168 | | September | 22 | 1 | 21 | 168 | | October | 22 | 1 | 21 | 168 | | November | 21 | 2 | 19 | 152 | | December | 23 | 1 | 22 | 176 | | **2026 total** | **261** | **11** | **250** | **2,000** | Holidays are counted in the month they are observed, so Independence Day 2026 sits in July on Friday 3 July. February and November hold 19 working days, the shortest; March, April, July and December hold 22. ## How many work days and weekdays are in a year? A year holds **260** to **262** weekdays depending on the day it starts and whether it is a leap year, which leaves 249 to 251 working days once the 11 US federal holidays come out. For 2026 and 2027 the answer is 261 weekdays and **250** working days in both. Both years land on the same figure by coincidence rather than by rule. 2026 and 2027 are both 365-day years with 261 weekdays, and in both years all 11 federal holidays occupy a distinct weekday once weekend dates shift. Working days and hours in 2026 and 2027, derived from calendar weekdays minus US federal holidays | Step | 2026 | 2027 | | --- | --- | --- | | Calendar days | 365 | 365 | | Saturdays and Sundays | 104 | 104 | | Weekdays | 261 | 261 | | Federal holidays observed on a weekday | 11 | 11 | | Working days | 250 | 250 | | Hours at 8 h/day | 2,000 | 2,000 | Federal holidays falling at a weekend are observed on the nearest weekday. In 2026 that is Independence Day (Sat 4 July, observed Fri 3 July). In 2027 it is Juneteenth (Sat 19 June → Fri 18 June), Independence Day (Sun 4 July → Mon 5 July) and Christmas (Sat 25 December → Fri 24 December). No two observances collide in either year, so the full 11 are subtracted. Juneteenth has been federal since 2021, which is what makes 11 the current count. If your contract or your country observes a different set, change that one row: the rest follows. ## How many work weeks are in a year? A year is **52.14** weeks (365 ÷ 7) which is why 52 is a convention rather than a count. In working weeks the answer is **50**: 250 working days at five days a week. Take the 15 days of holiday and 5 sick days used further down and it falls to 46. That last figure is the useful one for a freelancer quoting delivery dates. Promising work across “52 weeks” of capacity overstates the year by roughly a month and a half. ## How many work hours in a year at part-time? Below 40 hours a week the same two bases apply. The 52-week column is the nominal figure, useful for comparing offers and setting a salary equivalent. The 250-day column is 2026 and 2027 after federal holidays, which is the one to plan capacity against. Annual hours by weekly schedule, on a nominal 52-week year and on 250 working days | Hours per week | Per working day | 52 weeks | 250 working days | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 40 hours | 8 | 2,080 | 2,000 | | 35 hours | 7 | 1,820 | 1,750 | | 30 hours | 6 | 1,560 | 1,500 | | 25 hours | 5 | 1,300 | 1,250 | | 20 hours | 4 | 1,040 | 1,000 | ## How many hours can a freelancer actually bill in a year? This is the number that decides a rate, and it is the one most freelancers overestimate. Two subtractions stand between 2,000 and a billable total: the days you are not at the desk, and the hours at the desk that no client pays for. Start from the calendar and take the time off out. The 15 and 5 below are planning assumptions, not measurements. Set them to whatever you actually take, and the arithmetic holds. Working hours available to a freelancer in 2026 after holidays and time off | Deduction | Hours | Running total | | --- | --- | --- | | 261 weekdays at 8 hours | | 2,088 | | 11 federal holidays | −88 | 2,000 | | 15 days of holiday or PTO | −120 | 1,880 | | 5 sick or personal days | −40 | 1,840 | 1,840 hours is time at the desk, not time on an invoice. The second subtraction is [billable utilization](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate): the share of desk hours a client pays for, once sales, admin, proposals and your own bookkeeping have taken their cut. No study measures freelancers specifically. The closest hard number comes from SPI Research, whose 2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark put average billable utilization at 68.9% for 2024, against a 75% optimal threshold. The [time tracking statistics](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics) page collects the rest of the measured figures, law firms and A&E firms included. Billable hours per year at different utilization rates, from a base of 1,840 desk hours | Utilization | Billable hours | What it usually means | | --- | --- | --- | | 50% | 920 | Heavy sales, admin or unbilled rework | | 60% | 1,104 | Common for a solo freelancer running the business | | 68.9% | 1,268 | SPI Research average across services firms, 2024 | | 75% | 1,380 | SPI Research optimal threshold | Applied to 1,840 desk hours. Firm benchmarks are a reference point for solo work, not a measured freelance average. So the honest planning range for a full-time freelance year is roughly **1,100 to 1,400** billable hours, not 2,080. The gap is worth about 700 hours, and pricing against the wrong end of it is the most expensive arithmetic mistake in freelancing: [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) works a target income back through this number. If you would rather put your own figures in, the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) does the same arithmetic with your rate and your time off. ## What assumptions are these numbers built on? Stated plainly, so you can disagree with any of them and redo the row: an 8-hour day and a Monday-to-Friday week; the 11 US federal holidays, observed on the nearest weekday when the date falls at a weekend; no state, regional or company holidays; 15 days of PTO and 5 sick days in the freelancer ladder. Weekday counts and observance dates were computed from the 2026 and 2027 calendars rather than quoted. One edge case worth naming: 1 January 2028 falls on a Saturday, so federal employees observe it on Friday 31 December 2027. That day sits inside the 2027 calendar but belongs to the 2028 schedule, and it is not among the 11 counted above. ## Related tools - [Military time converter](https://billnotch.com/military-time-converter) , 24-hour and standard time, both directions - [Time duration calculator](https://billnotch.com/time-duration-calculator) , the hours between any two times, overnight included - [Timecard calculator](https://billnotch.com/timecard-calculator) , a week of clock times with breaks and overtime - [Hours to decimal converter](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) , turn 1h 45m into 1.75 for an invoice line - [Billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) , hours and your rate into what the time is worth ## The gap between 1,840 and what you invoice Utilization is only a number you can act on once you measure it, and reconstructing a week from memory always flatters it. BillNotch records the working day automatically and shows which of those hours reached an invoice. [How the automatic capture works](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) covers the loop end to end. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) --- # Guides ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog # Time tracking, billable hours, and getting paid. > Guides on time tracking, billable hours, and invoicing for freelancers and small agencies, from the team building BillNotch. Practical guides for freelancers and small agencies who bill by the hour. 40 posts · latest September 5, 2026 - [![Best Memtime Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/memtime-alternatives.png) ## Best Memtime Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks Memtime captures automatically and offline, but never invoices and sorts nothing for you: five alternatives compared on what happens after capture. September 5, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives) - [![Invoice Follow-Up Email: 3 Templates That Get Paid](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/invoice-follow-up-email.png) ## Invoice Follow-Up Email: 3 Templates That Get Paid Three copy-paste invoice follow-up email templates: a day-3 nudge, a firm day-14 chase and a final notice, plus when to send each and late-fee norms. September 3, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-follow-up-email) - [![Project Profitability: How to Know If a Project Pays](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/project-profitability.png) ## Project Profitability: How to Know If a Project Pays Project profitability in one formula: revenue minus time cost minus expenses, plus effective hourly rate and why untracked hours hide real losses. September 1, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/project-profitability) - [![How to Do a Time Audit (The Freelancer Method)](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/time-audit.png) ## How to Do a Time Audit (The Freelancer Method) How to run a week-long time audit as a freelancer: the categories to use, what the data usually reveals, and how to turn it into rate decisions. August 27, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-audit) - [![Best TimeCamp Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/timecamp-alternatives.png) ## Best TimeCamp Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks TimeCamp is cheap and invoices, but slices features across four tiers and meters its AI by usage: five alternatives compared on cost predictability. August 25, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/timecamp-alternatives) - [![Scope Creep Examples: How to Spot, Bill and Stop It](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/scope-creep-billing.png) ## Scope Creep Examples: How to Spot, Bill and Stop It Five scope creep examples freelancers hit, the early signs, how to bill each one, and the change-order script that reprices work without a fight. August 20, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/scope-creep-billing) - [![Best Timely Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/timely-alternatives.png) ## Best Timely Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks Timely tracks automatically but skips Linux, has no free plan and adds seat costs fast: five honest alternatives compared on capture, invoicing and price. August 18, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/timely-alternatives) - [![How Many Billable Hours in a Year? The Real Math](https://billnotch.com/og/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year.png) ## How Many Billable Hours in a Year? The Real Math How many billable hours are in a year? Start at 2,080, subtract time off, apply your utilization rate: the realistic range is 1,100 to 1,500 hours. August 13, 2026 Read ](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) ## Archive 32 more - [Freelance Invoice Template (Free CSV Download) 2026-08-11 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template) - [Freelance Time Tracking: The Billing-First Guide 2026-08-06 · 12m](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-freelancers) - [Billable Hours Tracker: 6 Compared on 5 Criteria 2026-07-26 · 9m](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker) - [Time Tracking Statistics 2026: Which Ones Hold Up 2026-07-26 · 10m](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics) - [Freelance Hourly Rate: The Formula, Not the Average 2026-07-24 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) - [Invoice Payment Terms Explained: Net 30, Deposits & More 2026-07-22 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) - [How to Invoice as a Freelancer: A Step-by-Step Guide 2026-07-20 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) - [Developer Time Tracking: VS Code, WakaTime and Billing 2026-07-18 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-developers) - [Best Time Tracking Software for Linux (2026) 2026-07-16 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) - [Best Time Tracking Software for Consultants (2026) 2026-07-14 · 10m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-consultants) - [Best Time Tracking Software for Agencies (2026) 2026-07-12 · 9m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-agencies) - [Rize Alternatives in 2026: Tracking + Invoicing 2026-07-10 · 9m](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) - [Best Toggl Alternatives in 2026: 6 Honest Picks 2026-07-08 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives) - [Best Clockify Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks 2026-07-06 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026) - [Toggl vs Clockify (2026): Price, Free Plans, Linux 2026-07-04 · 9m](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) - [Clockify Free Plan Changes in 2026: What to Know 2026-06-29 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026) - [Time Tracking and Invoicing Software: The Rare Combo 2026-06-26 · 6m](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-with-invoicing) - [Best Harvest Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks 2026-06-26 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026) - [What Is a Revenue Leak? Find & Fix Unbilled Time 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) - [How to Track Billable Hours Accurately (No Timer) 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) - [How to Calculate Billable Hours: Formula & Examples 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) - [Utilization Rate Formula: Billable Benchmarks Explained 2026-06-14 · 6m](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) - [Billable vs Non-Billable Hours: What Actually Counts 2026-06-14 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) - [Automatic Time Tracking App: Time Tracking Without Timers 2026-06-14 · 8m](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers) - [How to Stop Losing Billable Hours: a Revenue Audit 2026-06-14 · 6m](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) - [Billable Hours Best Practices: 7 Rules That Pay Off 2026-06-14 · 6m](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-best-practices) - [Freelance Timesheet: How to Build One That Actually Pays You 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-timesheet) - [Automatic Time Tracking Software in 2026: Compared 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) - [Best Time Tracking App for Freelancers (With Invoicing) 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing) - [Freelance Billing Software: What to Look For Before You Buy 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software) - [PDF Invoice Generator for Freelancers: Automatic vs Manual 2026-06-14 · 7m](https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers) - [Harvest vs Toggl (2026): Pricing, Invoicing, Tracking 2026-06-14 · 9m](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Automatic Time Tracking Software in 2026: Compared # Automatic Time Tracking Software in 2026: Compared [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Automatic time tracking software** ranges from genuinely passive (your computer records what you worked on and AI sorts it into projects) to "automatic" in name only, where you still start a timer or approve every entry by hand. Before you pick a tool, the word that matters most is what _automatic_ actually means inside it. That distinction decides whether time tracking is something you do or something that just happens. This guide breaks the market into three honest categories, shows where the well-known tools land, and lists what to weigh so you choose once and stop thinking about it. ## What does "automatic" actually mean in a time tracker? Almost every tracker calls itself automatic. In practice they fall into three groups: **Passive + AI (set it and forget it).** The app runs in the background, captures the apps and documents you touch, and an AI assigns that activity to the right project and client. You review a draft, not a blank page. This is the closest thing to time tracking that requires no daily effort. BillNotch, Timely, and Rize work this way. **Review-based (semi-automatic).** The app records your activity, but nothing becomes a billable entry until you confirm it. You [skip the stopwatch](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers), yet you still curate a timeline most days. Clockify's auto tracker and Toggl Track's activity logging fit here: useful, but not hands-off. **Manual (timer-first).** You press start, you press stop. Harvest is the clearest example: there's no background capture, so accuracy depends entirely on remembering to hit the button. None of these is wrong. A manual timer is fine if you bill in long, deliberate blocks. But if your day is fragmented (fifteen tabs, three clients, constant context-switching) manual tracking quietly leaks hours, and review-based tracking just moves the chore from logging to approving. ## What to actually weigh Four things separate these tools in daily use: 1. **Capture**: does it record activity on its own, or wait for you? 2. **Categorization**: does AI sort activity into projects, or do you? 3. **Invoicing**: can you [bill straight from tracked time](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-with-invoicing), or do you export to another app? 4. **Platforms**: does it run on your OS? Linux support is where most tools quietly drop off. A tool can ace one and fail another. Timely captures and categorizes automatically and invoices natively, but skips Linux, and [the Linux shortlist](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) is shorter than the field looks. Rize captures beautifully and does no invoicing at all. Knowing which trade-off you're signing up for is the whole game. ## How the tools compare _Details below were checked September 5, 2026: check each vendor's own pricing page, since plans and platforms change: [Timely](https://www.timely.com/pricing/), [Rize](https://rize.io/pricing), [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing)._ | Tool | Capture | AI categorization | Invoicing | Platforms | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **BillNotch** | Passive (background) | Yes, into projects | Native PDF, built in | Windows, macOS, Linux | | **Timely** | Passive (AI draft) | Yes | Native, syncs with QuickBooks | Windows, macOS, web/mobile | | **Rize** | Passive (AI) | Yes | None, export to bill | macOS, Windows | | **Clockify** | Review-based auto tracker | No (approve entries) | Paid Standard plan and up | Windows, macOS, Linux | | **Toggl Track** | Activity logging you approve | No | Paid plans | Windows, macOS | | **Harvest** | Manual timer only | No | Built in on paid Teams plan | Windows, macOS | A few notes that don't fit a grid. Clockify keeps a permanently free tier, but invoicing isn't part of it. Harvest's free plan is capped at one seat and two projects, and it bills some usage as paid extras, so a "free" start can become a metered bill as you grow. Toggl offers a free tier and a 30-day trial but no Linux build. Memtime belongs in this table too: it captures passively and offline and runs on Linux, but it does no invoicing and starts at $18 per user, as [the Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) lays out. For a deeper look at the always-on model, see [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker). ## Picking the right category for you Match the tool to how you bill, not to a feature count. - **You forget to start timers.** Go passive. A background tracker plus AI categorization means the hours are already there when you sit down. You edit a draft instead of reconstructing a day. - **You bill in long, focused sessions and like control.** A manual timer like Harvest may be all you need, and the simplicity is a feature. - **You want capture but don't trust automatic categorization yet.** A review-based tool (Clockify, Toggl) is a reasonable middle ground. Just budget time for the daily approval pass. - **You're on Linux.** Your shortlist shrinks fast. Confirm the desktop build exists before anything else. - **Invoicing matters.** Decide whether you want to bill inside the tracker or export elsewhere. Rize, for instance, is excellent at tracking and does no invoicing at all: [the Rize alternatives comparison](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) works through what that costs you. One more factor for the privacy-conscious: passive trackers record what's on your screen, including [window titles](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker). The better ones let you control where that data lives. BillNotch can keep window titles on-device, so the capture that powers categorization never has to leave your machine, worth checking on any always-on tool you consider. Its [help pages](https://billnotch.com/help) cover how the desktop app connects to an account and what each install needs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you want the fully passive path with invoicing in the same app: capture, AI-sorted projects, native PDF invoices, plus a Revenue Leak Finder that surfaces unbilled time. That's the gap [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is built for, across Windows, macOS, and Linux with a 14-day trial. But the honest takeaway stands on its own: decide which kind of "automatic" you need first, and the shortlist writes itself. For a closer head-to-head, see [how BillNotch compares to Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). ## Frequently asked questions ### What does automatic time tracking actually mean? It varies by tool. Genuinely passive tracking runs in the background, records the apps and documents you touch, and sorts that activity into projects, so you review a draft instead of a blank page. Review-based tools record activity but need you to approve each entry. Manual timers still require you to press start and stop. ### Does automatic time tracking work on Linux? For some tools. Most automatic trackers ship Windows and macOS only, so Linux support is where the field thins. BillNotch and Clockify run natively on Linux, and Memtime captures passively on Linux but does no invoicing. If Linux is your machine, confirm the desktop build exists before comparing anything else. ### Which automatic time trackers can invoice? Fewer than the category name suggests. BillNotch and Timely both track automatically and produce native invoices. Rize captures automatically but has no invoicing at all. Clockify and Toggl invoice or export on paid plans but lean on review-based or manual capture. Decide whether you want to bill inside the tracker before you pick. ### Is passive time tracking the same as employee monitoring? No. Passive trackers built for personal billing record the active app and window title to reconstruct your own hours, and the better ones let window titles stay on your device. Employee monitoring adds screenshots, keystroke counts, and productivity scores for a manager to review. The signal can be similar; the intent and the data controls are not. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-with-invoicing [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Time Tracking and Invoicing Software: The Rare Combo # Time Tracking and Invoicing Software: The Rare Combo > Time tracking and invoicing software is a small category: most trackers do not bill and most billing tools want a manual timer. Why, and what to check. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 26, 2026 6 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Automatic time tracking with invoicing** means one tool does two jobs that usually live apart: it records your working hours in the background, [with no timer to start or stop](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers), and it turns those hours into a client invoice. Time tracking and invoicing software this complete is rarer than the plain category name suggests: most products do one side well and treat the other as an afterthought. The reason is lineage. Automatic trackers grew out of focus and productivity tools, built to show you where your day went. Invoicing trackers grew out of billing software, built to get hours onto a bill. Few products have bridged the two, which is why automatic time tracking with invoicing is a small category rather than a default feature. ## The two camps Time trackers tend to fall into one of two groups, and the split is clean enough to draw. The first group tracks **automatically**. Tools like Rize, Timely, RescueTime, and the open-source [ActivityWatch](https://activitywatch.net/) watch what you do and build a record of it without asking you to press start. They are good at capture. Most of them were not built to bill a client, so they stop at the report. You take the numbers somewhere else to turn them into money. See [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) for how that capture works, or [Rize alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) if that is the tool you are weighing. The second group **invoices**, but tracks manually. Harvest, Clockify, and Toggl Track can take tracked hours and produce a client-ready bill. The catch is the capture method: they lean on a timer you start and stop, or an activity log you review and approve. The billing is solid; the hours feeding it are only as complete as your memory. | Camp | Example tools | Strength | The gap | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Automatic, no invoicing | Rize, Timely, RescueTime, ActivityWatch | Passive capture, records your day for you | Generally not built to bill clients | | Invoicing, manual capture | Harvest, Clockify, Toggl Track | Client-ready invoices | Hours depend on a timer you start or a log you approve | A few specifics are worth keeping straight, because details move. **Toggl Track** records an activity log you review and approve rather than tracking fully automatically; it has no Linux desktop and no AI categorization, and invoicing sits on its paid plans. **Harvest** uses a manual timer, has no Linux build, and invoices on its paid Teams plan; after its 2025 acquisition by Bending Spoons it moved to usage-based fees. **Clockify** is manual with a free tier. **Rize**, **Timely**, and **RescueTime** track automatically but are generally not built to generate client invoices. Prices and plans here were checked September 5, 2026; confirm the current specifics on each vendor's own pricing page ([Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing)), since they shift. Why so few products cross the line is less a mystery than it looks. Each half is a real piece of engineering: passive capture needs per-platform window tracking and categorization; invoicing needs rates, tax handling, and a document generator. Building one well is enough work that most teams stop there and assume you will bolt the other half on with a second subscription. That assumption is the gap. ## Why the combination matters The value of putting both halves in one tool is the handoff between them. When capture and billing live in separate products, someone has to move the hours across: export a CSV, re-key totals, reconcile what was billable against what was not. That reconciliation is usually a monthly chore: open the tracker, open the invoicing app, and match one to the other by hand. It is the step where time goes missing and where small errors creep in, and it is the step nobody enjoys. Put them together and the workflow changes shape: - **Capture runs on its own.** Time records in the background, so the hours that forgotten timers usually drop (the short reply, the quick review, the file you opened for ten minutes) are already on the record. Here is [how active-window tracking works](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker). - **The invoice is built from the captured total.** The billable hours you already tracked add up into the bill directly. Nothing is retyped, so nothing is rounded down from memory. - **Unbilled time is visible.** Because one system holds both the tracked hours and the invoiced ones, it can show you billable time that was captured but never sent to a client: money you earned and did not ask for. None of this is magic. It is the absence of a manual step that two-tool setups force on you. But that missing step is exactly where billable hours leak. ## Do you actually need both in one tool? Not everyone does, and it's worth being honest about that before you switch. If you bill a flat monthly retainer and never itemize hours, invoicing barely touches your tracked time, and a good standalone tracker plus a simple invoice template is enough. The same is true if your accountant already generates the invoices from a system you feed once a month. Time tracking and invoicing software earns its place in one specific situation: you bill by the hour or by the deliverable, your invoices are itemized from the actual work, and the number of billable hours you can prove is the number you get paid for. There, every manual step between the tracker and the bill is a chance to round down, forget a session, or ship an invoice a week late. Collapsing the two tools into one removes the step where the hours leak. So match the tool to the failure. If forgotten hours and slow month-end billing are your problem, the combined category is built for you. If they are not, don't pay for an integration you won't use. ## What to look for in time tracking and invoicing software If you are weighing tools in this small category, five things decide whether one actually closes the loop. - **How time is captured.** Fully automatic (active-window tracking), review-based (it logs activity, you approve it), or a manual timer. Automatic capture leaks the least, because it does not depend on you remembering; a manual timer leaks the most. - **Billable handling.** You want billable rates to attach to projects and flow through to the total without sorting every entry by hand. Tagging each line manually defeats the point of automatic capture. - **Native PDF invoicing.** Some tools produce a finished invoice; others export a CSV and leave you to rebuild the document elsewhere. A native PDF is the difference between a click and an afternoon. - **Platform support.** Native trackers commonly ship Windows and macOS only. If you work on Linux, the shortlist gets short quickly, so check before you commit. - **Privacy.** Automatic capture means the tool sees your window titles. Ask where that data goes: can titles stay on your device, can you revoke a device's access, where are the servers, and is your data ever sold. The answers vary a lot. These are criteria, not a scoreboard. The right answer depends on which failure you are trying to fix. If your problem is forgotten timers, weight the capture method first. Billing features do not help if the hours are already missing. If your problem is that billing takes a whole evening, weight the invoicing side and the handoff. A tool can be strong on one axis and weak on the other, and the homepage will rarely tell you which. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is built for this specific overlap, and it is one of the few tools that sits in it rather than on one side. The desktop app (Windows, macOS, and Linux) records the active window automatically, with no timer to start. Keyword rules, plus optional AI, sort that activity into client projects; billable status is inherited per project, so you set it once rather than per entry. The billable total becomes a PDF invoice, or a CSV export when your accountant wants the raw figures. The piece that comes from holding both halves is the **Revenue Leak Finder**, which flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the gap a two-tool setup cannot see. On privacy, window titles can stay on your device, you connect each machine with an API key you can issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. Pricing is flat: Pro is $9/mo for one seat, Team is $12/seat/mo, with a 14-day free trial that does not ask for a card. BillNotch is not the only tool that tracks automatically and invoices, but the list is short, so it is worth [comparing against the closest alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) before you decide. ## Frequently asked questions ### Which time trackers invoice natively? In this category, Harvest, Clockify, and Toggl can turn tracked hours into a bill, though Clockify and Toggl lean on manual or review-based capture and Toggl exports rather than storing invoices. Among automatic trackers, Timely and BillNotch invoice natively. Most passive trackers, like Rize, RescueTime, and ActivityWatch, stop at the report. ### Do I need time tracking and invoicing in the same tool? Not if you bill a flat retainer or your accountant generates invoices from a system you feed monthly. One tool earns its place when you bill by the hour and itemize from actual work, because every manual step between the tracker and the bill is a chance to round down, forget a session, or send an invoice late. ### Can automatic time tracking create invoices on its own? The capture and the invoice are usually separate stages, even inside one product. A passive tracker records your active window and sorts it into projects; the billable total then feeds an invoice you review and send. Nothing is retyped between the two, which is the point, but you still confirm the bill before it goes out. ### Does automatic tracking with invoicing run on Linux? Rarely. Native automatic trackers mostly ship Windows and macOS only, and the ones that invoice, like Timely, skip Linux. BillNotch is the unusual case here, with a native Linux desktop app that captures automatically and feeds invoicing in the dashboard. If you work on Linux, check the desktop build before anything else. ## The bottom line Most trackers are honest about being one thing: a capture tool or a billing tool. That is fine, as long as you know which you are buying and you have a plan for the other half. The category worth knowing about is the small one in the middle (automatic time tracking with invoicing) because it removes the step between doing the work and getting paid for it. If you are comparing options, the clearest contrasts are with the two camps' best-known names: see [BillNotch vs Rize](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) for the automatic-tracking side, [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) for the manual-but-bills side, and the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page for the plan details. Whatever you pick, confirm the current specifics on each vendor's site, plans move, and the homepage rarely tells the whole story. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026 [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Clockify Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks # Best Clockify Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks > The best Clockify alternatives in 2026 after the free plan was capped: Toggl, Harvest, TimeCamp, My Hours and BillNotch, compared fairly. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 6, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 If you're weighing **Clockify alternatives** in 2026, the reason is usually the same one: the free plan got narrower. In April, CAKE.com (Clockify's parent company) announced changes to the Free plan that rolled out around mid-June, and the headline is that the previously unlimited free team is now capped at five users, with billable rates, invoicing, and CSV/Excel export moved up to paid plans. Clockify is still a well-built tool, and for five-or-fewer users who only need to record hours, its free tier remains a solid $0 option. But if the change took away a workflow you relied on, it's a fair moment to see what else is out there. This is an even-handed look at where to go instead. None of the options below is a perfect Clockify clone (each trades something) so the honest answer is that the right pick depends on which part of Clockify you actually lost. Below: a quick recap of what changed, the four things that separate a real **alternative to Clockify** from a lateral move, a side-by-side table of five tools, and a fair note on where each one wins. For the full detail on the change itself, see [Clockify's free plan changes explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026). ## What changed on Clockify's free plan Two things moved. The free team went from unlimited headcount to **5 active users**: the owner plus the first four invitees. And several features that used to be free shifted to paid: billable rates, invoicing, shared reports, project estimates, kiosk mode, and CSV/Excel export. The free API was also tightened to roughly 30 requests per hour. What did **not** change is worth repeating: Free still costs $0 with no time limit and no credit card, and it keeps unlimited time tracking and unlimited projects and tasks for up to five users. CAKE.com said the move was driven by the cost of running global infrastructure for unlimited free users, and that as a bootstrapped company it is focusing on paid customers. So if you billed clients out of Clockify's free tier: marking time billable, then exporting a CSV or generating an invoice. That's the workflow that now needs a paid plan. Invoicing requires the Standard plan ($5.49 per user per month on annual billing), and billable rates require at least Basic ($3.99). That gap is the specific thing most people searching for a **Clockify free plan alternative** are trying to fill. ## What to look for in a Clockify alternative Before the list, it helps to name what you're optimizing for. Four things separate a genuine replacement from a sideways step. - **A free tier that still covers your team size.** If headcount is why you're here, check the user cap, not just the price. Some free plans stop lower than Clockify's new five; one is uncapped. - **Invoicing, if that's what you lost.** This is the big one. Most trackers (Clockify included now) gate invoicing behind paid plans. Only one tool below includes it on a $0 plan. - **How time gets captured.** A manual timer, an activity log you review, or fully automatic capture. Clockify is a manual timer at heart, so if forgotten timers were part of your frustration, a like-for-like manual tool won't fix that. - **Pricing shape.** A flat per-seat plan is predictable; usage-based pricing can be cheaper at small scale but harder to forecast as your client and invoice counts grow. ## The best Clockify alternatives in 2026, compared Treat the table as a map, not a quote. Prices and plan limits move often, so confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own pricing page before you commit. _Prices checked September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [TimeCamp](https://www.timecamp.com/pricing/)._ | Tool | Free plan | Invoicing | How it tracks | Best for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Toggl Track | Up to 5 users, $0 | Paid only (billable rates) | Autotracker + manual timer | Generous free tracking and reporting | | Harvest | 1 seat, 2 projects, $0 | Included, even on free | Manual timer | Keeping invoicing on a $0 plan | | TimeCamp | Unlimited users, $0 | Paid (Starter, from $3.99) | Automatic desktop activity | Free tracking for a larger team | | My Hours | Up to 5 users, $0 | Paid only | Manual timer | Simple, low-cost solo tracking | | BillNotch | 14-day trial, no card | Native PDF + CSV | Automatic active-window + AI | Capture and invoicing in one, flat pricing | **Toggl Track** is the most generous free tier still standing. Its free plan covers up to five users at $0 with no time limit, unlimited tracking, unlimited projects, and an autotracker on its desktop apps that records activity in the background for you to review. It's a mature, well-designed product with deep reporting. The catch for billers: Toggl's invoicing is a basic flat-rate-per-project export flow (Reports → Export → Create Invoice, out to CSV or PDF, or handed off to QuickBooks or Xero) rather than a billing pipeline, and it sits with billable rates on the paid Starter plan ($9 per user per month annually, about $10 monthly), with Premium at $14 per user per month for the first year, then $18. So if invoicing is what you lost on Clockify, Toggl won't really restore it, but for clean tracking and reporting on a free tier, it's a strong pick. Here's [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative), and [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) for the direct comparison. **Harvest** is the one tool here that still includes invoicing on a $0 plan. The free tier is limited (one seat and two projects) but within those limits you get both time tracking and invoicing, which is exactly the combination Clockify just moved behind a paywall. Paid plans start at $9 per seat per month annually, but Harvest (acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025) now layers usage-based fees on top of the per-seat rate for things like extra invoices, projects, and clients, which makes a growing bill harder to forecast. If you want that detail, see [what Harvest costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing). For a solo freelancer with a couple of clients, though, the free plan is a genuine like-for-like answer to lost free invoicing. **TimeCamp** is the standout if team size is the problem. Its free plan includes **unlimited users** and unlimited projects: uncapped where Clockify now stops at five, and it offers automatic time tracking through a desktop app that records computer and app activity, including a Linux build. Invoicing isn't free, though: it starts on the lowest paid tier (Starter), around $3.99 per user per month annually, with mid and top tiers above that. Confirm the current plan names and prices on [TimeCamp's pricing page](https://www.timecamp.com/pricing/). That entry tier is also the cheapest paid invoicing in this group. If you need free tracking for more than five people, TimeCamp is the clearest fit. **My Hours** is the simple, low-cost option. Its free plan covers up to five users with core tracking, unlimited projects and clients, and basic reporting, close in shape to Clockify's new free tier. Invoicing is paid-only, on Basic (from $4 per user per month annually) or Pro (from $8). It's a manual tracker without automatic capture, so it suits solo freelancers who want to log hours simply rather than have them recorded for them. **BillNotch** (our own tool) takes the automatic route and folds billing in. Its desktop app runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and records your active window automatically, with no timer to start; keyword rules, plus optional AI for the fuzzy cases, sort that activity into client projects, and billable status is inherited per project. The billable total then feeds a native PDF invoice or a CSV export, and a Revenue Leak Finder flags time you tracked but never billed. Pricing is flat: Pro is $9 per month for one seat, Team is $12 per seat per month, with a 14-day trial and no card. The honest caveat is on price: that's more than Clockify's $3.99 Basic, so BillNotch is not the budget pick. See [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) for the side-by-side, and [the Clockify alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) for what changes day to day if you move. ## Where BillNotch fits It's worth being straight about the trade-off, because price is where Clockify wins. Clockify Basic is $3.99 and BillNotch Pro is $9; if sticker cost is the deciding factor, Clockify is cheaper, even after this change. BillNotch isn't trying to be the cheap option. What it offers instead is a different shape of workflow, aimed squarely at the people who lost free invoicing. Three things set it apart from the others on this list. First, capture is automatic: the active window is recorded for you, the same passive approach as TimeCamp's activity tracker and Toggl's autotracker, rather than a stopwatch you have to remember to start. Second, that captured time is auto-sorted into **billable client projects** by rules and optional AI, which is the step Clockify's own free Auto tracker deliberately doesn't take. It logs activity privately for your review but doesn't categorize into client projects or turn it into an invoice. Third, invoicing is built in rather than a separate subscription, and the Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable time that never made it onto an invoice. If billing was the part you lost, [how to invoice from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) walks through the end-to-end flow, and [freelance billing software](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software) covers what to weigh before you buy. On privacy, window titles can stay on the device, each device connects with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. The pricing is flat with no usage fees, so the number you sign up for is the number you pay, which is the other half of the case against Harvest's metered model. None of that makes BillNotch right for everyone. If you prefer the certainty of starting a timer yourself, a manual tool like Clockify or My Hours will feel more natural, and if budget is the hard constraint, Clockify or TimeCamp will stretch further. The full plan details are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Clockify still free in 2026? Yes. Clockify's free plan still costs $0 with no time limit and no credit card, and it keeps unlimited time tracking and unlimited projects. What changed in 2026 is that the free team is capped at five users, and billable rates, invoicing, and CSV export moved to paid plans. Track-only teams of five or fewer are unaffected. ### Which Clockify alternative keeps invoicing on a free plan? Harvest is the only tool here that still includes invoicing on a $0 plan, limited to one seat and two projects. For a solo freelancer with a couple of clients, that is a genuine like-for-like replacement for the free invoicing Clockify moved behind a paywall. Most other trackers gate invoicing behind a paid tier. ### What is the best Clockify alternative for a team over five people? TimeCamp is the clearest fit. Its free plan covers unlimited users and unlimited projects, uncapped where Clockify now stops at five, and it does automatic tracking through a desktop app with a Linux build. Invoicing is not free, starting on its Starter tier at around $3.99 per user per month annually. ### Is there a Clockify alternative that tracks automatically and invoices? Yes, though the list is short. BillNotch records the active window automatically, sorts it into client projects, and turns the billable total into a PDF invoice or CSV export in the same tool. It is not the budget pick at $9 a month against Clockify's $3.99 Basic, but it folds capture and billing into one place. ## The bottom line There's no single best **Clockify replacement**: only the best fit for the part of Clockify you actually lost. Sort yourself first. If headcount was the problem, TimeCamp's uncapped free plan is the clearest answer. If you lost free invoicing and want it back at $0, Harvest's free tier is the only one here that still includes it. If you mainly want clean free tracking and reporting, Toggl Track is the pick. If you want something simple and cheap, My Hours fits. And if you want automatic capture plus built-in invoicing in one tool, and you bill by the hour, that's the narrow case BillNotch is built for. Whichever way you lean, the decision that outlasts any single feature is matching the tracking model and the pricing shape to how you actually work. To go deeper on the automatic-capture approach, see [automatic time tracking software](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software). And because plans keep shifting, confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own pricing page before you commit. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Time Tracking App for Freelancers (With Invoicing) # Best Time Tracking App for Freelancers (With Invoicing) > The best time tracking app for freelancers is the one that also invoices. The apps that capture hours and turn them into a bill, compared fairly. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 The **best time tracking app for freelancers** who bill by the hour is one that also invoices, capturing your hours and turning them into a sendable invoice without making you retype anything in between. The shortlist below covers the apps that genuinely cross both halves of that loop (real freelance time tracking with invoicing), and flags the ones that track time well but leave the billing to you. Most "time tracker" reviews stop at how the hours get recorded. For a freelancer who bills by the hour, that's only half the story. The hours are worth nothing until they're on an invoice, so the real question is how cleanly a tool gets you from tracked time to money owed. ## What to look for in a track-and-bill tool Before the options, the criteria. These are what separate a tool you'll keep from one you'll abandon two invoices in: - **How time gets captured.** Manual timers, activity-review tracking, or fully automatic. Anything that depends on you remembering to click start will leak hours. The question is how much. - **Billable vs. non-billable handling.** You need to bill what's billable and exclude what isn't, ideally without sorting every entry by hand. See [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). - **Native invoicing, and on which plan.** Some tools invoice on the free tier, some gate it behind a paid plan, and one popular tracker doesn't invoice at all. Read the plan, not the homepage. - **The handoff from hours to invoice.** Does the billable total [flow straight into a PDF](https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers), or do you export a CSV and rebuild the invoice elsewhere? This is where minutes (and accuracy) get lost. - **Platform coverage.** If you're on Linux, your shortlist shrinks fast. Most native trackers ship Windows and macOS only. - **Pricing shape.** Flat per-seat is predictable; usage-based extras can creep. For the mechanics of going from a list of entries to a sendable document, see [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software); for the buying criteria in depth, [what to look for in freelance billing software](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software). ## How we ranked the best time tracking app for freelancers The order here isn't by popularity or price. It's by how much of the tracked-to-billed loop each tool closes on its own, weighted for a solo freelancer who bills hours. Four things decided the ranking: - **Does it capture without a timer?** Fully automatic capture leaks the fewest hours, so it counts most. Manual timers lose whatever you forget to start. - **Does it invoice natively, and on which plan?** A tool that exports a CSV and stops isn't a track-and-bill tool. Where invoicing sits (free tier, paid plan, or a QuickBooks sync) matters as much as whether it exists. - **Does it run where you work?** Linux quietly removes half the field, so a native build there is a real differentiator, not a footnote. - **Does it catch what you didn't bill?** Flagging tracked-but-uninvoiced time is rare, and it's the feature that separates a tracker from a billing safeguard. No single tool wins every axis, which is why the picks below are framed by the failure each one fixes rather than a single score. Read the plan you'd actually be on, since free tiers and invoicing gates move. ## The options, compared A few prices below are omitted because vendors change them often: _details as of September 5, 2026; check each vendor's site before you buy._ | Tool | Time capture | Invoicing | Linux | Trial / free | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BillNotch | Fully automatic + AI categorization | Native PDF, all paid plans | Yes | 14-day trial | | Harvest | Manual timer only | On the paid Teams plan | No | Free: 1 seat, 2 projects | | Clockify | Review-based auto tracker | On the paid Standard plan+ | Yes | Permanent free tier (no invoicing) | | Timely | Fully automatic AI tracking | Native, syncs with QuickBooks | No | 14-day trial | | Toggl Track | Activity-review + manual timers | On paid plans | No | Free tier + 30-day trial | | Rize | Fully automatic AI tracking | None | No | 7-day trial | ### BillNotch The pitch is the whole loop in one tool. The desktop app records your active window in the background (no timer to start) and AI categorization sorts that activity into client projects. The billable total it keeps feeds a native PDF invoice, with CSV export when your accountant wants the raw numbers. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and window titles can stay on your device if a project is sensitive. Pro is $9/mo, Team is $12/seat, with a 14-day trial. The piece most freelancers notice is the [Revenue Leak Finder](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak), which catches billable time that was tracked but never invoiced. More in [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). ### Harvest A long-standing, well-liked tracker with a clean invoicing flow once you're on the paid Teams plan ($9 per seat per month billed annually, $11 monthly). The tradeoff is the capture method: Harvest uses a manual timer, so the hours are only as complete as your discipline. Its free plan is genuinely free but tight (one seat and two projects) and some extras are usage-based, so read the plan carefully. No Linux build. If you live in a manual-timer habit and want straightforward billing, it's a solid pick; if forgotten timers are your problem, the capture side won't fix it. We go deeper in [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative). ### Clockify Generous where it counts: a permanently free tier that covers a lot of tracking. It offers a review-based "auto tracker": it records activity for you to review, rather than auto-categorizing it into clients, and invoicing arrives on the paid Standard plan ($5.49 per seat per month annually) and up, not on the free tier. It's also one of the few here with a real Linux build. If budget is the constraint and you don't mind doing the categorization pass yourself, Clockify is hard to argue with. ### Timely Fully automatic AI tracking, with native invoicing that syncs with QuickBooks: a strong fit if QuickBooks is already your books. Pricing starts around $9/user/mo on annual billing and scales up with usage and features. It's Windows, macOS, web, and mobile: no Linux desktop. If you want automatic capture and live inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, it's a natural shortlist entry. ### The honest caveats: Toggl and Rize Two popular names need an asterisk for this specific use case. **Toggl Track** is an excellent tracker, but it's built around activity-review tracking plus manual timers rather than fully passive capture, and invoicing lives on its paid plans. It's Windows and macOS only: no Linux. Great tool; just know invoicing isn't on the free tier. **Rize** does fully automatic AI tracking very well, and has **no invoicing at all**. If your billing already lives somewhere else and you only want sharper focus and time data, Rize is a fine choice. As a track-and-bill tool, it's out of scope, because the "bill" half doesn't exist. ## Picking from the shortlist Match the tool to the failure you actually have. If you forget timers, prioritize automatic capture (BillNotch, Timely, Rize). If you want billing in the box without extra software, narrow to tools that invoice natively (BillNotch, Harvest on Teams, Clockify on Standard, Timely via QuickBooks). If you're on Linux, the field is short. BillNotch and Clockify are the realistic options. And if catching unbilled time matters as much as logging it, that's a specific feature to look for, not a given. Billing as a consultant or running an agency shifts the weighting: [the consultant shortlist](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-consultants) and [the agency shortlist](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-agencies) sort the same field for those cases. There's no universal winner here: only the best fit for how you work and what you're willing to do at invoice time. Whatever you choose, prices and plan boundaries move, so confirm the current details on each vendor's own pricing page before you commit. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best free time tracking app with invoicing for freelancers? Harvest is the only tool here that invoices on a genuinely free plan, though it is capped at one seat and two projects. Clockify's free tier is generous for tracking but moves invoicing to its paid Standard plan. For a solo freelancer with a couple of clients, Harvest's free plan is the closest fit. ### Which time tracking apps with invoicing run on Linux? The realistic options are BillNotch and Clockify. Both ship a native Linux build, while Harvest, Timely, Toggl Track, and Rize do not, leaving Linux users on a web app. If you want automatic capture that also invoices on Linux, that narrows the field to BillNotch. ### Does Toggl Track have built-in invoicing? Not really. Toggl Track is an excellent tracker, but it is built around activity-review tracking plus manual timers, and invoicing lives on its paid plans as an export rather than a stored invoice. If billing inside the tracker matters, it is not the tool; if you mainly want clean reporting, it earns its place. ### Can I create invoices automatically from tracked time? Yes, with a tool that holds both the hours and the bill. BillNotch and Timely capture time automatically and turn the billable total into a native invoice, so nothing is retyped. The Revenue Leak Finder in BillNotch also flags billable time that was tracked but never invoiced, which two separate tools cannot see. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026 [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Harvest Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks # Best Harvest Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks > The best Harvest alternatives in 2026, after Bending Spoons added usage-based fees. BillNotch, Toggl, Clockify, Timely and My Hours, compared fairly. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 26, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Most people searching for **Harvest alternatives** in 2026 aren't unhappy with how Harvest records time. They're reacting to the bill. After Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in 2025, the pricing changed shape: a per-seat base rate now sits underneath **usage-based fees** charged against things like invoices, projects, clients, and tasks. The per-seat price itself didn't rise, but those metered extras make a monthly total harder to predict, and that unpredictability is what sends people looking. Here's the shape of it as of 2026. [Harvest's Teams plan](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing) runs **$9 per seat per month on annual billing** ($11 month-to-month), Enterprise is **$14 per seat per month** annually, and the free plan still covers **one seat and two projects**. The seat prices themselves didn't go up. What's new is the layer of usage-based fees on top. For a solo user with a couple of clients the difference may be small; for a growing roster, it's the part that turns next month's total into a guess. If you want the full breakdown of what changed, see [what Harvest actually costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing). This is a fair look at where to go instead. Each option below trades something (none is a perfect Harvest clone) so the honest answer is that the right pick depends on which Harvest problem you're actually solving. Below: the four things that actually matter in a replacement, a side-by-side table of five tools, and an even-handed note on where each one wins. ## What to look for in a Harvest alternative Before the list, it helps to name what you're optimizing for. Four things separate a real replacement from a lateral move. - **Predictable pricing.** This is usually the reason you're here. A flat per-seat plan with no metered add-ons means the number you sign up for is the number you pay each month. Usage-based pricing isn't automatically worse (it can be cheaper at a small scale) but it's harder to forecast as your client, project, and invoice counts grow. - **How time gets captured.** Manual timers, an activity log you review, or fully automatic capture. Harvest is a manual timer, so if forgotten timers are part of your frustration, a like-for-like manual tool won't fix that part of it. - **Built-in invoicing.** Harvest's billing flow is one of its genuine strengths. A replacement should match it, or you'll end up bolting a separate invoicing tool onto your stack, which is its own kind of cost. - **Platforms.** If you work on Linux, the field narrows fast. Most native desktop trackers ship Windows and macOS only, so it's worth checking before you get attached to one. ## The alternatives, compared None of these is a drop-in clone of Harvest, and that's the point. Each makes a different trade. Treat the table as a map, not a quote: prices and plan limits move often, and we're deliberately not pinning exact competitor prices here. Confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own site before you commit. _Prices checked September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [Timely](https://www.timely.com/pricing/)._ | Tool | Tracking model | Invoicing | Free tier | Platforms | Best for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window + AI sorting | Native PDF + CSV | 14-day trial (no card) | Windows, macOS, Linux | Hourly billers who want capture and invoicing in one, with no usage fees | | Toggl Track | Activity log you review + manual timer | On paid plans | Free tier + 30-day trial | Windows, macOS | Teams that want polished reporting and UX | | Clockify | Manual timer | On paid plans | Generous free tier | Windows, macOS, Linux, web | Tight budgets and large headcounts | | Timely | Automatic (memory/AI) tracking | Native | Trial (check site) | Windows, macOS, web | Teams wanting AI memory who'll pay for it | | My Hours | Manual timer | On paid plans | Has a free tier | Web + mobile | Simple, low-cost solo tracking | **BillNotch** is the option built around the whole loop. Its desktop app records your active window automatically (there's no timer to start) and a mix of keyword rules and optional AI sorts that activity into client projects. The billable total feeds a native PDF invoice or a CSV export when your accountant wants the raw numbers, and a Revenue Leak Finder flags time you tracked but never billed. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and window titles can stay on your device if a project is sensitive. Pro is $9/mo for one seat and Team is $12/seat/mo, on flat plans with no usage metering. To be clear, that isn't cheaper per seat than Harvest's base rate. The difference is that the bill is fixed. The trade-off is that always-on capture is a heavier approach than a manual stopwatch, and it won't suit everyone. See [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) for the side-by-side, or [the Harvest alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) if you have already decided to leave and just want to know what replaces each piece. **Toggl Track** is a mature, well-designed tracker. It logs your desktop activity in the background and lets you review and approve it into entries, and it also offers manual timers, so it's not fully automatic, and it doesn't categorize time into projects with AI. Invoicing is available on its paid plans, and it keeps a free tier alongside a 30-day trial. There's no Linux desktop app. Its reporting and filtering are genuinely deep, though, and the apps are well built across desktop, web, and mobile. It's the strongest pick if what you mainly want is clean reporting and a polished interface; here's [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). **Clockify** competes on price, and it's good at it. The free tier is genuinely generous. It was tightened somewhat in April 2026, but still covers a lot of everyday tracking, and the paid plans are inexpensive. Tracking is a manual timer at its core, and invoicing sits on the paid plans rather than the free one. It also ships a real Linux build, which is uncommon in this category. It's widely used by larger teams precisely because the per-seat cost stays low as headcount climbs. For tight budgets or large headcounts, it's hard to argue with; the full comparison is [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative), and [the Clockify alternatives roundup](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026) covers what changed on its free plan. **Timely** takes the automatic route. It uses a memory- and AI-based engine to track work for you, with native invoicing, and it's aimed at agencies that want that hands-off capture. It's priced at a premium and there's no Linux desktop. If you want automatic tracking with AI memory and you're willing to pay for it, Timely is a fair shortlist entry. The question is mostly whether the price matches the value for your team. **My Hours** rounds out the list as the simple, low-cost choice. It's a straightforward manual tracker with a free tier, well suited to solo freelancers who want to log hours without much setup. Plan limits and invoicing features shift over time, so check its site for the current details, but as a no-friction place to start, it's a reasonable one. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is the featured pick here for a specific reason, not a general one. It's built for the person leaving Harvest because the bill stopped being predictable, and who bills by the hour. Its edge isn't a lower sticker price. Harvest's base seat rate is competitive. The edge is that the plan is **flat**: there are no fees that scale with invoices, projects, or clients, so the number you budget is the number you pay. The second part of the case is that it folds the whole loop into one app. Capture happens automatically from the active window, categorization into client projects runs on keyword rules with AI as an optional layer, and invoicing is native rather than a separate subscription. On top of that, the Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable time you tracked but never put on an invoice: the kind of gap that usually only shows up when you reconcile by hand, if at all. The capture itself is limited to the active app and its window title (no screenshots, no keystrokes) which keeps it on the lighter side of monitoring. It's also deliberate about privacy: window titles can stay on-device, you can issue and revoke API keys for the desktop app, data sits on EU servers, and your information is never sold. None of that makes it right for everyone. If you prefer the certainty of starting a stopwatch yourself, a manual timer like Harvest or Clockify will feel more natural. If budget is the hard constraint, Clockify or My Hours will stretch further. BillNotch's case is narrower and honest: automatic capture plus built-in invoicing, on pricing you can forecast. You can see the full plan details on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, and the freelancer-specific rundown lives at [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why did Harvest change its pricing? After Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in 2025, the pricing changed shape. The per-seat rate did not rise, but usage-based fees now sit on top, charged against invoices, projects, clients, and tasks. For a solo user the difference is small; for a growing roster, those metered extras make a monthly total harder to predict, which is what sends people looking. ### Is there a Harvest alternative with flat pricing? Yes. BillNotch charges a flat rate with no usage fees: Pro at $9 a month for one seat and Team at $12 per seat, so the number you budget is the number you pay. It is not cheaper per seat than Harvest's base rate; the difference is that the bill does not climb with your project and invoice counts. ### Does Harvest still have a free plan? Yes. Harvest still offers a free plan covering one seat and two projects, with time tracking and invoicing inside those limits. It is genuinely useful for a solo freelancer with a couple of clients. The usage-based fees and the paid Teams and Enterprise tiers only matter once you outgrow that free cap. ### Which Harvest alternative runs on Linux? Among these picks, Clockify and BillNotch ship a native Linux build. Toggl Track, Timely, and Harvest itself do not, so on Linux you would be on a web app. If your team runs Linux and wants desktop capture, that narrows the shortlist to the two with a current native app. ## The bottom line There's no single best Harvest alternative: only the best fit for the problem that pushed you to look. If it was the unpredictable usage-based bill and you bill hourly, BillNotch's flat pricing and built-in invoicing are aimed squarely at that. If you want polished reporting above all, Toggl Track is the pick. [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) puts those two side by side. If budget rules the decision, Clockify. If you want automatic AI tracking and will pay a premium, Timely. And if you just want something simple and free to start with, My Hours fits. Most people find the decision comes down to two of these, not five. Narrow by your platform and your pricing tolerance first, then trial the survivors. Whatever you choose, the step that matters most is matching the tracking model and the pricing shape to how you actually work. That decision outlasts any single feature. And because prices and plan limits keep moving, confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own site before you commit. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-agencies [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Time Tracking Software for Agencies (2026) # Best Time Tracking Software for Agencies (2026) > The best time tracking software for agencies in 2026, ranked by team utilization reporting and revenue-leak visibility: Harvest, Toggl and more. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 12, 2026 9 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Choosing **time tracking software for agencies** usually comes down to one question that has little to do with the timer itself: how much of the time your team tracks actually ends up on an invoice. Agencies rarely lose money on the hourly rate. They lose it in the gap between hours tracked and hours billed, through low utilization, write-offs, and scope creep nobody charged for. So the most useful way to rank these tools is not by stopwatch features; it is by how clearly they show team-level utilization and how well they catch billable work that slips through unbilled. This is an even-handed look at the field as of 2026. Each tool below does the basics well, so the comparison focuses on the part that decides margin: utilization reporting, revenue-leak visibility, and pricing you can forecast across a roster. ## The real agency leak is the gap between tracked and billed It helps to start with the numbers, because they explain why this category exists. [SPI Research](https://spiresearch.com/)'s [2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark](https://get.kantata.com/rs/677-LEJ-696/images/2025-ps-maturity-benchmark.pdf) (PDF, February 2025), drawn from 403 firms, put average billable utilization at **68.9%** for 2024 and average EBITDA margin at **9.8%**, the latter described as the lowest in five years. Utilization has slid from **73.2% in 2021**, and it now sits below the roughly 75% threshold usually cited for healthy professional-services profitability. For which figures in this field are traceable and which are not, see [time tracking statistics](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics). Agencies typically run lower than that. The agency-finance specialist Parakeeto pegs [healthy agency-wide net utilization](https://www.parakeeto.com/blog/resource-utilization-capacity-planning-for-marketing-agency-2/) at roughly **50 to 60% (up to 70%)**, with individual delivery staff at **65 to 85%** on a net annual basis (2021 guidance), structurally below a pure consultancy because agencies carry more non-billable overhead. The point is not the exact figure for your shop; it is that a few points of utilization, multiplied across a team, is real money. If you want the formula and benchmarks, see [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). There are actually two distinct leaks, and they get confused. **Utilization** is billable hours divided by available hours: the work you never got to bill because it was internal, idle, or non-billable. **Realization** is billed hours divided by billable hours: work that was billable but got written off, discounted, or simply never made it onto an invoice. Utilization is the one solid primary number above; realization is harder to pin down, but it is where the quiet losses hide. A [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) is realization gone wrong: time tracked, never billed. ## What to look for in time tracking software for agencies Five things separate a tool that protects agency margin from one that just logs hours. - **Team-level utilization reporting.** You need a per-person and per-project view of billable versus available time, not just a personal timesheet. Most tools here can produce it, but it often sits in a higher tier. - **Revenue-leak visibility.** Can the tool show you billable time that was tracked but never invoiced? This is the rarest feature in the category, and the one most tied to realization. - **Predictable pricing.** A flat per-seat plan means the number you sign up for is the number you pay. Usage-based pricing is not automatically worse, but it is harder to forecast as your project, client, and invoice counts grow. - **How time gets captured.** Manual timers depend on memory; an activity log you review is a middle ground; automatic capture records what happened without anyone starting anything. If forgotten timers are a recurring problem, a like-for-like manual tool will not fix it. - **Built-in invoicing.** Time that flows straight into an invoice beats a CSV you rebuild elsewhere. For the mechanics, see [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software). ## The tools, compared None of these is a drop-in for the others. Each makes a different trade. Treat the table as a map. Prices below are the **billed-annually** per-seat rates each vendor showed, checked September 5, 2026; month-to-month billing is higher, and plans shift, so confirm the current number on each vendor's own pricing page: [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), before you commit. | Tool | Starting price (billed annually) | Utilization / profitability reporting | Flags tracked-but-uninvoiced time | Capture model | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BillNotch | $12/seat/mo flat (Pro $9, single seat) | Per-person & per-project rollup | Yes, Revenue Leak Finder | Automatic active-window | | Harvest | $9/seat/mo + usage-based fees | Higher tiers | No | Manual timer | | Toggl Track | $9/user/mo (Starter) | Profitability on Premium ($14) | No | Manual + activity review | | Productive.io | $10/user/mo (3-seat minimum) | Full PSA: utilization & profitability | No | Manual | | Clockify | $3.99/user/mo (Basic) | Paid tiers | No | Manual timer | | Everhour | $8.50/seat/mo (5-seat minimum) | Paid plan | No | Manual + integrations | A note on that last column: all of these tools can report utilization or profitability in some form, so this is not a knock on their reporting. The honest distinction is that the agency-relevant reports tend to sit in a higher, pricier tier, and none of them specifically surface billable time that was tracked but never made it onto an invoice. **Harvest** is a mature, well-built tracker with one of the cleanest time-to-invoice flows in the category, and profitability and approval features on its higher tiers. Its Teams plan is $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and Enterprise is $14 annually ($17.50 monthly). The wrinkle for agencies is recent: after Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in July 2025, the company added **usage-based fees** on top of seats. Its pricing page states that "additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use." The per-seat price did not rise; what changed is a metered layer that grows with how much of the product you run, which lands hardest on project- and client-heavy agencies. The full breakdown is in [what Harvest pricing looks like in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing), and there is a wider list in [best Harvest alternatives in 2026](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026). **Toggl Track** is polished and pleasant to use, with genuinely deep reporting. It logs desktop activity in the background for you to review into entries, alongside manual timers. The agency-relevant pieces are tiered: billable rates and team-level reporting start on Starter at $9 per user per month annually (about $10 monthly), while profitability analysis and fixed-fee project tracking require Premium at $14 per user per month for the first year, then $18. If clean reporting and a refined interface matter most, it is a strong pick. There is no Linux desktop app. **Productive.io** is the most agency-native option here: a full PSA that folds utilization, profitability, resource planning, and budgeting into one tool. It is priced accordingly: Essential $10, Professional $25, and Ultimate $33 per user per month billed yearly, with a three-seat minimum on every plan. If you want one system of record for the whole agency and you will use the planning and budgeting depth, the price can be justified. If you mostly want accurate hours and invoices, it is more platform than you need. **Clockify** competes on price and does it well. Its published tiers run Free, Basic $3.99, Standard $5.49, Pro $7.99, and Enterprise $11.99 per user per month on annual billing, with profitability and billable reporting reserved for the paid plans. Tracking is a manual timer at its core, and it ships a real Linux build, which is uncommon. For larger headcounts on a tight budget, the per-seat math is hard to beat. **Everhour** is built to live inside your project tool. It integrates tightly with Asana, ClickUp, and similar, and its paid Team plan is $8.50 per seat per month billed yearly. The catch for small teams is a **five-seat minimum**, so a two- or three-person shop still pays for five. Two other names worth knowing: **Hubstaff** bills strictly per seat and leans toward activity monitoring and screenshots, which is a different posture than most agencies want; **Float** starts at $7 per user per month, but time tracking ("actuals") is a Pro-tier feature rather than part of the entry plan. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is the featured pick here for a specific reason tied to the leak framing above, not a general one. On headline seat price it is **not** the cheapest option. Team is $12 per seat per month against Harvest's $9 base and Clockify's lower tiers. Its case is two-sided: pricing you can forecast, and capture that does not depend on anyone remembering a timer. The pricing is **flat, with no usage-based fees**: the bill is the same whether your agency runs two projects or two hundred. That is the deliberate contrast to a metered model: predictability instead of a total that climbs with your project and invoice counts. Pro is $9 per month for a single seat and Team is $12 per seat, billed monthly or yearly (two months free annually), with a 14-day trial and no card. The capture side is where the leak gets closed. The desktop app records each person's active window automatically (there is no timer to start) and a mix of keyword rules and optional AI sorts that activity into client projects, with billable status inherited per project. From there it rolls up **per-person and per-project billable totals and utilization**, and the **Revenue Leak Finder** flags billable time that was tracked but never put on an invoice: the realization gap that usually only surfaces when someone reconciles by hand, if at all. The billable total feeds a PDF invoice or a CSV export when your accountant wants the raw numbers. It is also deliberate about privacy, which matters when you are tracking a whole team: window titles can stay on each device, every device connects with an API key you issue and revoke per person, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. The capture is limited to the active app and its window title (no screenshots, no keystrokes) so it stays on the lighter side of monitoring. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. None of that makes it right for everyone: if you want a full PSA with budgeting and resource planning, Productive.io is more complete; if budget rules the call, Clockify stretches further; and if your team prefers starting a stopwatch by hand, a manual tool will feel more natural. The agency-specific rundown is at [BillNotch for agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies), the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page has the full plan details, and the direct head-to-head is [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a good utilization rate for an agency? There is no single target, but agency-wide net utilization around 50 to 60 percent is common, with individual delivery staff often at 65 to 85 percent. Agencies run lower than pure consultancies because they carry more non-billable overhead. The point is to know your real number and track whether it drifts, not to chase 100 percent. ### What is the difference between utilization and realization? Utilization is billable hours divided by available hours: the work you never got to bill because it was internal or idle. Realization is billed hours divided by billable hours: work that was billable but got written off, discounted, or never invoiced. Utilization is easier to measure; realization is where the quiet losses hide. ### Which time tracking software flags unbilled agency hours? Most trackers report utilization but do not surface billable time that was tracked and never invoiced. That reconciliation is rare in the category. BillNotch's Revenue Leak Finder is built for it, comparing tracked billable time against what actually reached an invoice, so the realization gap shows up on purpose rather than at year-end. ### Should agency time tracking use per-seat or flat pricing? Either works, but the shape matters more than the headline rate. Flat per-seat pricing means the number you sign up for is the number you pay. Usage-based fees that scale with projects, clients, or invoices are harder to forecast as an agency grows. Price a tool on your real volume, not its base rate. ## The bottom line There is no single best time tracking software for agencies: only the best fit for the leak you are actually trying to close. If your problem is reporting depth and a refined interface, Toggl Track is the pick. If you want one platform for the whole agency, Productive.io. If budget and headcount rule, Clockify or Everhour. If the metered Harvest bill is what pushed you to look, a flat-priced, automatic tool like BillNotch is aimed squarely at that: predictable pricing plus capture that catches the hours and the invoices you would otherwise miss. If you bill as an individual rather than staffing a team, [the consultant shortlist](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-consultants) sorts the same field differently. And if the agency is an architecture studio, [time tracking software for architects](https://billnotch.com/for/architects) covers phase-based billing specifically. Narrow the field by two questions first: which tier holds the utilization reporting you need, and whether the pricing shape is one you can forecast across a growing roster. Then run a [revenue audit](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) on one real week before you decide. It tells you more than any feature list. And because plans and per-seat rates change often, confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own pricing page before you commit. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-consultants [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Time Tracking Software for Consultants (2026) # Best Time Tracking Software for Consultants (2026) > Time tracking software for consultants, compared on capture, billable rates, invoicing and price: Toggl, Harvest, Clockify and BillNotch. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 14, 2026 10 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Time tracking software for consultants** has to clear a higher bar than a generic stopwatch, because a consultant's time _is_ the product. Every six-minute increment that goes unlogged is real revenue, and consulting is full of exactly the work that never gets timed: the discovery call, the prep before it, the hour spent thinking through a client's problem in a document. The right tool captures that time without asking you to remember, attaches a billable rate to it, and turns it into an invoice with as few manual steps as possible. There's no single best answer, because consultants optimize for different things: some want the lowest per-seat price, some want the deepest reporting, some want capture and billing in one place. This guide compares four of the most common options on the four criteria that actually matter for consulting work: how time is captured, whether billable rates are built in, how invoicing works, and what it costs. Where it helps, it names the trade-off each tool makes rather than pretending any is perfect. ## Why consultant time tracking is different Consultants, like lawyers and accountants, typically bill in **six-minute (0.1-hour) increments**: the tenths-of-an-hour model that splits an hour into ten units. That granularity is unforgiving: at a consulting rate, a handful of unlogged six-minute blocks across a week adds up to a meaningful number by month's end. And the work most likely to go unlogged is the work that doesn't sit still: calls, prep, follow-up, and the thinking time that doesn't announce itself as billable until later. Setting the rate those hours bill at is a separate step; the [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) fixes it from your income goal and real utilization. The scale of the problem shows up in the benchmarks. According to [SPI Research](https://spiresearch.com/)'s [2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark](https://get.kantata.com/rs/677-LEJ-696/images/2025-ps-maturity-benchmark.pdf) (PDF, February 2025, 403 firms surveyed), billable utilization fell to **68.9% in 2024**, below the 75% threshold the report treats as optimal, and a continuation of a steady slide from 73.2% in 2021. Utilization is the share of available hours that end up billable, so a number in the high sixties means a lot of paid-for capacity never reaches a client invoice. Some of that is genuine bench time; some is simply time that was worked but never captured. A tracker's job is to shrink the second kind. For the mechanics, see [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) and [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). Four things separate a tool that fits consulting from one that merely tracks time: - **How time gets captured.** A manual timer you start and stop, an activity log you review and approve, or fully automatic capture. The more it leans on your memory, the more it leaks. - **Billable rates.** Consulting runs on rates. You want a rate to attach to a project or client and flow through to the total, not a flat log you sort by hand every month. - **Invoicing.** The closer billing sits to capture, the less time you lose in the handoff between tracking hours and getting paid for them. - **Price shape and platform.** Per-seat versus flat, plus whether the tool runs where you work. If you're on Linux, the field narrows fast. ## The best time tracking software for consultants, compared None of these is a drop-in match for the others. Each makes a different trade. Treat the table as a map, not a quote: prices and plan limits move often, so confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own site before you commit. _Prices checked September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing)._ | Tool | How time is captured | Billable rates | Invoicing | Paid plans start at | Platforms | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window + AI sorting | Inherited per project | Native PDF + CSV | $9/mo flat (Pro), $12/seat (Team) | Windows, macOS, Linux | | Toggl Track | Activity-log review + manual timer | Paid plans (Starter+) | Report-export PDF | $9/user/mo annual (Starter) | Windows, macOS | | Harvest | Manual timer | All plans | Native, all plans | $9/seat/mo annual + usage fees | Windows, macOS | | Clockify | Manual timer | Paid plans | Standard tier and up | $3.99/seat/mo annual (Basic) | Windows, macOS, Linux, web | **Toggl Track** is a mature, well-built tracker with a strong reputation for reporting. It records an activity log in the background that you review and approve into entries, and it also offers manual timers, so it's not fully automatic, and it doesn't categorize time into client projects with AI. Billable rates are only available on the paid **Starter plan ($9/user/month billed annually)** and above; the free plan covers up to five users but can't tag time as billable at all. Premium runs **$14 per user per month for the first year, then $18**, and adds profitability analysis and approvals. On invoicing, Toggl can produce a PDF by exporting a report, but those reports aren't stored as invoices in the app and there's no built-in invoicing module or accounting-system reconciliation. It's report export, not full invoicing. There's no Linux desktop. For consultants who mainly want clean, deep reporting, it's a strong pick; here's [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). **Harvest** has the deepest billing heritage of the group, and invoicing is one of its genuine strengths. It's available on every plan, including the free one (one seat, two projects). Paid plans are **Teams ($9/seat/month billed annually, $11 monthly)** and **Enterprise ($14/seat/month annually)**. The wrinkle is structural: after Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in July 2025, it moved to a per-seat base rate plus **usage-based fees**, where additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use. The per-seat number didn't jump, but that metered layer makes a monthly total harder to forecast as your client roster grows. Capture is a manual timer, and there's no Linux build. If you want the detail, see [what Harvest costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) and [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative). **Clockify** competes on price and does it well. Its per-seat annual rates are **Basic $3.99, Standard $5.49, Pro $7.99, and Enterprise $11.99** (monthly billing is higher). **Standard ($5.49/seat/month annually) is the first tier that includes invoicing**. Basic and Free don't. As of April 2026, the free plan is capped at five users, a change from its earlier unlimited-user free tier, so check the current limits if a generous free plan was the draw. Tracking is a manual timer at its core, but it does ship a real Linux build, which is uncommon in this category. For tight budgets or larger headcounts, it's hard to argue with; the comparison is [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative), and the free-plan change is covered in [Clockify's 2026 free plan update](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026). **BillNotch** takes the automatic route and folds invoicing in. In short: active-window capture with no timer to start, AI-assisted sorting into client projects, native PDF and CSV invoicing, and flat pricing with no usage fees. It's the heaviest approach to capture on this list (always-on rather than a stopwatch you control) which won't suit everyone. The full case is below. ## Captured time beats remembered time The difference between a good month and a frustrating one is often not the rate. It's how much of the worked time actually made it onto a bill. Time you remember to log is a subset of time you worked, and the gap is widest for short, scattered tasks: the five-minute reply, the quick review, the call that ran ten minutes long. A tracker that captures automatically closes most of that gap, because it doesn't depend on you noticing that the last twenty minutes were billable. Capture is only half of it, though. The other half is making sure captured time gets invoiced. It's common for hours to be tracked correctly and then never sent: an entry that didn't make it onto the invoice, a small project that slipped, a client whose last week got missed. That's a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak): money you earned and simply didn't ask for. A tool that holds both the tracked hours and the invoiced ones can flag the difference; two separate tools can't see across the gap. For the wider pattern, see [stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours). ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is built for the consultant who bills by the hour and is tired of the gap between working and invoicing. Its desktop app (Windows, macOS, and Linux) records the **active window automatically**, with no timer to start, so the hour spent in a strategy document is captured whether or not you remembered to mark it. Keyword rules, plus optional AI for the fuzzy cases, sort that activity into client engagements, and billable status is inherited per project, so you set it once instead of tagging every entry. From there the captured total becomes a **PDF invoice or a CSV export** per client and period, and the **Revenue Leak Finder** flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the leak described above, surfaced on purpose instead of discovered by accident at year-end. On privacy, window titles can stay on-device per machine, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. The honest part: BillNotch isn't the cheapest option here. Pro is **$9/month** for one seat and Team is **$12/seat/month**, on flat plans with no usage fees, which is more per seat than Clockify's Basic tier and level with Harvest's base rate. What you're paying for isn't a lower sticker price; it's automatic capture and built-in invoicing in one tool, on a bill that doesn't move with your invoice or client count. If a manual stopwatch suits how you work, or budget is the hard constraint, another tool on this list may fit better. The [consultants page](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) has the full rundown, and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists the plans. There's a 14-day free trial that doesn't ask for a card. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do consultants bill in six-minute increments? Many do. Consultants, like lawyers and accountants, often bill in six-minute (0.1-hour) blocks, the tenths-of-an-hour model that splits an hour into ten units. At a consulting rate, a handful of unlogged six-minute blocks across a week adds up fast, which is why capturing the small tasks matters as much as the rate. ### What is the best time tracking tool for hourly consulting? It depends on how your time goes missing. If you forget to start timers, automatic capture with built-in invoicing fits, and BillNotch is one of few tools that does both. If reporting depth leads, Toggl Track earns its place; if budget rules, Clockify is hard to beat; if you already like Harvest's billing, staying is a fair call. ### Why is billable utilization low for consultants? Some of it is genuine bench time between engagements, but much of it is worked time that was never captured: the discovery call, the prep, the hour spent thinking through a problem. Industry benchmarks put average billable utilization in the high sixties, below the 75 percent often treated as optimal. A tracker's job is to shrink the uncaptured share. ### Does consulting time tracking need built-in invoicing? Not always, but it removes a step where hours leak. When capture and billing live in separate tools, someone re-keys the totals every month and small errors creep in. A tool that holds both the tracked hours and the invoice can also flag billable time that was tracked but never sent to a client. ## The bottom line The best time tracking software for consultants is the one that matches how your time goes missing. If forgotten timers are the problem and you bill hourly, automatic capture with built-in invoicing is aimed squarely at that, and BillNotch is one of the few tools that does both in one place. If you want the deepest reporting, Toggl Track earns its place; if budget rules, Clockify is hard to beat; and if you're already happy with Harvest's billing and just want to understand the new usage-based fees, that's a different decision than switching. Staffing a team rather than billing solo? [The agency shortlist](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-agencies) covers the same ground with utilization reporting in front. Whatever you choose, weigh the capture method and the price shape before the feature list. Those two decisions outlast every other one. And because plans and pricing keep moving, confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own site before you commit. A good next step is [six billable hours trackers compared](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker) or [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), which covers the handoff every consultant has to get right regardless of which tool wins. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Time Tracking Software for Linux (2026) # Best Time Tracking Software for Linux (2026) > Time tracking software for Linux is a short list. Which tools run natively, which are web-only, and which combine automatic tracking with invoicing. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 16, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Time tracking software for Linux** is a shorter list than it looks. Plenty of well-known trackers advertise themselves as cross-platform, but when you reach for a native Linux desktop app, or automatic active-window tracking on Ubuntu, several of the biggest names quietly drop off. This guide sorts the field honestly: which tools run natively on Linux, which only work through a browser, and which combine automatic tracking with invoicing. The short version: if you want a native Linux desktop tracker that records your work **automatically**, the options narrow fast. ActivityWatch does automatic capture on Linux but has no invoicing. Kimai runs in the browser and generates invoices, but tracks manually. And most commercial auto-trackers (Toggl, Timely, Rize) don't ship a supported native Linux app at all. Below is the full breakdown, plus where the genuine gap sits. ## What counts as time tracking software for Linux "Linux support" is doing a lot of work in marketing copy, so it helps to separate three different claims: - **Native desktop app.** A real installer (`.deb`, `.rpm`, `.AppImage`) that runs as a Linux application, not a browser tab. - **Automatic capture.** The app records which application and window you're in on its own ([active-window tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker)) rather than waiting for you to start a timer. - **Web access only.** The tool "works on Linux" in the sense that any website does: you open it in Chrome or Firefox. Useful, but it's not a Linux app, and it usually can't see your active window. Most tools that claim Linux support mean the third thing. That's fine for [manual timers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers), but it rules out the always-on, no-timer experience that makes [passive tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) worth using in the first place. Keep those three columns in mind as you read. They're where the real differences live. ## The commercial trackers that skip native Linux Four popular paid trackers are worth naming because people assume they cover Linux and they don't, at least not as a native desktop app. None of these is a bad tool; they're just built for Windows and macOS first. _Details below were checked September 5, 2026: platforms and plans change, so confirm on each vendor's own site before you commit: [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [Rize](https://rize.io/pricing), [Kimai](https://www.kimai.org/), [Solidtime](https://www.solidtime.io/pricing)._ | Tool | Native Linux desktop | Automatic tracking | Invoicing | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Toggl Track** | Deprecated, web app only | Windows & macOS desktop only | On paid plans | | **Harvest** | None, web app on Linux | No (manual timer only) | Built in | | **Timely** | None, web & mobile only | Windows & macOS only | Native | | **Rize** | None, "coming soon" | Yes, but not on Linux | None | A few specifics behind the grid: **Toggl Track** publishes a support article literally titled "Toggl Track desktop app for Linux (deprecated)." It once had a Linux desktop app; it no longer supports one. Linux users get the web app and browser extensions, and Toggl's own plan copy says automatic desktop activity tracking runs only on its Windows and macOS apps, so on Linux you're back to manual entry. The reporting is excellent, to be clear; it's the platform coverage that's the catch. See [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) for the side-by-side. **Harvest** is a strong invoicing tool with a clean manual timer, and its apps page lists Mac and Windows desktop apps plus browser extensions and mobile: no native Linux desktop download. On Linux you run Harvest in the browser. It's also worth being precise: Harvest is a start/stop timer and doesn't do automatic active-window capture on _any_ operating system, so the Linux gap is really a "no native app" gap, not a missing feature you'd otherwise get. Here's [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative). **Timely** runs an automatic, memory-based tracking engine, but only on Windows and macOS. Its official downloads page lists macOS, Windows, and mobile, with no native Linux build. Linux users once leaned on a browser-extension route that's no longer maintained, so there's no current native automatic tracking on Linux. **Rize** is candid about it. Its own pricing FAQ says Rize "is currently available for macOS and Windows" and that "support for Linux will be coming soon." It's an automatic tracker at heart, with paid plans starting around **$9.99/month billed annually** on a 7-day trial and no permanently free tier, but none of that reaches Linux yet (confirm the current tiers on [Rize's site](https://rize.io/pricing)). [BillNotch vs Rize](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) covers the difference, and [Rize alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives) covers the wider field. One automatic tracker does ship Linux: **Memtime** captures passively and offline, and its Linux app is real. The catch is that it works on X11 only, distributed as an AppImage, tested on GNOME, Plasma/KDE and XFCE with no Wayland claim, and it does no invoicing. [The Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) covers where it stops. The pattern: the tools that track automatically tend to skip Linux, and the one with great invoicing (Harvest) doesn't track automatically anywhere. ## The open-source Linux options that do exist Linux has a genuinely good open-source tracking ecosystem, better than the commercial picture suggests. The catch is that each tool covers part of the job, not all of it. | Tool | Runs on Linux | Tracking model | Invoicing | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **ActivityWatch** | Native desktop app | Automatic active-window | None | | **Kimai** | Browser (self-hosted/cloud) | Manual entry | Full: PDF & DOCX | | **Solidtime** | Browser (self-hosted/cloud) | Manual entry | PDF invoices (cloud premium) | **ActivityWatch** is the standout for automatic tracking on Linux. It's free, open source, and runs natively on Linux (plus Windows, macOS, and Android), recording the active application and window title out of the box, with all data stored locally. If you want to _see_ where your time goes on Linux, it's excellent. What it isn't is a billing tool: there's no invoicing, no billable rates, and no client-billing workflow. It's a personal time-analytics dashboard, and a good one, just not the thing you send a client. **Kimai** is the open-source answer for invoicing. It's AGPL-licensed, runs on Linux via the browser (self-hosted or cloud), and it genuinely generates invoices from timesheet data: configurable templates, PDF and DOCX output, billable-item filtering. So the common claim that "open-source Linux tools can't invoice" is simply false; Kimai can. The trade-off is that Kimai's tracking is manual. There's no automatic active-window capture, so accuracy still depends on you remembering to log. **Solidtime** is a newer, modern open-source tracker for freelancers and agencies, self-hosted or cloud, with billable rates and import from Toggl, Clockify, and CSV. In mid-2026 it also added invoice generation: PDF invoices (plus EU e-invoices) built straight from tracked time, billed as a premium feature on its cloud and an extension for self-hosted installs, so confirm the current details on [solidtime.io](https://www.solidtime.io/pricing). The remaining catch is the same as Kimai's: tracking is manual web-based entry, not a native desktop tracker with automatic active-window capture. It's also worth noting that not _every_ commercial tracker skips Linux. Clockify, for instance, ships a native Linux desktop app. The specific scarcity is the combination below, not Linux support in general. ## The real gap: automatic tracking plus invoicing on Linux Line the options up and a clear hole appears. On Linux you can get automatic tracking _or_ invoicing, but rarely both in one tool: - **Automatic + Linux, no invoicing:** ActivityWatch. - **Invoicing + Linux, but manual and web-only:** Kimai and Solidtime. - **Automatic + invoicing, but not on Linux:** Toggl and Timely. (Rize is automatic too, but skips both Linux and invoicing.) If you're a Linux-based freelancer or consultant who bills by the hour, that's the frustrating part. The tools that capture your time without a timer don't bill, and the tools that bill make you track by hand. You end up stitching two apps together, which is its own quiet tax on your week. Developers feel this sharpest, because a coding day is nothing but window-switching; [developer time tracking on Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-developers) covers capturing VS Code, terminal, and browser hours without an editor plugin. For more on why that matters, see [automatic time tracking software](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) and [freelance billing software](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software). This is the specific gap worth solving, and it's narrower than "Linux needs a tracker." Linux has trackers. What it's short on is one product that does **native automatic capture and invoicing together**. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is built around that exact combination. It ships native Linux installers (`.deb`, `.rpm`, and `.AppImage`) so it runs as a real Linux desktop app, not a browser tab; the [Linux time tracker page](https://billnotch.com/linux) breaks down packaging and Wayland support compositor by compositor, and the [help pages](https://billnotch.com/help) cover which package to take and how to connect it to an account. The desktop app records your active window automatically; there's no timer to start. Keyword rules and optional AI sort that activity into client projects, billable status is inherited per project, and the running billable total becomes a PDF invoice or a CSV export. A [Revenue Leak Finder](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) flags billable time you tracked but never put on an invoice: the kind of gap that otherwise only surfaces when you reconcile by hand, if at all. One honest architecture note: the native desktop app does the **automatic tracking** on Linux, while **invoicing** lives in the BillNotch dashboard. So it's a platform that tracks automatically on Linux and invoices, rather than a desktop app that itself emits PDFs. The pieces are connected, but they're not the same window. Two caveats worth stating plainly. First, automatic active-window capture is reliable on **X11**; Wayland's locked-down active-window access is a known limitation across every Linux tracker, BillNotch included, so it's worth testing on your setup rather than assuming flawless Wayland support. Second, BillNotch's flat plans (Pro at **$9/mo** for one seat, Team at **$12/seat/mo**, 14-day trial, no card) aren't the cheapest per seat in this category. Clockify and the open-source tools win on price. The case for BillNotch isn't "cheapest." It's that, on Linux specifically, it combines native automatic capture with invoicing in a way the established tools split apart. So the honest shortlist looks like this. If you only want to _see_ your time on Linux and don't bill, ActivityWatch is hard to beat and free. If you want open-source invoicing and don't mind logging manually, Kimai is solid. If you want automatic, no-timer tracking that flows straight into client invoices on Linux, that narrower job is what BillNotch is built for. You can compare the full plans on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, and the workflow rundown lives in [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software). Whichever you pick, decide first whether you need automatic capture, invoicing, or both. On Linux, that one choice does most of the narrowing for you. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Toggl Track work on Linux? Only in a browser. Toggl once shipped a Linux desktop app but publishes a support article marking it deprecated, so Linux users get the web app and browser extensions. Toggl's own plan copy says automatic desktop activity tracking runs on Windows and macOS only, so on Linux you are back to manual entry. ### Can open-source Linux time trackers generate invoices? Yes. Kimai is AGPL-licensed, runs in the browser, and generates invoices from timesheet data with PDF and DOCX output. Solidtime added PDF invoices and EU e-invoices as a premium feature in 2026. The claim that open-source Linux tools cannot invoice is false; the real trade-off is that both track manually rather than automatically. ### Which Linux tracker does automatic active-window capture? ActivityWatch is the standout: free, open source, and native on Linux, recording the active application and window title locally. Memtime also captures automatically on Linux, though on X11 only. BillNotch does automatic active-window capture on Linux too, and adds invoicing. None of the manual web tools, like Kimai or Solidtime, capture this way. ### Does automatic tracking work on Wayland? It is inconsistent. Wayland's locked-down active-window access is a known limitation across every Linux tracker, so automatic capture is most reliable on X11. Support depends on your compositor, and BillNotch's Linux page breaks it down compositor by compositor. Test it on your own setup rather than assuming flawless Wayland capture. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-best-practices [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Billable Hours Best Practices: 7 Rules That Pay Off # Billable Hours Best Practices: 7 Rules That Pay Off > Seven billable hours best practices that help freelancers keep more of what they earn: track in real time, bill the edges, round honestly, audit leaks. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 6 min read Updated September 6, 2026 The **billable hours best practices** that keep the most money in your pocket come down to one habit: capture every billable minute as it happens, draw a consistent line around what counts, and bill it before you forget. The freelancers who keep the most of what they earn rarely charge the most; they simply leak the least. Below are seven concrete rules. None require a rate conversation or a single extra hour of work, just a tighter system around the hours you're already putting in. ## 1\. Track in real time, not from memory Reconstructing your week on Friday is where money dies. You round down, you forget the 15-minute calls, you drop the quick fixes, and every omission is in the client's favour, never yours. Time logged after the fact reliably undercounts. Capture each task as it happens, or have something capture it for you. The goal is a record that already exists when you sit down to invoice, so billing is a _review_, not an act of memory. For the mechanics, see [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). ## 2\. Define billable vs. non-billable once, and never relitigate it Ambiguity costs you money every time you hesitate. Decide your rules up front and apply them on autopilot: - **Billable**: work that exists _because_ a specific client hired you: deliverables, their calls, in-scope revisions, project-specific research. - **Non-billable**: running your own business: sales, admin, learning, internal email. The test is one question: _would this task exist if this client hadn't hired me?_ If no, it's [non-billable](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). Write your rules down so "is this billable?" is never a fresh judgment call mid-week. ## 3\. Bill for the work around the work The deliverable is the obvious part. The money leaks in the edges: | Often unbilled | Bill it? | | --- | --- | | Client calls and meetings | Yes, it's their project | | Project-related email and Slack | Yes, in aggregate | | In-scope revisions and fixes | Yes | | Research specific to the engagement | Yes | | Deployment, setup, project admin | Yes, if the work requires it | A few client messages a day and a couple of calls a week add up to real hours over a month. Put a number on it: three unlogged 15-minute calls a week is 0.75 of an hour, so at a $90 rate that is $67.50 a week, or roughly $3,240 over 48 working weeks of billable time that never reached an invoice. If the task only exists because of the engagement, it belongs on the invoice. ## 4\. Round honestly, and in small units Rounding every task up to the nearest hour overbills clients and invites disputes; rounding everything down quietly donates your time. Pick a small increment (6 or 15 minutes) and apply it consistently in both directions. Small, even rounding is fair, defensible, and over a year it's the difference between a system clients trust and one they audit. A [billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) lists the billed hours for every minute at 6, 10, 15 and 30 minute rounding, so the unit you settle on is a lookup rather than mental math. ## 5\. Invoice on a fixed cadence The longer the gap between doing the work and billing it, the more detail evaporates and the more likely an entry is forgotten entirely. Bill weekly or every two weeks, not "whenever the project wraps." A tight cadence does three things at once: it shrinks the window for memory loss, it smooths your cash flow, and it surfaces scope creep while you can still raise it. Money you bill in seven days is money; money you bill in ninety is a hopeful estimate. ## 6\. Watch your utilization, not just your rate Two freelancers at the same rate earn very differently if one bills 30 hours a week and the other bills 20. What a realistic week and year actually look like is covered in [how many billable hours a year and week are realistic](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year). Your **utilization rate** (the share of worked hours you can actually invoice) is the lever most people ignore because raising it doesn't require a single awkward pricing conversation. Track it monthly. If it's drifting down, the problem is usually leaked billable time or creeping admin, both fixable from the inside. The full method is in [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate), and the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) turns a week of entries into a utilization and effective-rate figure. ## 7\. Audit for leaks every month Once a month, compare hours _worked_ against hours _billed_. The gap is your revenue leak: earned money that never made it onto an invoice. It hides in forgotten short tasks, untracked calls, scope you absorbed quietly, and time you wrote off because you weren't sure it counted. Unlike a client who refuses to pay, a leak is invisible: the work shipped, the money was earned, and you never even knew to miss it. That's what makes it the most expensive number you're not looking at. For where it comes from and how to plug it, see [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) and how to [stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours). ## A billable hours checklist to keep by your desk Print this and run it at month end. Each row is one of the seven rules turned into a yes-or-no you can actually check off. | Check | The habit behind it | | --- | --- | | ☐ Every task logged as it happened, not from memory | Real-time capture | | ☐ Billable vs non-billable decided by one written rule | No mid-week judgment calls | | ☐ Calls, email and admin billed where the work required them | Bill the edges | | ☐ Time rounded to a small unit, in both directions | Honest rounding | | ☐ Invoices sent weekly or biweekly, not at project end | Fixed cadence | | ☐ Utilization rate checked this month | Watch the ratio, not just the rate | | ☐ Hours worked compared against hours billed | Monthly leak audit | If a row is still unchecked at month end, that is where money is most likely leaking, and the rule it maps to is the one to tighten first. ## Putting it together These seven rules share one engine: a complete, real-time record of your time that you trust enough to bill from directly. Get that, and honest rounding, fixed invoicing, utilization, and leak-hunting all fall out of it naturally. That's the case for passive tracking. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your active window in the background and uses AI to sort it into client projects, so the record already exists when you invoice, and its Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable time you'd otherwise write off, turning these best practices from a discipline you have to maintain into a default that maintains itself. If you are still choosing the tool, [six billable hours trackers compared](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker) sorts the field on the criteria that decide whether hours reach an invoice. If you bill in tenths of an hour, [time tracking software for lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers) applies these same rules to matters. ## FAQ ### What are the most important billable hours best practices? Capture time as you work rather than from memory, define billable versus non-billable once and apply it consistently, bill the small tasks around the deliverable, round in small units both ways, invoice on a fixed weekly or biweekly cadence, watch your utilization rate, and audit hours worked against hours billed every month. ### How do you avoid losing billable hours? Losses come from reconstruction and delay. The fix is a complete, real-time record you can bill straight from, plus a short billing cadence so entries stay fresh. A monthly comparison of hours worked to hours billed surfaces the gap. Passive capture removes the step where you forget to start a timer in the first place. ### What is a good billable utilization rate for freelancers? There is no measured freelance benchmark, but 60 to 75 percent is a common working range once you account for sales, admin and learning. Below 50 percent, too much time is non-billable or leaking. Near 100 percent almost always means non-billable time is not being tracked, not that it does not exist. ### How often should a freelancer invoice? Weekly or every two weeks beats waiting for a project to wrap. A tight cadence shrinks the window for memory loss, smooths cash flow, and surfaces scope creep while you can still raise it. The longer the gap between doing the work and billing it, the more detail evaporates and the more entries get forgotten. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Billable Hours Tracker: 6 Compared on 5 Criteria # Billable Hours Tracker: 6 Compared on 5 Criteria > How we evaluated six billable hours trackers: on capture, invoicing, pricing shape, platforms and privacy, plus the trade-off each one makes. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 26, 2026 9 min read Updated September 6, 2026 A **billable hours tracker** is a narrower thing than a time tracker. A time tracker records duration. A billable hours tracker has to do three more jobs: know which of those hours a client actually owes you for, attach a rate to them, and get them onto an invoice without you retyping anything. Plenty of tools claim all four steps on their homepage. Fewer do the last two well, and the gap between "tracks time" and "gets you paid for it" is where most of the frustration in this category lives. The trouble with picking one is that every vendor's feature list looks identical from the outside. So rather than open with a ranking, this guide opens with the criteria: the five questions that actually separate these tools once you're using one every day, and then applies them to six options. Where a tool is the wrong choice, it says so. One disclosure up front: BillNotch is our own product: [who builds it and why](https://billnotch.com/about) is a separate page you can read before deciding how much weight to give our section. It's on the list because it fits a specific case, it's judged on the same five criteria as everything else, and the section on it names the two reasons you might pick something else instead. ## What actually separates these trackers in daily use? Five criteria, in the order they tend to matter once the novelty of a new tool wears off. **1\. How time gets captured.** There are three models and they are not interchangeable. A **manual timer** you start and stop. An **activity log** the app records in the background and you review and approve into entries. And **automatic capture**, where the app records what you worked on and sorts it into projects itself. The more the model leans on your memory, the more hours leak out of it, and the hours most likely to go missing are the short, scattered ones: the five-minute reply, the quick review, the call that ran long. If forgotten timers are your actual problem, swapping one manual timer for another won't fix it. [How to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) covers why the gap opens in the first place. **2\. Where invoicing lives.** This is the criterion people underweight and later regret. There are three real answers: a **native invoice** generated from your billable total; a **report export** you can save as a PDF but that isn't an invoice the tool keeps track of; or **nothing**, and you rebuild the numbers in separate billing software. The closer invoicing sits to capture, the fewer hours are lost in the handoff, and the fewer transcription errors end up in front of a client. **3\. The shape of the price, not just the number.** Flat pricing is predictable. Per-seat pricing scales with headcount, which is fair and easy to forecast. Usage-based pricing (where invoices, projects, or clients each add to the bill) can be cheaper at small scale and much harder to predict as your roster grows. Compare the shape before the sticker. **4\. Platform coverage.** Web works everywhere; a desktop app is what makes automatic capture possible at all. If you're on **Linux**, the field narrows sharply. Most of this category ships Windows and macOS only. **5\. What leaves your machine.** A tool that watches your desktop is a tool you should ask questions of. What does it record, what does it upload, where is it processed, and can you turn parts of it off per device? Two things this guide deliberately does **not** score: integration depth (genuinely important, but entirely dependent on which other tools you run) and mobile apps (most billable desk work isn't done on a phone). Prices and plan limits in this category move often. Treat every number below as a map, not a quote. ## The six, side by side _Prices checked September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's pricing page before you commit._ | Tool | How it captures | Invoicing | Paid plans start at | Platforms | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Toggl Track | Activity log + manual timer | Report export, no invoices | $9/user/mo annual (Starter) | Windows, macOS | | Harvest | Manual timer | Native, on every plan | $9/seat/mo annual + usage fees | Windows, macOS | | Clockify | Manual timer | Native, Standard tier up | $3.99/seat/mo annual (Basic) | Windows, macOS, Linux, web | | TimeCamp | Automatic desktop activity | Native, lowest paid tier | about $3.99/user/mo (Starter) | Windows, macOS, Linux, web | | My Hours | Manual timer | Native, paid plans | about $4/user/mo annual (Basic) | Web | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window + AI sorting | Native PDF + CSV | $9/mo flat (Pro), $12/seat (Team) | Windows, macOS, Linux | ### Toggl Track The most polished product in the group and the one with the deepest reporting. Its desktop apps record an activity log in the background that you review and approve into entries, so it sits between a manual timer and true automatic capture, and it does not sort your activity into client projects for you. The catch for billing specifically: **Toggl does not generate invoices.** You can export a report as a PDF, but those exports aren't stored as invoices in the app and there's no billing module behind them. Billable rates require the paid Starter plan ($9 per user per month billed annually, about $10 monthly); the free plan covers up to five users but can't mark time billable at all. Premium is $14 per user per month for the first year, then $18. No Linux desktop app. **Pick it if** reporting is what you're buying and invoicing already lives elsewhere. The full breakdown is in [BillNotch vs Toggl Track](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). ### Harvest The strongest billing heritage on this list, and the only tool here that includes invoicing on a **$0 plan**: one seat and two projects, but within those limits you get tracking and invoicing together, which is unusual. Paid plans are Teams at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and Enterprise at $14 per seat annually. The thing to understand before you commit is structural: after Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in July 2025, it added **usage-based fees on top of the per-seat rate** for things like additional invoices, projects, and clients. Worth being precise about this, because it's often reported wrong. The per-seat rate itself didn't rise. What changed is that the total is now metered, which makes it harder to forecast as your client list grows. Capture is a plain manual timer; no Linux. [What Harvest costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) has the detail, and [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) has the side-by-side. ### Clockify The value pick, and it isn't close. Per-seat annual rates run **Basic $3.99, Standard $5.49, Pro $7.99, Enterprise $11.99**, with monthly billing higher. Note where invoicing starts: **Standard ($5.49) is the first tier that includes it**. Free and Basic don't, and billable rates need at least Basic. In 2026 the free plan was capped at five users, down from an earlier uncapped free tier, and invoicing plus CSV/Excel export moved to paid; [Clockify's 2026 free plan changes](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026) covers exactly what moved. Capture is a manual timer at heart. It does ship a real Linux build, which is rare here. **Pick it if** budget is the binding constraint or you're standardizing a larger team, on price per seat, nothing else on this list competes. ### TimeCamp The interesting middle. Its free plan includes **unlimited users** and unlimited projects: uncapped where Clockify now stops at five, and it does automatic tracking through a desktop app that records computer and app activity, including a Linux build. Invoicing is not free, but it starts on the lowest paid tier (Starter, around $3.99 per user per month annually), which makes it the cheapest paid invoicing in this comparison. Confirm the current plan names and prices directly, as this lineup has changed. **Pick it if** you need free automatic tracking for more than five people, or you want automatic capture at the lowest possible paid price. ### My Hours The simplest tool here, and the one that asks the least of you. The free plan covers up to five users with core tracking, unlimited projects and clients, and basic reporting. Invoicing is paid-only: Basic from about $4 per user per month annually, Pro from about $8. It's a manual tracker with no automatic capture and no desktop tracking, so it does nothing about forgotten timers. **Pick it if** you already log hours reliably and want tidy, low-cost project-and-client tracking without a learning curve. ### BillNotch Ours, judged on the same five criteria. Capture is **automatic active-window recording** on Windows, macOS, and Linux with no timer to start; keyword rules plus optional AI sort that activity into client projects, and anything the tracker is unsure about waits as a draft on a review screen rather than being assigned silently. Billable status is inherited per project, so the total is right without per-entry tagging, and it becomes a native **PDF invoice or CSV export**. A Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) that separate tracking and billing tools structurally cannot see. Pricing is flat with no usage fees: Pro $9/month for one seat, Team $12/seat/month, 14-day trial, no card. On privacy, window titles can stay on-device per machine, each device connects with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. There's a fuller walkthrough on the [automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) page. Two honest reasons to pick something else. **Price:** $9 is more than Clockify's $3.99 Basic and there is no free tier. If you want a $0 plan, Clockify or TimeCamp is the answer, not this. **Capture style:** always-on recording is the heaviest model on this list, and if you'd rather decide yourself when the clock is running, a manual timer will feel better no matter how much it costs you in forgotten hours. ## Which billable hours tracker fits your situation? Sort yourself by the constraint that's real, not the feature list that's appealing. - **You want a free plan.** TimeCamp for uncapped free users and automatic capture; Clockify's free tier for up to five users with tracking only; Harvest's free tier if the thing you need free is _invoicing_ and one seat is enough. - **Budget is the hard limit.** Clockify. Add Standard if you need invoicing inside it. - **Forgotten timers are the problem.** Automatic capture: TimeCamp if price leads, BillNotch if you want the categorization and the invoice at the end of it. - **You're on Linux.** Clockify, TimeCamp, or BillNotch. That's the list. - **Reporting depth matters most.** Toggl Track, with billing handled elsewhere. - **You want tracking and invoicing in one place.** Harvest or BillNotch: a manual timer with mature invoicing, or automatic capture with invoicing built on top. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between a time tracker and a billable hours tracker? A time tracker records duration. A billable hours tracker does three more jobs: it works out which hours a client owes you for, attaches a rate to them, and gets them onto an invoice without retyping. Plenty of tools claim all four steps; fewer handle the last two well, which is where the frustration lives. ### Which billable hours trackers run on Linux? The list is short. Among the tools compared here, Clockify, TimeCamp, and BillNotch ship a native Linux build. Toggl Track, Harvest, and My Hours do not, so on Linux you would be on a web app. If Linux is your daily machine, filter by native support before comparing anything else. ### What is the cheapest billable hours tracker with invoicing? On price, Clockify's Standard tier at $5.49 per seat per month annually is the cheapest that includes invoicing, and TimeCamp's Starter is close at around $3.99. Harvest is the only tool here that invoices on a $0 plan, capped at one seat and two projects. Match the tier that holds invoicing, not the headline rate. ### Do billable hours trackers capture time automatically? Some do. Automatic capture records what you worked on and sorts it into projects without a timer, which is what TimeCamp and BillNotch do. Toggl Track keeps an activity log you review, and Harvest, Clockify, and My Hours rely on a manual timer. If forgotten timers are your problem, a manual tool will not fix it. ## The bottom line There is no best billable hours tracker, only the best match for the way your hours currently go missing. If they go missing because you forget to start something, buy a different capture model. If they go missing between the tracker and the invoice, buy a tool that holds both. If neither is your problem and you just want the cheapest reliable log, the cheapest reliable log is the right purchase. Whatever you land on, the two decisions that outlast every feature comparison are the capture model and the price shape. Those are the ones you can't easily undo six months in. And before you shop at all, it's worth knowing your own numbers: [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) covers the arithmetic, the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) prices a week from your entries in a minute, the [billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) shows what each minute bills once you round to tenths or quarter hours, and [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) covers the harder question of what you should have been charging for in the first place. If your hours go missing between matters, [time tracking software for lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers) captures them contemporaneously and bills in tenths. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Utilization Rate Formula: Billable Benchmarks Explained # Utilization Rate Formula: Billable Benchmarks Explained > The utilization rate formula is billable hours over hours worked. The math, a worked example, healthy benchmarks, and how to lift your number. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 6 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Billable utilization rate** is the share of your working hours that you can actually bill to clients. The **utilization rate formula** is one short division: billable hours over the hours you worked, times 100. If you work 40 hours in a week and 28 of them are billable, your utilization rate is 70%. It's the single clearest measure of how much of your time turns into income, and for most freelancers, it's lower than they'd guess. It is also the input the [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) divides by, so getting it right moves the rate directly. ## The billable utilization rate formula The formula is simple: > **Billable utilization rate = (billable hours ÷ total hours worked) × 100** A worked example: - Total hours worked this week: **45** - Billable hours (client work you can invoice): **31.5** - Utilization rate = (31.5 ÷ 45) × 100 = **70%** The other 30% (13.5 hours) went to admin, sales calls, invoicing, email, and the unpaid edges of running your business. That time is real and often necessary; it just doesn't bill. A quick note on the denominator: some people calculate utilization against a fixed "available" capacity (say, a 40-hour week) rather than hours actually worked. Both are valid. Just pick one and stay consistent, because the two answers can differ a lot if you regularly work more than your nominal week. ## Working the utilization rate formula step by step Run the numbers once and the formula stops being abstract. Take a week where you sat at your desk for 42 hours and 27 of them were client work you can invoice. 1. **Add up total hours worked.** Everything at the desk, billable and not. Here, 42. 2. **Add up billable hours.** Only the hours tied to a paying client. Here, 27. 3. **Divide, then multiply by 100.** 27 ÷ 42 = 0.643, times 100 = **64.3%**. | Week | Total hours | Billable hours | Utilization | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Light admin week | 40 | 30 | 75% | | Typical week | 42 | 27 | 64% | | Heavy sales week | 44 | 22 | 50% | The three weeks share a rate and a person; only the split between billable and non-billable moved. That is the whole point of the ratio: it catches the weeks that felt busy but billed thin, the ones a rate alone can never show you. Track four of these in a row and the average is your real utilization, not the flattering number a single strong week suggests. ## What's a good utilization rate? There's no universal target, and no study measures freelancers specifically. The closest hard numbers come from firms: [SPI Research](https://spiresearch.com/)'s [2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark](https://get.kantata.com/rs/677-LEJ-696/images/2025-ps-maturity-benchmark.pdf) (PDF, February 2025) put average billable utilization at **68.9% for 2024** against a 75% optimal threshold, while Parakeeto's agency guidance puts healthy [agency-wide net utilization](https://www.parakeeto.com/blog/resource-utilization-capacity-planning-for-marketing-agency-2/) at **50 to 60%** (2021). Read the bands below as reference points for solo and small-team service work, not as measured benchmarks: | Utilization | What it usually means | | --- | --- | | **Below 50%** | A lot of time is going to non-billable work: sales, admin, or unbilled client work (a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak)). | | **60 to 75%** | A healthy, sustainable range for most freelancers once you account for running the business. | | **80%+** | High. Great for income, but watch for burnout and zero slack for sales or growth. | | **Near 100%** | Almost always a measurement error: non-billable time isn't being tracked, not that it doesn't exist. | The goal isn't to maximize the number to 100%. Some non-billable time (sales, learning, admin) is what keeps the business alive. The goal is to know your real number and make sure it's a choice, not an accident. ## Why utilization matters more than your rate Two freelancers charge the same $100/hour. One [bills 30 hours a week](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year); the other bills 20. The first earns 50% more for the same hourly rate, purely on utilization. Raising your rate is hard and client-dependent. Raising your utilization is mostly an internal, operational fix: track more accurately, cut low-value non-billable work, and stop leaking billable hours. That's why utilization is the lever most freelancers underuse. It doesn't require a single uncomfortable rate conversation. ## How to measure (and improve) your utilization You can't improve a number you don't measure, and utilization is notoriously hard to measure by hand, because the billable hours you forget to log inflate your rate artificially (your utilization looks higher than it is) while the non-billable time you don't track hides where it's going. To get an honest number: 1. **Track all your time, not just billable time.** Automatic, [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) captures the whole day (billable and non-billable) without you starting a timer. 2. **Tag work as billable or not.** See [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) for what counts. 3. **Divide and watch the trend.** One week is noise; the trend over a month tells you whether your utilization is drifting. The [utilization rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) turns a single week's billable and worked hours into the share and the effective rate in one step. 4. **Attack the biggest non-billable bucket.** Automate or batch it: invoicing, status updates, and reporting are common culprits, and tools that generate invoices from your tracked time remove one of them entirely. BillNotch records your full working day automatically and inherits billable status from the project, so your utilization rate falls out of data you didn't have to assemble by hand. From there, [calculating your billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) and spotting leaks is the easy part. ## Key takeaways - Utilization rate = billable hours ÷ total hours worked. - 60 to 75% is a common working target for freelancers rather than a measured benchmark; near-100% means you're not tracking non-billable time. - It's a bigger income lever than [your hourly rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer), and easier to move. - An honest number requires tracking _all_ your time, which is exactly what automatic tracking is for. Accountants track realization the same way, billed hours over worked hours, and [time tracking software for accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants) captures the worked side automatically so the ratio is real rather than reconstructed. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a good billable utilization rate? There is no universal target, and no study measures freelancers specifically. Firm benchmarks put average billable utilization near 69 percent against a 75 percent optimal threshold. For solo and small-team work, 60 to 75 percent is a common sustainable range once you account for sales, admin, and learning. Near 100 percent usually means non-billable time is not being tracked. ### What is the difference between utilization and billability? Utilization is the share of your worked hours that end up billable: billable hours divided by total hours worked. Billability usually describes whether a role or a person is expected to bill at all. Utilization is the number you track and move; it measures how much of your time actually turns into invoiceable work. ### How do you calculate utilization rate? Divide billable hours by total hours worked, then multiply by 100. If you work 40 hours and 28 are billable, utilization is 70 percent. Pick one denominator, either hours actually worked or a fixed available capacity, and stay consistent, because the two answers diverge when you regularly work more than your nominal week. ### Why does utilization matter more than your hourly rate? Two freelancers at the same rate earn very differently if one bills 30 hours a week and the other 20. Raising your rate is hard and client-dependent; raising utilization is an internal fix: track more accurately, cut low-value non-billable work, and stop leaking billable hours. It needs no uncomfortable pricing conversation. Next: [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) · [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Billable vs Non-Billable Hours: What Actually Counts # Billable vs Non-Billable Hours: What Actually Counts > Billable vs non-billable hours explained: what counts, the grey areas to settle up front, and how to track both without the overhead. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Billable hours** are the time you spend on work a client agreed to pay for. **Non-billable hours** are everything else you do to run your business, work that's real and often necessary, but that no client is paying for directly. Knowing which is which, consistently, is the foundation of accurate invoicing and a healthy [utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). The [billable-hour convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billable_hours) comes from legal and professional-services billing, but the same line applies to any freelancer who invoices by the hour. ## What counts as billable If the work exists _because a specific client hired you_ and falls within the scope you agreed, it's billable. That's broader than "heads-down time on the deliverable." It typically includes: - The core deliverable work (design, code, writing, strategy) - Calls, meetings, and project-related messages with the client - Research and reading specific to the engagement - Revisions and post-delivery fixes within scope - Setup, deployment, and project admin the work genuinely requires The test is simple: _would this task exist if this client hadn't hired me?_ If no, it's billable. ## What's non-billable Non-billable time keeps your business running but isn't tied to a paying engagement: - Sales: proposals, discovery calls with leads, pitching - Your own admin: invoicing, bookkeeping, email triage - Marketing: your site, content, social - Learning and skill development - Internal tools, planning, and breaks Non-billable doesn't mean worthless. Sales and learning are what create future billable work. It just doesn't go on a client's invoice. ## The grey areas (decide these up front) A few categories cause most billing disputes. Settle them in your agreement before the work starts, not on invoice day: - **Scope creep.** "Quick" extra requests are billable, but only if you flagged them as such. Re-quote or note them when they happen. - **Revisions.** Fixed-scope projects often include a set number of revision rounds; beyond that is billable. - **Travel.** Often billable, often at a reduced rate. Agree the policy in advance. - **Rework from your own error.** Generally non-billable. You don't charge a client to fix your mistake. - **Communication.** A short check-in is usually billable; a long async thread definitely is. Don't let it slip into "free." ## Billable, non-billable, or depends: 20 common activities Here is where 20 everyday activities usually fall. Billable and non-billable are the clear cases; the "depends" rows are the ones to pin down in your agreement before the work starts, not on invoice day. | Activity | Class | The rule | | --- | --- | --- | | Core deliverable work | Billable | The work the client hired you to produce. | | Client kickoff or status call | Billable | Time spent on the client's project, on a call or off. | | Reading the brief or files | Billable | Research tied to this specific engagement. | | In-scope revisions | Billable | Inside the revision rounds your agreement covers. | | Deployment, handoff, setup | Billable | Work the deliverable genuinely requires to ship. | | Project messages and threads | Billable | Substantial threads about the work count; a one-line "thanks" is not worth logging. | | Scope creep or extra requests | Depends | Billable only if you flag it and re-quote before doing it, never after. | | Travel to a client | Depends | Often billable, sometimes at a reduced rate; agree the policy before the trip. | | Learning a tool for the project | Depends | Billable if the client required that tool, non-billable if it is general upskilling. | | Fixing a bug after delivery | Depends | In-scope warranty work is non-billable; a new defect outside scope is billable. | | Onboarding a subcontractor | Depends | Billable if the client's project needs it and scope allows, otherwise overhead. | | Waiting on client feedback | Depends | Billable only if your agreement bills reserved or standby time; most do not. | | Rework from your own mistake | Non-billable | You do not charge a client to fix your error. | | Writing proposals and pitches | Non-billable | Sales time, spent before any contract exists. | | Discovery calls with leads | Non-billable | Prospecting, not a paid engagement. | | Invoicing and bookkeeping | Non-billable | Your own admin, not the client's work. | | Email triage and inbox | Non-billable | General upkeep, unless a thread is clearly project work. | | Marketing your own business | Non-billable | Building future work, not current client work. | | Internal planning and tooling | Non-billable | Running the business, on your own account. | | Skill development and courses | Non-billable | General learning that outlives any one client. | The pattern is simple: if a task exists only because a specific client hired you and sits inside the scope you agreed, it bills. What the "depends" rows share is a decision you can make in advance, in the agreement, instead of arguing it after the work is done. ## Why the split matters Tracking the line between billable and non-billable does three things at once: 1. **Accurate invoices.** You bill everything billable (no [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak)) and nothing that isn't (no trust-eroding over-billing). 2. **A real utilization number.** Billable ÷ total only means something if both are tracked. See [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate), or work it out from your own hours and rate with the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator). 3. **Smarter decisions.** When you can see how much time sales or admin actually eats, you know what to automate, delegate, or [price into your rates](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer). ## How to reduce non-billable hours Non-billable time is never going to zero, and it should not. Sales and learning are what create the next engagement. The goal is to stop the _avoidable_ non-billable work from eating hours you could bill. - **Batch the admin.** Do invoicing, bookkeeping, and status updates in one weekly block instead of scattering them through billable time. Switching out of client work and back costs more than the task itself. - **Templatize the repeat work.** Proposals, onboarding emails, and reports that start from a saved template take minutes instead of an afternoon. - **Qualify leads faster.** A short, structured discovery step keeps you from pouring unpaid hours into prospects who were never going to sign. - **Automate what a tool can do.** Invoices generated from tracked time remove one of the largest recurring non-billable buckets outright. - **Raise your rate so you sell less.** Higher-value work means fewer clients to win and service for the same income, which cuts sales and admin overhead directly. - **Bill communication honestly.** A project call or a substantial thread is billable work; only genuinely trivial one-liners are not. Letting real project communication drift into "free" is one of the quietest non-billable leaks there is. - **Measure it first.** You cannot cut a bucket you cannot see. Capturing the whole day, billable and not, shows exactly where the non-billable hours go, so you attack the biggest one instead of guessing. ## How to track both without the overhead The friction is that non-billable time is the time you're _least_ likely to log. You're not going to start a timer for invoicing or email. So it goes uncounted, your utilization looks artificially high, and you never see where the day actually goes. The fix is to capture the whole day automatically, then let billable status come from the project rather than a per-task decision: - [Passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records every app and document, billable or not, with no timer. - Projects carry the billable flag, so a client project is billable and your "admin" project isn't, automatically. - The billable total is ready to invoice; the non-billable total tells you the true cost of running the business. That's how BillNotch handles it: track everything automatically, inherit billable from the project, and [calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) without sorting entries by hand. See it [for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers), or read [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) and [billable hours best practices](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-best-practices). Accountants who split this by client and engagement can see the firm version in [time tracking software for accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants). ## Frequently asked questions ### Are meetings billable hours? Client meetings and calls about their project are billable: the time exists because that client hired you. A short check-in usually bills, and a substantial thread bills in aggregate. Internal meetings, sales calls with leads, and your own planning are non-billable, because no client is paying for them directly. ### Is travel time billable? Often, and frequently at a reduced rate, but it is a grey area you should settle in the agreement before the trip rather than on invoice day. Some clients expect to pay for travel to their site; others do not. Agreeing the policy in advance is what keeps it from becoming a dispute later. ### Is email billable? Project email and messages tied to a specific engagement are billable, counted in aggregate rather than logged one line at a time. A one-line acknowledgement is not worth logging. Your own inbox triage and general upkeep are non-billable. The test is whether the message exists because of the client's project or because you run a business. ### Is time spent learning a tool billable? It depends. If the client required a specific tool for their project, the time to learn it is usually billable. If it is general upskilling that outlives any one client, it is non-billable business investment. Decide which case applies up front, because this is one of the grey areas that causes billing disputes. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026 [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Clockify Free Plan Changes in 2026: What to Know # Clockify Free Plan Changes in 2026: What to Know > Clockify capped its free plan at 5 users in 2026 and moved invoicing and exports to paid. What actually changed, who’s affected, and your options. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 29, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 If you rely on the **Clockify free plan**, the rules changed in 2026. In April, Clockify (owned by CAKE.com) announced a set of changes to its Free plan that took effect around mid-June, and the headline is that the previously unlimited free team is now capped. Free is still free, with no time limit and no credit card, but the shape of what you get for $0 is narrower than it was. Here is what actually changed, what stayed the same, and how to think about it if your billing workflow lived on the free tier. ## What actually changed on the free plan Two things moved. First, the free team is now **capped at 5 active users**. It used to have no limit on headcount. Second, several features that used to sit on Free moved up to the paid plans. Most notably for anyone who billed clients out of Clockify, that list includes **billable rates, invoicing, and CSV/Excel export**, along with kiosk mode, shared reports, and project estimates. The free API was also tightened to roughly **30 requests per hour** plus three webhooks, which matters if you had scripts or integrations pulling data automatically. | Feature | Before (free) | After (free) | | --- | --- | --- | | Team size | Unlimited users | Up to 5 active users | | Time tracking | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Projects and tasks | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Billable rates | Included | Paid plans only | | Invoicing | Included | Paid plans only | | CSV / Excel export | Included | Paid plans only | | Kiosk, shared reports, estimates | Included | Paid plans only | | API access | Higher limit | ~30 requests/hour + 3 webhooks | | Price | $0 | $0 | _Prices checked September 5, 2026: confirm current limits on [Clockify's pricing page](https://clockify.me/pricing)._ The change drew a documented reaction on Clockify's own community forum, where a [thread titled "Death of the free plan"](https://forum.clockify.me/t/death-of-the-free-plan/10006) collected complaints from long-time free users in June 2026. The frustration is mostly from people who had built a billing or reporting routine on features that are now behind a paywall. ## What stayed free It is worth being precise here, because "death of the free plan" overstates it. Free still costs **$0**, with no time limit and no credit card. For up to five users it keeps **unlimited time tracking** and **unlimited projects and tasks**. Those were not capped, and that matters if your main need is simply recording hours. Clockify also still ships native desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux, which is uncommon in this category, and its free, opt-in **Auto tracker** (a private feature that passively records the apps and websites you use, alongside the manual timer) is unchanged and still free. So if you are a small team that tracks time and does not invoice from Clockify, the free plan remains genuinely useful. The tracking core is intact, and the tool is still well built. ## Who this affects The change lands hardest in two places. **Teams over five people** who ran on the free plan now have to either trim to five active users or move to a paid plan. There is no longer a free option for a larger headcount, so a six-person studio that used Clockify precisely because it scaled to any size for $0 is now making a different decision. **Anyone who billed clients on the free tier** is the other group. If your routine was track time, mark it billable, then export a CSV or generate an invoice, every step after tracking now needs a paid plan. That is the workflow the forum thread is mostly about. A solo freelancer who used Free because it included billable rates and invoicing is now looking at a subscription to keep doing what they did last month. If you only ever tracked time and read it in the dashboard, you will likely notice nothing. ## Your options There are three honest paths, and the right one depends on which group you are in. **Stay on Clockify free.** If you are at or below five users and you do not invoice from the tool, nothing about your day changes. This is the simplest answer and, for a lot of people, the correct one. **Pay for Clockify.** If you want the invoicing, exports, and billable rates back, the paid plans are inexpensive and roughly unchanged: **Basic $3.99, Standard $5.49, Pro $7.99, and Enterprise $11.99** per user per month on annual billing, a little higher month to month. For a tight budget, upgrading in place is often cheaper than switching, and you keep everything you already know. **Switch tools.** If the change made you reconsider the whole setup (especially if invoicing was the feature you lost) it is a reasonable moment to look at alternatives that bundle capture and billing differently. We keep a fuller list in [best Clockify alternatives for 2026](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026), plus a broader one in [best Harvest alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026), and many of the same trade-offs apply here. If Toggl is the other tool you are weighing, [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) puts the two side by side. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is one option in that third direction, and it is worth being straight about the trade-off. On price, BillNotch is **not** cheaper than Clockify: Pro is $9/mo for one seat against Clockify's $3.99 Basic. If sticker price is the deciding factor, Clockify wins that comparison, even after this change. What BillNotch offers instead is a different shape of workflow for the people who specifically lost free invoicing. Its desktop app runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and records your active window automatically: there is no timer to start. Keyword rules, with optional AI for the fuzzy cases, sort that activity into **client projects**, and billable status is inherited per project. This is the part that differs from Clockify's Auto tracker: that feature logs your activity privately for your own review, but it does not categorize time into billable client projects or turn it into an invoice. In BillNotch the billable total feeds a **PDF invoice or a CSV export** directly, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags time you tracked but never billed. If that last step is the one you just lost, [how to invoice from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) walks through what it looks like end to end. On privacy, window titles can stay on the device, each device connects with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. Pricing is flat: Pro is $9/mo for one seat and Team is $12/seat/mo, with a 14-day trial and no card. The full breakdown is on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page. The honest framing: BillNotch is not the budget pick, and it is not trying to be. It fits the person who lost free invoicing and wants capture and invoicing in one tool rather than two. If that is not you, Clockify's free or Basic plan is a fine place to stay. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Clockify still free in 2026? Yes. Clockify's free plan still costs $0 with no time limit and no credit card, and it keeps unlimited time tracking and unlimited projects. The change capped the free team at five active users and moved billable rates, invoicing, and CSV export to paid plans. If you only track hours, the free tier is still useful. ### How many users does the Clockify free plan allow now? Up to five active users: the owner plus the first four invitees. Before the 2026 change the free plan had no headcount limit. Teams over five now have to trim to five active users or move to a paid plan, which is the change that lands hardest on larger groups that ran on the free tier. ### What did Clockify move to paid plans? Billable rates, invoicing, CSV and Excel export, shared reports, project estimates, and kiosk mode all shifted from the free plan to paid tiers. The free API was also tightened to about 30 requests per hour plus three webhooks. Invoicing now needs the Standard plan at $5.49 per user per month annually, and billable rates need Basic at $3.99. ### What are the alternatives if I lost free invoicing on Clockify? Three honest paths. Stay on Clockify free if you are at or below five users and do not invoice. Pay for Clockify's Basic or Standard tier to get invoicing back cheaply. Or switch to a tool that bundles capture and billing differently, such as BillNotch, which tracks automatically and invoices, though it is not the budget pick. ## The bottom line The Clockify free plan is narrower than it was, but it is not gone: for five or fewer users who only need to track time, it is still a strong $0 option, and Clockify remains a well-built tool. The squeeze is real only if you relied on the features that moved to paid, especially invoicing and exports. So sort yourself into a group first. Track-only and small? Stay free. Want invoicing back on a budget? Clockify's paid plans are cheap and familiar. Lost the billing workflow and want capture plus invoicing in one place? That is where a tool like BillNotch is aimed. See [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) for the side-by-side, [the Clockify alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) for what the move actually changes day to day, and the rundown [for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) if that is how you bill. Whichever way you go, confirm the current numbers on Clockify's own pricing page first. These details shift, and the right call depends on how you actually work. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Freelance Billing Software: What to Look For Before You Buy # Freelance Billing Software: What to Look For Before You Buy > Freelance billing software, judged on what matters: automatic capture, billable handling, native PDF invoices, catching unbilled time, and pricing. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Good **freelance billing software** does more than print invoices. It captures the time those invoices are built on, keeps billable and non-billable hours straight, and turns the total into a clean PDF without you rebuilding it elsewhere. Before you buy, judge any tool against the criteria below rather than its feature list, because the marketing page and the day-to-day rarely match. The trap is picking on price or polish and discovering the friction later: the timer you keep forgetting, the export-then-rebuild dance, the hours that never made it onto a bill. A short, honest checklist saves you a migration six weeks in. ## Does it capture time automatically? Start here, because everything downstream depends on it. Billing software is only as accurate as the hours feeding it, and the hours are only complete if capturing them doesn't rely on your memory. There are three broad approaches: - **Manual timers**: you start and stop them. Accurate when you're disciplined, leaky when you're not. - **Activity-review / "auto" tracking**: the tool records activity for you to review and assign later. - **Fully automatic**: it records your active window in the background and categorizes it into projects, no timer involved. If you bill multiple clients and switch tasks often, lean toward automatic capture. The five-minute reply and the quick review are exactly the work manual timers miss, and they add up over a month. ## Does it separate billable from non-billable cleanly? An invoice should contain everything billable and nothing that isn't. That sounds obvious; it's where money quietly leaks in both directions: unbilled work you did, and over-billed time that erodes client trust. The good setups let billable status come from the **project** rather than a per-entry decision: a client project is billable, your "admin" project isn't, and entries inherit that automatically. Ask how a tool draws that line, and whether it forces you to tag every entry by hand. For the underlying distinction, see [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours); for turning the result into a number, [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours). ## Does it produce a native PDF invoice? A PDF is what clients expect and what files and prints cleanly. The question is whether the tool [generates one directly from your tracked total](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), or whether you export a CSV and rebuild the invoice in another app. A native invoice should carry, at minimum: | Field | Why it matters | | --- | --- | | Unique number | Your records and their accounts payable both need it | | Both parties | Your details and the client's legal billing details | | Itemized lines | Task, hours, rate, line total: answers questions early | | Totals + tax | Subtotal, any tax, amount due | | Payment terms | A due date and how to pay; vague terms are slow terms | If a tool gives you raw numbers but no invoice, you're buying a tracker and a spreadsheet, not billing software. CSV export is still worth having (accountants want the raw figures) but it should be the secondary path, not the only one. ## Does it catch time you forgot to bill? This is the criterion most checklists skip, and the one that pays for the software. Tracked-but-unbilled time is invisible by default: the work happened, the hours exist, and they simply never made it onto an invoice. Ask whether the tool surfaces billable entries that were never invoiced: a reconciliation between what you tracked and what you actually charged for. Without it, you're trusting yourself to notice gaps by eye, which is the same habit that lost the hours in the first place. ## Which platforms does it run on? Most native trackers ship **Windows and macOS only**. If you work on Linux, this single line eliminates a large share of the market before you compare anything else, so check it early rather than falling for a tool you can't install. If you're cross-platform or on a team with mixed machines, full coverage across Windows, macOS, and Linux is worth weighting heavily. It's cheaper to rule out incompatible tools now than to discover the gap after you've onboarded. [The best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) is the short list that survives that filter. ## Flat pricing or usage-based? Two pricing shapes dominate, and they age differently: - **Flat per-seat**: a predictable monthly number. Easy to budget, easy to expense. - **Usage-based extras**: a low headline price with charges that scale as you add projects, clients, or volume. Fine if you stay small; a creeping bill if you grow. Harvest is the clearest recent example of the usage-based shape: its Teams plan is $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly), with metered fees on top, as [what Harvest actually costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) breaks down. Neither is wrong, but know which you're signing. Map your real usage (clients, projects, seats) against the plan boundaries, and check whether the features you need are on the tier you'd actually pay for. Prices and plan limits change often (competitor prices here were checked September 5, 2026), so confirm the current details on each vendor's pricing page before you commit. ## Turning the checklist into a decision Run each candidate through the six questions and the field narrows fast: automatic capture, project-level billable status, a native PDF, a way to catch unbilled time, the right platforms, and a pricing shape you can live with. A tool that misses two or three of these will cost you in friction or lost hours, however good the demo looked. For the same criteria applied to named tools, see the [best freelance time tracking with invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing). [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) was built to answer all six in one place: automatic active-window tracking on Windows, macOS, and Linux, AI categorization with billable status inherited from the project, native PDF invoices generated straight from the tracked total, CSV export when you need the raw numbers, and a Revenue Leak Finder that flags billable time you almost didn't invoice, with window titles able to stay on your device. [Pro is $9/mo and Team is $12/seat](https://billnotch.com/pricing), with a 14-day trial to test it against this exact list. Whatever you pick, buy against your own workflow, not the feature grid. The best billing software is the one that captures every hour, keeps the billable line straight, and gets the invoice out without you rebuilding it by hand. ## Frequently asked questions ### What should freelance billing software do? More than print invoices. Good billing software captures the hours the invoice is built on, keeps billable and non-billable time straight, produces a native PDF, catches time you forgot to bill, runs on your platform, and prices in a shape you can forecast. A tool that misses two or three of those costs you in friction or lost hours. ### Is flat or usage-based billing software cheaper? It depends on scale. Usage-based pricing has a lower headline number but adds charges as you take on projects, clients, or volume, so it can be cheaper when small and a creeping bill as you grow. Flat per-seat pricing is predictable. Map your real usage against the plan boundaries before you sign either. ### Does freelance billing software run on Linux? Most native trackers ship Windows and macOS only, so Linux removes a large share of the market before you compare anything else. Check it early rather than getting attached to a tool you cannot install. If you are cross-platform or on a mixed team, weight full coverage across Windows, macOS, and Linux heavily. ### What is the difference between a time tracker and billing software? A tracker records hours; billing software turns those hours into a client-ready invoice and keeps the billable line straight. A tool that gives you raw numbers but no invoice is a tracker and a spreadsheet, not billing software. The strongest options capture time automatically and generate the invoice from the same data. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Freelance Invoice Template (Free CSV Download) # Freelance Invoice Template (Free CSV Download) > A free freelance invoice template: download the CSV, see every field a payable invoice needs, a worked example, and the mistakes that delay payment. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 11, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 A **freelance invoice template** is a fixed set of fields you fill the same way every time, so nothing that gets an invoice paid ever goes missing. You can [download the free CSV template](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoice-template.csv) and open it in any spreadsheet app, [fill one in your browser](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator), or copy the worked example below into whatever you already use. An invoice is not a creative document. The fastest one to write is the one you stopped redesigning. If you want the reasoning behind the choices: which terms to set, who to send it to, how to number the sequence: [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) covers that. This post is the template itself. ## What every invoice needs An invoice has two halves. The header says who, when, and which invoice. The line items say what the money is for. | Field | What goes in it | Why it matters | | --- | --- | --- | | Invoice number | A unique identifier you never reuse | Lets both sides reference one document without ambiguity | | Invoice date | The day you issued it | Starts the clock on your payment terms | | Due date | An explicit calendar date | "Net 14" is a rule; a date is a deadline | | Payment terms | Net 7, Net 14, Net 30, due on receipt | States the rule the due date came from | | PO number | The client's purchase order reference, if they use one | Missing PO numbers are a top reason invoices sit unpaid | | From | Your business name, address, email, tax/VAT number | Identifies who is owed and who to pay | | Bill to | The client's legal entity, address, and AP email | The paying entity is often not the person who hired you | Then the work itself, one row per task or deliverable: | Column | What goes in it | | --- | --- | | Description | One concrete line about what you did | | Hours / Qty | Decimal hours (2h 30m is 2.5) or a unit count | | Rate | Your rate for that line | | Amount | Hours × Rate | And the close: subtotal, sales tax as its own line where it applies, total due, and how to pay you. Fold tax into the total and you make the client's accounts team recompute it, which is a small delay you gain nothing from. ## The template, filled in Here is the CSV rendered as it would look on a finished invoice. The header block: | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Invoice number | 2026-001 | | Invoice date | 2026-08-11 | | Due date | 2026-08-25 | | Payment terms | Net 14 | | From | Your Business Name, [billing@yourbusiness.example](mailto:billing@yourbusiness.example) | | Bill to | Acme Co Ltd, [accountspayable@acme.example](mailto:accountspayable@acme.example) | The work: | Description | Hours | Rate | Amount | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Homepage wireframes and two revision rounds | 6.5 | 75 | 487.50 | | Design system components | 4 | 75 | 300.00 | | Client calls and feedback | 2.25 | 75 | 168.75 | | Responsive QA pass | 3 | 75 | 225.00 | | **Total due** | | | **1,181.25** | Fifteen and three-quarter hours at $75 an hour. Every line answers the question a client actually asks, which is not "how much?" but "what was this?" A single line reading "professional services: $1,181.25" invites that question; four specific lines answer it before it's asked. Note the hours are decimal, not clock time. Forty-five minutes is 0.75, not 0.45, and getting that wrong is a real and quietly expensive error: [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) has the conversion and the rounding conventions. ## Filling in the fields that trip people up Most of the template is transcription. Four fields carry judgment: - **Invoice number.** Start at `2026-001` and never reuse or skip a value. Prefixing with the year and resetting each January keeps the sequence readable, and if you void an invoice, reissue under a new number rather than deleting the old one so the sequence has no gaps. - **Due date.** Write the calendar date, not just the term. Net 14 on an invoice dated August 11 is August 25. Say August 25. Ambiguity about "when" is a free extension the client didn't ask for. - **Payment terms.** Net 14 is a sensible default for freelance work and new clients; Net 30 is the common corporate expectation. [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) covers early-payment discounts and the rest of the vocabulary. - **Tax.** Whether you charge sales tax, VAT, or GST depends on where you and the client are and what you sell. The template gives it a line; what goes on that line is a question for your jurisdiction. ## Mistakes that delay payment None of these are dramatic. They just add a week each. - **Sending it to the person who hired you.** At anything larger than a sole trader, invoices are processed by accounts payable. Ask for the billing email on day one and put it in the "bill to" block. - **Omitting the PO number** when the client's system requires one. The invoice will not route, and nobody will tell you for two weeks. - **A vague single line.** "Consulting, October" gives the approver nothing to approve. Itemized lines are harder to query and easier to sign off. - **Naming the wrong legal entity.** The brand you worked with and the entity that pays can be different companies. Get the registered name. - **Billing from memory.** The line items are only as honest as the hours behind them. If you reconstruct the month at invoice time, you round down, because the safe guess is always the low one, and the small tasks you forgot are the ones that add up. A [freelance timesheet template](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) with fixed columns is the source document this invoice is supposed to summarize. ## When a template stops scaling An invoice template for freelancers, in a CSV or a spreadsheet, is the right tool for the first few dozen invoices, and then it starts to cost you. The break points are predictable. You notice it when you're retyping. The hours already exist in a timesheet, and the template makes you copy them across by hand, which is both a chore and a place for errors to enter. You notice it when the numbering slips, because two invoices got the same number or a month got skipped. You notice it when a client asks what invoice 2026-014 covered and answering means reopening four files. And you notice it when nobody is watching the paid column, so an invoice from six weeks ago is overdue and no one has flagged it. Every one of those is the same underlying problem: a template records an invoice, but it doesn't know anything about your invoices as a set. It can't number them for you, tie them back to tracked time, or tell you which are outstanding. [PDF invoice generator for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers) draws that line in more detail. ## Or let your tracked hours write it If the retyping is the weak point, remove the retyping. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your active window in the background, sorts the activity into client projects with keyword rules and optional AI, and keeps a live billable total per client and date range. When you're ready to bill, that total becomes a PDF invoice (numbered, dated, itemized by project) or a CSV export, with no step where you copy hours from one document into another. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never put on an invoice, which is the gap this template can't see. It isn't the cheapest thing you can buy; Pro is $9/month for one seat and Team is $12/seat/month, flat, with a 14-day trial and no card required. Plenty of tools track time for less, and plenty of tools invoice for less. The case is the combination: the hours and the invoice living in the same place, so the second is a view of the first rather than a retype of it. If you bill hourly, [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) walks the whole loop. Either way, start with the template. The [free hourly and contractor invoice template](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) fills in from your browser and downloads a PDF with no signup. The fields are the same whether you fill them by hand or let software fill them for you, and [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) shows what the finished version of that handoff looks like. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do freelancers need to charge sales tax or VAT on invoices? It depends on where you and the client are and what you sell, so treat it as a question for your jurisdiction. The template gives tax its own line; what goes on that line is yours to decide. Show any tax as a separate line rather than folding it into the total, so the client's accounts team does not have to recompute it. ### What invoice number should I start with? Start at a readable value like 2026-001 and never reuse or skip one. Prefixing with the year and resetting each January keeps the sequence easy to scan. If you void an invoice, reissue under a new number rather than deleting the old one, so the sequence has no gaps for anyone reconciling your records. ### Should freelancers use Net 14 or Net 30? Net 14 is a sensible default for freelance work and new clients, and it gets you paid sooner. Net 30 is the common corporate expectation, so larger clients may push for it. Whichever you choose, write the actual calendar due date on the invoice, not just the term, because a date is a deadline and a rule is not. ### How do I convert minutes to decimal hours on an invoice? Divide the minutes by 60. Forty-five minutes is 0.75 of an hour, not 0.45, and getting that wrong is a quiet but real error. Two hours and thirty minutes is 2.5. Invoices use decimal hours rather than clock time, so convert each entry before you multiply by your rate. ## Keep reading - [Download the free freelance invoice template (CSV)](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoice-template.csv) - [How to invoice a client, step by step](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) - [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-timesheet [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Freelance Timesheet: How to Build One That Actually Pays You # Freelance Timesheet: How to Build One That Actually Pays You > A freelance timesheet needs date, client, description, duration and a billable flag, filled as you work. What to include and how to stop losing hours. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 To build a **freelance timesheet** that actually pays you, it needs four columns: date, client/project, a description, and duration, plus a billable flag, and it has to be filled while you work, not reconstructed on invoice day. The format is easy. The money is won or lost in whether every hour makes it onto the sheet in the first place. A timesheet isn't paperwork for its own sake. It's the evidence behind every line on your invoice, the answer when a client asks "what was this for?", and the only honest record of where your week actually went. Get it right and it pays for itself many times over. ## What a freelance timesheet needs Strip away the templates and a timesheet that holds up has five things: | Field | What to record | Example | | --- | --- | --- | | **Date** | The day the work happened, so entries sort and scope to a billing period | Mon, Apr 6 | | **Client / project** | Who the time bills to, one label per entry, never a pile of loose minutes | Acme, checkout redesign | | **Description** | One concrete line that justifies the charge later | Revised the checkout error state | | **Duration** | The actual time spent, captured as it happened | 1h 20m | | **Billable** | A yes or no per entry, because not everything for a client is chargeable | Yes | | **Rate** (optional) | The hourly rate for this client, if it varies across your book | $85/h | That billable flag is the column most freelancers skip, and it's the one that decides whether the sheet is useful. Without it you either over-bill and erode trust, or under-bill and quietly lose income. If you're unsure where the line sits, [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) covers it properly: calls, research, and revisions usually count; internal admin and pitching new leads usually don't. Here's what one client's week looks like on a sheet that's doing its job: | Date | Project | Description | Duration | Billable | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mon | Acme, site | Design revisions | 3h 15m | Yes | | Mon | Acme, site | Standup call | 30m | Yes | | Tue | Acme, site | Reading the new brief | 40m | Yes | | Wed | Internal | Invoicing & email | 50m | No | | Thu | Acme, site | Deploy + QA | 1h 20m | Yes | | **Billable total** | | | **5h 45m** | | The 50 minutes of admin is real work. It just doesn't belong on Acme's invoice. A single client is the easy case. Here is a fuller week across two clients plus internal time, which is where the billable flag earns its place: | Date | Client / project | Description | Duration | Billable | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mon | Acme, checkout | Design revisions | 3h 15m | Yes | | Mon | Internal | Invoicing and email | 45m | No | | Tue | Bell Co, brand | Logo concepts | 2h 30m | Yes | | Tue | Acme, checkout | Standup call | 30m | Yes | | Wed | Bell Co, brand | Revision round | 1h 45m | Yes | | Wed | Internal | Proposal for a new lead | 1h 10m | No | | Thu | Acme, checkout | Deploy and QA | 1h 20m | Yes | | Fri | Bell Co, brand | Handoff call | 25m | Yes | | **Acme billable** | | | **5h 05m** | | | **Bell Co billable** | | | **4h 40m** | | Two clients, one internal bucket, and the billable totals split cleanly by who pays. The 1h 55m of internal work is real, but it belongs on no client's invoice, which is exactly what the flag is for. ## How to fill it without losing hours The format is the easy part. The hard part is capture, and it's where almost all the leakage happens. Three rules keep the sheet honest: 1. **Record at the moment, not from memory.** The single biggest source of lost income is reconstructing your week on invoice day, when you only remember the big blocks. The five-minute reply, the ten-minute review, the quick call between two other tasks. Those are exactly the entries that get dropped, and they sum to real money across a month. 2. **Log the small stuff first.** Counterintuitively, the tiny tasks are the ones worth the most discipline, precisely because they're the easiest to forget. A heads-down three-hour block will never go missing. A scattered hour of fifteen short interruptions will, every time. 3. **Decide billable once, per project.** Don't re-litigate every entry. Set the rule at the project level: "everything on Acme is billable except internal admin", so filling the flag is mechanical, not a judgment call you make forty times a week. For the mechanics of capturing time accurately and what to do with it, [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) goes deeper. And when it's time to turn the sheet into a number, [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) walks through converting minutes to decimal hours and applying your rate. The [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) does that conversion both ways, a whole column at a time. ## Timesheet vs time tracker: not the same thing A timesheet is the record: the rows of date, client, description, duration, and billable flag that back your invoice. A time tracker is the tool that produces those rows. You can keep a timesheet with no tracker at all, typing entries into a spreadsheet, and you can run a tracker that never hands you a clean timesheet, only a raw activity log. What you want is a tracker that writes the timesheet for you, capturing the hours automatically and returning sortable, billable-flagged rows instead of a wall of app names to sort by hand. ## Why an auto-generated timesheet beats a spreadsheet A manual spreadsheet has one fatal flaw: it depends on you remembering to fill it. Every entry is a small act of discipline, and discipline fails under a deadline, which is exactly when you're working the most billable hours. The sheet is most incomplete precisely when it matters most. A start/stop timer is barely better. You forget to start it (the first hour vanishes), you forget to stop it (now you're guessing, and guessing low to be safe gives away time), and context-switching hides the short tasks the timer was supposed to catch. Every one of these failures rounds in the client's favour, never yours. An automatically generated timesheet removes the discipline tax entirely. Instead of asking you to log time, it watches what you actually work on and writes the entries for you: the forgotten call and the after-hours fix are already on the sheet by the time you sit down to invoice. That's the approach behind [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/): the desktop app records the active window in the background, sorts your activity into client projects with keyword rules (plus optional AI categorization for the fuzzy cases), and inherits the billable flag from the project. The timesheet builds itself, the billable total is live for any client and date range, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that never made it onto an invoice. If you bill by the hour, see [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). ## The short checklist - Give every entry a date, client/project, description, duration, and billable flag. - Capture as it happens: never reconstruct the week on invoice day. - Log the small, frequent tasks first; they leak the most. - Set billable status once per project, not per entry. - Automate capture so a forgotten timer never costs you an hour again. ## Frequently asked questions ### What should a freelance timesheet include? At minimum: the date, the client or project, a short description of the work, the duration, and a billable yes or no per entry. The date lets you scope an invoice to a period, the description justifies the charge later, and the billable flag keeps non-chargeable work off the client's bill. A rate column helps when your rate varies by client. ### How do I fill a timesheet without losing hours? Record as the work happens, not from memory on invoice day, and log the small tasks first because those are the ones that vanish. Set billable status once per project so the flag is mechanical, not a decision you make forty times a week. The most reliable version lets a tracker capture the hours so nothing depends on you remembering. ### What is the difference between a timesheet and a time tracker? A timesheet is the record, the rows that back your invoice; a time tracker is the tool that captures the hours. You can keep a timesheet by hand with no tracker, and a tracker can produce a raw log that is not yet a usable timesheet. The best setup is a tracker that writes the timesheet for you. ### Is a spreadsheet enough for a freelance timesheet? For one client billed occasionally, yes. Across several clients billed monthly, a spreadsheet leaks, because every entry depends on you remembering to type it, and discipline fails under a deadline. That is when automatic capture pays off: it records the hours whether or not you remembered, so the timesheet is complete when you sit down to invoice. ## Keep reading - [How to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) - [Billable vs non-billable hours: what actually counts](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) - [How to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) - [Free freelance timesheet template (CSV)](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Harvest vs Toggl (2026): Pricing, Invoicing, Tracking # Harvest vs Toggl (2026): Pricing, Invoicing, Tracking > Harvest vs Toggl in 2026: prices checked this month, invoicing, reports, automatic tracking, Linux, and the third option that does both. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 9 min read Updated September 7, 2026 Two tools keep landing on the same freelancer shortlist, and **Harvest vs Toggl** is usually the last round before you pay for one. They solve overlapping problems from opposite ends: Harvest is a billing tool that happens to track time, and Toggl is a tracking tool that leaves the billing to someone else. Here is the verdict first, then the detail behind it, and an honest note on a third path if neither quite fits. - **Choose Toggl** if you want the cleaner interface, stronger reports, a genuinely useful free plan, and you never send an invoice from inside the tracker. - **Choose Harvest** if invoicing clients is the whole point, and you accept a higher, sometimes usage-based bill to get billing and time in one place. - **Choose neither** if what you actually want is automatic capture that also invoices, on a flat price. That combination is the gap both leave open, and it is where a tool like BillNotch fits. Both are mature, well-supported products. The decision is less about quality than about which job you are hiring the tool to do. ## Harvest vs Toggl at a glance Prices below are the annual per-seat figures, with the month-to-month rate in parentheses, checked on the vendors' own pricing pages on **September 5, 2026**. Plans move, so confirm the current numbers on [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/) and [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing) before you commit. | | **Harvest** | **Toggl Track** | | --- | --- | --- | | **Cheapest paid** | Teams $9/seat/mo annual ($11 monthly) | Starter $9/seat/mo annual (about $10 monthly) | | **Free tier** | Yes, 1 person and 2 projects | Yes, up to 5 users | | **Usage-based fees** | Yes, on Flex billing | No | | **Invoicing** | Built in on every tier | None native, handed to integrations | | **Expense tracking** | Yes | No | | **Reporting** | Solid, profitability on Enterprise | Stronger, profitability on Premium | | **Automatic capture** | No, manual start and stop | Timeline logs your apps to review | | **Linux desktop app** | No | No, web app only | | **Integrations** | 50-plus, accounting-heavy | Broad, Jira and Salesforce on Premium | | **Trial** | 30-day, no card | 30-day, no card | Two rows carry most of the decision: invoicing (Harvest's win) and usage-based fees (Harvest's risk). Everything else is a matter of taste. ## Pricing in 2026: where Harvest changed Toggl's pricing is the easy one to read. The free plan covers up to five users at $0 with no time limit. **Starter** is $9 per seat per month billed annually, roughly $10 month to month, and it adds billable rates and project estimates. **Premium** is $14 per seat per month for your first annual year, then it renews at $18, and it adds profitability analysis, approvals, and the Jira and Salesforce integrations. Enterprise is custom. A predictable per-seat ladder, nothing hidden. Harvest is where you have to read carefully, because the model changed. After [Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in 2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_\(software\)), the company restructured its plans into **Teams** and **Enterprise**, each billed either **Flex** (usage-based) or **Unlimited** (fixed). Teams starts at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($108 a seat a year), or $11 month to month. Enterprise starts at $14 per seat annually, $17.50 monthly. The word "starting from" is doing real work there. On Flex billing you pay the per-seat base rate **plus** usage fees calculated on your prior period's active projects, clients, tasks, and invoicing. Harvest does not publish those per-unit fees on the pricing page, so a small headline rate can grow as your client list does. That is the part that surprised people at renewal, and it is why the [Harvest price increase](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) became its own story. If a forecastable bill matters to you, price Harvest on your real project and invoice volume, not on the base seat rate. ## How each one tracks time This is the fork in the road, and it is temperament as much as feature set. **Toggl Track** runs a desktop Timeline that records the apps and sites you used in the background, so you can drag those blocks into entries and approve them later. You are not glued to a stopwatch, but you are still curating a record. It also has plain manual timers when you would rather press start yourself. **Harvest** is a manual timer, full stop. You start it when you begin and stop it when you finish. There is no background capture, which makes Harvest refreshingly simple and also means the hours are only as complete as your memory of them. Be clear about one shared limit: neither uses AI to sort your tracked time into the right project or client. Toggl's Timeline is a memory aid you review; Harvest asks you to have started the timer in the first place. If reconstructing your day is the chore you want gone, read up on [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) before you pick either. ## Invoicing and getting paid Harvest wins this outright, and it is not close. Invoicing is Harvest's origin and its strongest ground. It builds invoices from tracked time, records payments, and syncs to QuickBooks and Xero, and that billing pipeline sits on every tier, including the free one. If the invoice is the product of your week, Harvest was designed for exactly that. Toggl has no native invoicing pipeline. You can export billable time as a report and invoice from another tool, but the billable-rate math and any real billing depend on integrations or a separate app. Toggl is honest about this: it is a tracker, and billing is somebody else's job. So if you bill clients and want the number to become an invoice without leaving the tool, that requirement alone points at Harvest. ## Reports and expenses Toggl is the stronger reporting product. Its dashboards read cleanly, the summaries are fast, and profitability analysis arrives on Premium. For a team that lives in reports, Toggl usually feels a step ahead. Harvest's reporting is solid rather than deep. The catch is where the good parts live: profitability reporting, timesheet approval, and unlimited custom reports are Enterprise-only, so a small Teams account sees a lighter version. Harvest does have one thing Toggl does not, though: built-in **expense tracking**, on every tier, which matters if you rebill costs alongside hours. Call it a split. Toggl for reporting polish, Harvest if expenses are part of how you bill. ## Integrations Both connect widely, in different directions. Harvest leans into the accounting and payments side, with 50-plus integrations including QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Asana, Slack, and its own Forecast resource planner. Toggl casts a broader productivity net and adds Jira and Salesforce on Premium. If your stack is accounting-first, Harvest's ecosystem is the better match. If it is project-and-dev-tool-first, Toggl's is. Neither is thin. ## Platforms, Linux and privacy Here is a line both comparison pages tend to skip. **Neither Harvest nor Toggl ships a current native Linux desktop tracker.** Harvest has no Linux desktop app at all, and Toggl's Linux desktop client was retired, so Linux users run the web app in a browser. If your machine runs Linux and you want a real desktop tracker rather than a tab, both are off the table before you compare anything else. On privacy, both are ordinary cloud SaaS: your entries live on their servers. Neither takes screenshots, which is a point in their favor next to the surveillance-heavy end of this market. If keeping window titles and activity data under your own control is a priority, that is worth checking against whatever you pick. ## Harvest vs Toggl: choose which A short decision guide, by the question that actually decides it: - **Pick Toggl** if you want the better interface and reports, a real free plan for a small team, and you handle billing elsewhere. Its Timeline is the better safety net for fragmented days. - **Pick Harvest** if invoicing inside the tool is the point, you value the QuickBooks and Xero sync, and you can price the usage-based fees honestly against your volume. - **Either way**, expect to assign time to projects by hand, and do not count on a native Linux app. If the choice keeps stalling on "invoicing but manual" (Harvest) versus "automatic-ish but no invoicing" (Toggl), that stall is the signal that neither is the shape of tool you want. ## The third option: automatic capture that also invoices The thread through everything above is that both still need a person in the loop, to start or approve the timer, then sort entries into projects, then turn that into a bill. If removing that whole chain is the goal, that is a different category, and it is the one BillNotch is built for. Be straight about the trade-offs first. BillNotch is **not** the cheapest here (Pro is $9 a month for one seat, Team is $12 per seat month to month), and it deliberately leaves out some of what Harvest offers: there is **no expense tracking and no resource-scheduling or forecasting** like Harvest's Forecast. If you rebill expenses or plan capacity weeks out, Harvest still does things BillNotch does not. What it trades for that is the workflow neither incumbent has. The desktop app runs on **Windows, macOS, and Linux** and records your active window automatically, so there is no timer to start. Keyword rules, with optional AI for the fuzzy cases, sort that activity into client projects, and billable status is inherited per project. The live billable total becomes a **PDF invoice or a CSV export** in the same app, and a Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced. Window titles can stay on each device, and there is a 14-day trial with no card. If you want the direct feature tables, here is [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) and [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). To widen the field instead, see [the best Harvest alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026), [the best Toggl alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives), the [Harvest alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative), or the [Toggl alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). And if your other shortlist is the cheaper pair, [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) settles that one. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the main difference between Harvest and Toggl? Harvest tracks time and invoices clients in one place, so it suits billing-first work. Toggl focuses on fast, flexible tracking with stronger reports and a genuinely useful free plan, but it leaves invoicing to integrations. In one line: Harvest is billing-first and Toggl is tracking-first. ### Which is cheaper, Harvest or Toggl? Both start at $9 per seat per month on annual billing, so the headline rates tie. Toggl is the more predictable of the two, because Harvest's Flex billing adds usage-based fees on projects, clients, tasks, and invoices at renewal. If a forecastable bill matters, price Harvest on your real volume, not its base rate. ### Does Toggl do invoicing like Harvest? Not natively. Invoicing is Harvest's core strength and sits on every Harvest tier. Toggl has no native invoicing; it passes billing to third-party accounting integrations and exports billable time for invoicing elsewhere. If invoicing inside the tracker matters, Harvest fits, or you use a tool such as BillNotch that captures automatically and issues PDF invoices from the same data. ### Does Harvest or Toggl track time automatically? Toggl's desktop app keeps a background Timeline of the apps you used, which you review and turn into entries; Harvest is manual start and stop only. Neither auto-sorts time into projects. Dedicated automatic trackers like BillNotch and Memtime record the active application in the background, so you reconstruct your day instead of remembering to press start. ### Do Harvest or Toggl run on Linux? Neither ships a current native Linux desktop tracker. Harvest has no Linux desktop app, and Toggl's Linux desktop client was retired, so Linux users are on the web app. If your team runs Linux and wants passive desktop capture, BillNotch ships a native Linux tracker alongside Windows and macOS, which is unusual in this category. ### Is there a good alternative to both Harvest and Toggl? Yes, if your stall is "invoicing but manual" versus "automatic but no invoicing." A tool that captures automatically and invoices on flat pricing removes that trade-off. BillNotch tracks time automatically, sorts it into projects, flags unbilled hours, and turns the total into an invoice, starting at $9 a month for one seat with no usage fees. ### How much does Harvest cost per month? Harvest's Teams plan is $9 per seat per month on annual billing, or $11 month to month; Enterprise is $14 annually or $17.50 monthly. On Flex billing, usage-based fees for projects, clients, tasks and invoices are added on top, so the monthly total is often higher than the seat rate alone. ### Is the Harvest app worth the cost? It depends on how much you invoice. Harvest earns its price when built-in invoicing and expense tracking replace a second tool, but its Flex usage fees can make the real bill unpredictable. If you want automatic capture and invoicing on a flat price, a tool like BillNotch covers the same job from $9 a month without usage fees. ### What is the best timesheet software? There is no single best; it depends on whether you need invoicing, automatic capture, or a free plan. Toggl leads on tracking and reporting, Harvest on built-in invoicing, and BillNotch captures time automatically and invoices on flat pricing. Choose on the one feature you cannot do without. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How Many Billable Hours in a Year? The Real Math # How Many Billable Hours in a Year? The Real Math > How many billable hours are in a year? Start at 2,080, subtract time off, apply your utilization rate: the realistic range is 1,100 to 1,500 hours. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 13, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 There is no single number of **billable hours in a year**, but there is a defensible way to reach yours: start from 2,080 work hours (40 hours × 52 weeks), subtract time off, then apply your utilization rate. For most freelancers and consultants that lands between **1,100 and 1,500 billable hours a year**, not the 2,080 that rate calculators quietly assume. The gap between those two numbers is why so many hourly rates come out too low. The [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) divides by your real billable hours rather than the 2,080 a full year assumes. ## Where the 2,080 figure comes from The 2,080-hour year is an accounting convention: 40 hours a week × 52 weeks, with nothing removed. It is useful for one thing, converting an annual salary to an hourly equivalent, and it is the standard basis US payroll uses to do exactly that. What it is not is a count of hours anybody bills. It assumes you work every week of the year, take no holidays, and spend every working minute on client work. All three assumptions fail, in that order, and each one takes a bite out of the total. ## What comes off the top Before utilization enters the picture, subtract the weeks you don't work at all. An employee's version of this is easy to itemize: | Time off | Hours | | --- | --- | | Public holidays (10 days) | 80 | | Vacation (15 days) | 120 | | Sick and personal days (5 days) | 40 | | **Total off** | **240** | That leaves 1,840 hours at work. Freelancers get no paid holidays, which changes the economics but not the arithmetic. You still take the days, they just cost you directly. Four weeks off across a year, holidays included, puts you around 1,920 available hours; five or six weeks puts you at 1,840 or 1,760. Pick the number that matches how you actually live rather than the one that flatters the spreadsheet. ## What utilization does to the rest Available hours are not billable hours. Everything you do that no client pays for comes out of the same pool: proposals, invoicing, bookkeeping, marketing, your own learning, email that isn't attached to a project. The share that survives is your [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). > **Billable utilization rate = (billable hours ÷ total hours worked) × 100** For solo freelancers, 60% to 70% is a common working range, and sustained 80% is high. It usually means either an unusually clean client pipeline or unpaid admin happening after hours, off the books. Consultancies and agencies often set 70% to 80% as a target for delivery staff, which is achievable precisely because someone else does the selling and the invoicing. Knowing which side of that line you're on starts with [what actually counts as billable](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). ## Billable hours per year, by scenario Multiply the two together and the realistic range falls out: | Available hours | At 60% | At 70% | At 80% | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 2,080 (no time off) | 1,248 | 1,456 | 1,664 | | 1,920 (4 weeks off) | 1,152 | 1,344 | 1,536 | | 1,840 (5 weeks off) | 1,104 | 1,288 | 1,472 | | 1,760 (6 weeks off) | 1,056 | 1,232 | 1,408 | The middle of that grid (around 1,300 billable hours) is the number most independent professionals should plan against. Cross-check it against the week: 1,288 hours over 47 working weeks is about 27 billable hours a week, which matches the 20 to 30 range most freelancers report and which the weekly breakdown below works through role by role. Note how little the top-left corner of the table means. Even at zero days off, a 60% utilization rate caps you at 1,248 hours. Utilization moves the number far more than heroics about time off do. ## Billable hours per week The same math read weekly gives the number most people actually feel. For most freelancers the practical planning range is **20 to 30 billable hours** out of a 40-hour week, a 50% to 75% utilization rate rather than the 40 the myth assumes. It moves with your role more than your effort. These are practical ranges to sanity-check your own week against, not cited research: | Role | Typical billable hours/week | | --- | --- | | Solo freelancer (established) | 25-32 | | Solo freelancer (new / scaling) | 15-25 | | Agency: junior / production | 30-36 | | Agency: senior / specialist | 25-32 | | Agency: lead / principal | 12-22 | | Consultant (premium / project) | 15-25 | Two patterns hold. The more senior you get, the fewer hours you bill, because your time shifts toward winning and directing work rather than delivering it. Agency production roles bill the most precisely because someone else does the selling. So 22 billable hours is thin for a production designer and strong for a [principal consultant](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants): benchmark against your role, not a stranger on the internet. ## Why law firm numbers look so different Annual billable targets of 1,800 to 2,000 hours are commonly reported at large US law firms, and they are real. They are also not a counter-example. Hitting 1,900 billable hours at 75% utilization means working roughly 2,530 hours, about 50 hours a week, every week, with two weeks off. The billable number went up because the hours worked went up, not because the arithmetic is different. If you see a high annual billable figure quoted somewhere, the useful question is always what total it was drawn from. ## How to find your own number Estimating this once a year, from memory, produces a number that flatters you. Measuring it takes one month: 1. **Record every working hour for a month**, billable or not, including the admin. You cannot compute a ratio from only half of it. 2. **Flag each entry billable or not**, using one consistent rule per project rather than a judgment call per task. 3. **Divide** billable hours by total hours worked. That is your real utilization, and it is usually lower than the figure you would have guessed. 4. **Multiply** by your available hours for the year, after the time off you actually intend to take. The result matters most when you set a rate, because your rate is annual income divided by this number and nothing else. Divide by 2,080 instead of 1,300 and you underprice yourself by around 37%: the exact mistake [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) is built to prevent. It also matters when you plan capacity: knowing you have roughly 1,300 billable hours to sell is what tells you whether a retainer is worth taking. Step one is where this usually falls apart. Recording only client work gives you a numerator with no denominator, and reconstructing the rest at month's end always drops the same things: the short tasks, the interruptions, the twenty minutes on someone else's problem. [How to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) covers the capture side, and the hours that vanish between working and billing are the subject of [what a revenue leak is](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak). ## Measuring it without the month of bookkeeping [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your active window in the background on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so the whole working day is captured without a timer to start, the non-billable hours included, which is the half most trackers never see. Keyword rules and optional AI sort the activity into client projects, billable status is inherited per project, and the reports give you billable, non-billable, and the ratio between them for any date range. Invoices come out of the same tracked time as a PDF or CSV, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable hours you recorded but never billed. Pro is $9/month for one seat and Team is $12/seat/month, flat, with a 14-day trial and no card. It is not the cheapest tracker available and doesn't try to be; what it does is keep the capture, the utilization math, and the invoice in one place instead of three. Whatever you use, the discipline is the same: count all your hours, not just the ones you bill. See [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) for the benchmarks, and [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) for what to do with the number once you have it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many billable hours are in a year? Start from a full-time year of about 2,080 hours, subtract vacation, holidays, and sick time, then apply a realistic billable share of what remains. For most freelancers and consultants that lands between roughly 1,100 and 1,500 billable hours a year. The 2,080 figure is hours available, not hours you can actually bill, which is the mistake that underprices rates. ### How many billable hours are in a month? Take your realistic annual billable hours and divide by twelve. At 1,100 to 1,500 a year, that is roughly 90 to 125 billable hours a month, not the 160-plus a 40-hour week implies. Any single month swings with holidays, illness, and how much unpaid selling and admin the month demanded, so treat the average as a planning figure. ### How many billable hours should I aim for per week? It depends on your role and how much non-billable work you carry. A common healthy target for solo consultants is around 25 to 30 billable hours in a 40-hour week, with the rest going to sales, scoping, admin, and learning. Agencies push utilization higher because someone else handles the selling, but nobody bills a full week. ### What is a realistic billable utilization rate? Utilization is billable hours divided by hours worked. Professional-services firms treat about 70 percent as healthy and high performers sustain near 75, but solo freelancers usually run lower once unpaid selling and admin are counted. Measure your own for a month rather than assuming; the real number is almost always below the one you would guess. ## Keep reading - [Billable utilization rate: formula and benchmarks](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) - [How much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Freelance Hourly Rate: The Formula, Not the Average # Freelance Hourly Rate: The Formula, Not the Average > Set a freelance hourly rate from the bottom up: income, expenses and tax over your real billable hours, not the average that quietly underprices you. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 24, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Figuring out how much to charge as a freelancer comes down to one honest equation: the rate that covers your income goal, your business expenses, and your taxes, divided by the hours you can actually bill, not the hours you work.** There is no single correct number, and any "average freelance hourly rate" you find online blends wildly different skills, regions, and experience levels into a figure that describes no one in particular. The rate that works for you is the one your own costs and your own billable hours can defend. So skip the market-average shortcut. A rate you can stand behind is built from the bottom up, and most of the work is being honest about two things people routinely get wrong: what your taxes actually take, and how few of your working hours are billable. ## A formula for how much to charge as a freelancer The most defensible way to set a freelance rate is a single division: > **Hourly rate = (target income + business expenses + tax) ÷ actual annual billable hours** Three things make this formula better than guessing a number or copying a competitor: - The numerator is **everything you need to bring in**: your take-home pay plus the software, hardware, insurance, and tax that come out before you ever see it. - The denominator is **billable hours, not worked hours**: the hours a client actually pays for, which is always fewer than the hours you sit at your desk. - It is **yours**: plug in your numbers and you get a floor that's true for your costs, your tax situation, and your real capacity. Get either side wrong and the rate is fiction. The two most common mistakes are forgetting how much tax self-employment carries, and dividing by 2,080 as if every hour were billable. The [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) runs this division for you and adds a tax buffer, so both mistakes are harder to make. ## Build up from your real costs first Before you can price an hour, you have to know what a year actually costs you. Two buckets matter most. **Business expenses.** Software subscriptions, hardware, a co-working desk, professional insurance, accounting fees, your own pension contributions. These are easy to underestimate because they trickle out monthly. Add them up annually and fold them into the numerator. **Tax.** This is the one freelancers most often shortchange. In the US, the self-employment tax rate is **15.3%**: 12.4% for Social Security plus 2.9% for Medicare (per the [IRS](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employment-tax-social-security-and-medicare-taxes)), and that sits **on top of** ordinary income tax. A few details worth knowing: | Self-employment tax detail | What it means | | --- | --- | | Rate | **15.3%** = 12.4% Social Security + 2.9% Medicare | | Social Security cap | Applies only up to an annual wage base, **$176,100 in 2025 (a projected $184,500 for 2026)** | | Medicare cap | None, the 2.9% applies to all self-employment income | | Taxable base | Figured on **92.35%** of net self-employment earnings via Schedule SE | | Deduction | You can deduct the **employer-equivalent half** of SE tax when calculating adjusted gross income | The numbers and brackets shift, and rules outside the US differ entirely, so confirm current figures with the relevant tax authority or an accountant. The point that doesn't change: a freelancer charging like an employee, ignoring the self-employment tax an employer would normally split, is quietly underpricing every hour. ## You can't bill every hour you work Here is the assumption that wrecks freelance rates. A standard full-time year is about **2,080 hours** (52 weeks × 40 hours), so dividing your income goal by 2,080 silently assumes every hour is billable. None of them are. Every billable hour has to be earned twice: once by doing the work, and once by finding, scoping, scheduling, and invoicing it. That second job is unpaid and never goes away. A Freelancer Map survey (reported by Clockify) found that nearly half of freelancers spend roughly six hours a week on non-billable administration and accounting alone, and that figure excludes marketing, proposals, and learning, so total non-billable time runs higher. Even well-run agencies, where someone else does the selling, don't bill the whole week. According to [SPI Research](https://spiresearch.com/)'s [2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark](https://spiresearch.com/ps-maturity-model/), industry billable utilization fell to an all-time low of **66.4%** in 2025, below the prior record low of 68.9% in 2024 ([2025 benchmark](https://get.kantata.com/rs/677-LEJ-696/images/2025-ps-maturity-benchmark.pdf), PDF); SPI treats **70%** as the minimum healthy benchmark and notes high-performing firms sustain around 75%. Those numbers describe professional-services **firms**, not solo freelancers, but they prove the broader rule: nobody bills 100% of their available hours. (For the freelancer-specific picture, see [how many billable hours a year and week are realistic](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) and how to read your [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate).) What that does to the math: | Billable share of a 40-hour week | Billable hours/week | Roughly per year | | --- | --- | --- | | 50% | 20 | ~1,040 | | 60% | 24 | ~1,250 | | 70% | 28 | ~1,450 | | 80% | 32 | ~1,660 | Annual totals here are planning assumptions, not measured statistics. They show direction, not a guarantee. But the lesson is stark: at 60 to 70% billable, you have **24 to 28 billable hours a week**, not 40. Because a meaningful slice of every week is non-billable, the true rate you need to hit an income target is materially higher than income-goal-÷-2,080 would suggest, often by a third or more. If you're unsure which of your hours count, [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) draws the line, and [how to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) shows the method. ## A worked illustration Numbers make it concrete. **Treat the figures below as an illustration, not a recommendation**. The result depends entirely on the inputs you choose: | Input | Example value | | --- | --- | | Target take-home income | $70,000 | | Business expenses | $8,000 | | Estimated tax (illustrative) | $22,000 | | **Total to earn** | **$100,000** | | Actual annual billable hours (28/week × ~45 weeks) | ~1,260 | | **Implied hourly rate** | **~$79** | Now watch what happens if you'd used 2,080 hours instead of 1,260: the same $100,000 implies a rate near $48, a number that looks competitive and quietly guarantees you miss your goal by a wide margin. The gap between those two figures is the entire reason careful freelancers charge what they do. Run the formula with your own income target, expenses, tax estimate, and an honest billable-hours figure, and you get a floor: the rate below which the year doesn't add up. ## What moves your freelance hourly rate the most Once the formula is set, the useful question is which input to fight over. The freelance hourly rate is most sensitive to the denominator, your billable hours, and least sensitive to small changes in expenses. Run one scenario: a $100,000 target over 1,260 billable hours is about $79 an hour. Add a $2,000 laptop to expenses and the floor moves up by roughly $1.60. Now lose ten billable hours a month, about 120 a year, and the same target has to come from 1,140 hours: the floor jumps to about $88. A single equipment purchase barely moved the number; a shrinking denominator moved it by nine dollars. That is why chasing utilization pays better than trimming costs, and why the billable-hours figure is the one to measure rather than guess. Put your own income goal, expenses, tax rate and billable hours into [the rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) and change one field at a time; the output shows which lever actually moves your floor. Then set the rate above that floor to reflect the value the work delivers, beyond what it costs you. ## Set the floor, then price for value The formula gives you a floor, not a ceiling. It tells you the least you can charge and still hit your goal; it says nothing about what the work is worth to the client. Above that floor, value is the better guide. A project that saves a client weeks of internal time, or directly drives revenue, can justify a rate far above your cost-based minimum, and pricing the outcome rather than the hour is often where experienced freelancers and [consultants](https://billnotch.com/for/consultants) make their margin. But the floor still matters: it's the line that tells you when a "good" project is actually losing you money once tax and non-billable time are counted. Know the floor first, then negotiate up from a position of fact. ## Track your real billable hours instead of guessing Every part of this formula is only as good as one input you probably can't recall accurately: your actual billable hours. Most freelancers overestimate it, because the hours they forget to log make them look more billable than they are, while the non-billable time they never record hides where the week went. Both errors push in the flattering direction, which is exactly why a gut estimate sets your rate too low. The fix is to measure one honest month, billable and non-billable alike, and let the real ratio set your denominator. That's the job passive tracking does. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your active window automatically on Windows, macOS, and Linux (no timer to start) and uses keyword rules and optional AI to sort the day into client projects, with billable status inherited per project. After a month you can see your true billable share instead of guessing it, turn the live billable total into a [PDF invoice or CSV](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), and let its [Revenue Leak Finder](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) flag billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the hours that silently lower your effective rate. A rate built on measured hours is one you can hold in a negotiation without flinching. Start with the formula, then let the data confirm the denominator. See also: [how many billable hours per week](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) · [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) · [time tracking for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) · [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing). ## Frequently asked questions ### How much should I charge as a freelancer? Build the rate from the bottom up, not from an average. Add your target take-home income, business expenses, and the self-employment tax an employer would normally cover, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year, not by 2,080. The average rate in your field is a sanity check, not the number, because it hides everyone underpricing themselves. ### What is a good freelance hourly rate? There is no single right number; it depends on your costs, your field, and how many hours you actually bill. A rate is healthy when it covers your income goal, expenses, and taxes across your real billable hours with margin left over. If the rate only works when every hour is billable, it is too low, because no freelancer bills every hour. ### How many hours can a freelancer actually bill? Fewer than a full-time year of 2,080. Selling, scoping, scheduling, and invoicing are unpaid and never stop, so a large share of every week is non-billable. Even professional-services firms run billable utilization near 70 percent. Solo freelancers usually land lower, so a realistic billable year is closer to 1,100 to 1,500 hours than 2,080. ### Should I charge hourly or a fixed price? Either can work if you know your effective hourly rate. Hourly protects you when scope is uncertain; a fixed price rewards you for being fast but punishes a bad estimate. Whichever you quote, track the hours behind it so you can see the real rate you earned, and reprice the next project when the estimate misses. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How to Calculate Billable Hours: Formula & Examples # How to Calculate Billable Hours: Formula & Examples > How to calculate billable hours: the formula, a worked example, decimal-hour conversion, and the tracking mistakes that quietly cost freelancers money. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 To **calculate billable hours**, add up the time you spent on work a client agreed to pay for, then multiply by your hourly rate. The math is trivial. The hard part (and where most freelancers lose money) is capturing _all_ the billable time in the first place, and drawing a consistent line between what's billable and what isn't. ## What is the billable hours formula? > **Billable amount = billable hours × hourly rate** And to get billable hours for a period: > **Billable hours = sum of all time entries marked billable** A worked example for one week on one client: | Task | Time | Billable? | | --- | --- | --- | | Design work | 6h 30m | Yes | | Client call | 45m | Yes | | Revisions | 1h 15m | Yes | | Internal admin | 40m | No | | Proposal for a _new_ lead | 30m | No | | **Billable total** | **8h 30m** | | At a $90/hour rate: 8.5 × $90 = **$765** billable for the week. The 70 minutes of admin and sales are real work, but they're [non-billable](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). They don't go on this client's invoice. Run your own week through the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) to total it and apply a billing increment. ## Step by step 1. **Track every task with its duration.** You can't sum what you didn't capture. This is the step that quietly breaks. See below. 2. **Mark each entry billable or non-billable.** Decide once, per project or task type, so it's consistent. 3. **Convert minutes to decimal hours.** 8h 30m = 8.5 hours. (Minutes ÷ 60: 30 ÷ 60 = 0.5.) Most invoices and rate math use decimal hours, and the [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) converts a whole column in one place. 4. **Apply the rate.** Multiply billable decimal hours by your rate. Use different rates per client or project if you have them. 5. **Round consistently, and document it.** If you round to the nearest 15 minutes, do it the same way every time and tell clients up front. Inconsistent rounding is both a trust problem and a source of lost income. A [freelance timesheet template](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) with fixed columns makes that consistency easier to hold. ## What does a billable month look like? A single week is easy to eyeball. A month is where the real number lives, because it blends your strong weeks with your admin-heavy ones. Here is one freelancer's month across two clients at two rates: | Week | Client | Billable hours | Rate | Revenue | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Week 1 | Acme | 18 | $90 | $1,620 | | Week 1 | Bell | 9 | $110 | $990 | | Week 2 | Acme | 22 | $90 | $1,980 | | Week 2 | Bell | 6 | $110 | $660 | | Week 3 | Acme | 15 | $90 | $1,350 | | Week 3 | Bell | 12 | $110 | $1,320 | | Week 4 | Acme | 20 | $90 | $1,800 | | Week 4 | Bell | 8 | $110 | $880 | | **Month total** | | **110** | | **$10,600** | Two things fall out of a month like this. First, the monthly billable total (here 110 hours for $10,600) is the figure to compare against an income goal, not a single strong week. Second, the rate blend matters: Bell pays more per hour, so shifting hours toward Bell lifts revenue without changing either rate. Total your own month the same way in the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator), and convert any h:mm entries with the [hours to decimal calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/hours-to-decimal) before you multiply. ## How many billable hours are in a month? There is no fixed answer, because billable hours are a share of the hours you work, not the days on the calendar. A common planning range is 20 to 30 billable hours a week, which lands around 80 to 130 billable hours a month once you subtract sales, admin, and the weeks that run light. The 110-hour month above is a realistic, sustainable load rather than a stretch. If your monthly total sits far below that, the gap is usually non-billable time or [unbilled work that leaked away](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak), not a shortage of hours at the desk. Your real number is whatever a few tracked months average out to. ## How rounding changes the monthly total Billing increments compound over a month. If you round every entry up to the nearest 6 minutes, a scatter of short tasks each gains a little, and across 110 hours of entries that adds up. Round to the _nearest_ unit rather than always up if you want the fairest total, and apply the same increment to every entry so the month reconciles. The safest habit is to bill in decimal hours to the second where your contract allows it, and reserve rounding for the clients who require a fixed increment. Whatever you pick, document it once and hold to it, because an inconsistent rule is both a trust problem and a slow leak. A printable [billing increment chart](https://billnotch.com/tools/billing-increment-chart) shows what each minute bills under 6, 10, 15 and 30 minute rounding, so you can compare rules before you commit to one. ## Which mistakes cost you the most money? - **Reconstructing from memory.** Adding up the week on invoice day means you only remember the big blocks. The small, frequent tasks (the ones that sum to real money) get dropped. - **Forgetting to start a timer.** Time worked before the timer started is simply gone. Across a month this is often the single biggest leak. - **Always rounding down "to be safe."** Generous to the client, expensive for you. Round to the nearest unit, not always downward. - **Mixing billable and non-billable.** If you don't separate them, you either over-bill (and erode trust) or under-bill (and lose income). Knowing the split is also how you measure [billable utilization](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). - **Not converting to decimal.** Multiplying $90 by "1:20" instead of 1.33 quietly mangles the total. Convert h:mm to decimal first, then apply the rate. - **Judging income on one week.** A light week after a heavy one looks like a problem that is not there. Total the month before you draw conclusions about a client or your rate. ## Let the calculation do itself The reliable way to calculate billable hours is to never assemble them by hand. If your time is captured automatically and each entry already carries a billable flag, the total is just a sum the software runs for you, for any client and any date range. [Six billable hours trackers compared](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker) sorts the tools by whether they actually do that. [Automatic time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records your working day in the background; billable status is inherited from the project; and the billable total is live, ready to drop straight onto an invoice. That removes both error-prone steps (the capturing and the summing) at once. BillNotch does exactly this: it tracks automatically, sums your billable total to the second, and generates a PDF invoice from it. See [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours), or learn [what counts as billable](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). Lawyers converting minutes to tenths on each matter can see that workflow in [time tracking software for lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers). ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you calculate billable hours? Total the time you spent on client work that your agreement lets you charge for, then convert it to the unit you bill in. Add each task's duration across the period, keep billable and non-billable separate, and express the billable total in decimal hours or your rounding increment. Multiply by your rate to get the amount due. ### How many billable hours are in a month? That depends on how much of your worked time is billable, not on the calendar. A 40-hour week is about 160 worked hours a month, but realistic billable time is lower once selling, admin, and unpaid client work come out. For many freelancers the billable figure lands closer to 90 to 125 hours a month. ### How do you convert minutes to decimal hours? Divide the minutes by 60. Fifteen minutes is 0.25 hours, 30 is 0.5, and 45 is 0.75; six minutes is 0.1, which is why legal and consulting work often bills in tenths of an hour. Keeping time in decimals makes the rate math one multiplication instead of juggling hours and minutes. ### Should I round billable hours? Only if your contract or client expects it, and then consistently. Rounding every task up to the nearest 15 minutes adds up in your favor but can read as padding; rounding down quietly gives work away. Whichever convention you use, apply it the same way everywhere and state it, so the total is one you can defend. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How to Invoice as a Freelancer: A Step-by-Step Guide # How to Invoice as a Freelancer: A Step-by-Step Guide > How to invoice as a freelancer, step by step: what to include, numbering, who to send it to, choosing Net terms, and a filled example to copy. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 20, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Knowing **how to invoice as a freelancer** comes down to a repeatable sequence: put your details and theirs on a numbered document, list the work as itemized lines with hours and rates, total it, set a clear due date, and send it to whoever actually pays. Do that consistently and you get paid faster and chase less. This guide walks through writing your first invoice, what to include, and the small choices that decide whether the money arrives on time. Getting it right matters more than it looks. The [2025 Intuit QuickBooks US Small Business Late Payments Report](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/small-business-late-payments-report-2025/), a January 2025 survey of 2,487 US small businesses, found 56% were owed money on unpaid invoices, averaging about $17,500 per affected business, and 47% said some of their invoices were more than 30 days overdue. A clear, complete invoice sent to the right person is your first defense against ending up in that group. ## What to include on an invoice A complete invoice is a short, specific document. There is no universal US federal invoice template. Invoices are governed by general contract principles and tax rules, but a payable one always carries the same fields: | Element | What it is | | --- | --- | | Your details | Business name, address, email, tax/VAT number if you have one | | Bill to | The client's legal entity, billing address, and AP email | | Invoice number | A unique, never-reused identifier | | Dates | The invoice date and an explicit calendar due date | | Line items | One per task: description, hours or quantity, rate, line total | | Totals | Subtotal, sales tax as a separate line where it applies, total due | | Payment | Accepted methods and your payment terms | Where sales tax applies, show it as its own line rather than folding it into the totals. It keeps the math legible for the client's accounts team and for you at tax time. ## How to write an invoice, step by step Once you have the fields, writing the invoice is mechanical: 1. **Number it.** Assign a unique invoice number (more on the scheme below). 2. **Fill in both parties.** Your details, and the client's correct "bill to" entity. 3. **Itemize the work.** One line per task, with hours, rate, and line total. 4. **Total it.** Subtotal, any sales tax, and the amount due. 5. **Set terms and a due date.** A specific calendar date, not just a label. 6. **Send it promptly** to the right person, with a short note stating the due date. The first four steps are arithmetic over work you've already done. The last two are where most of the get-paid-on-time advantage actually lives. ## Number every invoice in sequence Assign every invoice a unique, never-reused number. There is no single US federal law that forces invoice numbers to be sequential, but a sequential scheme is standard practice and the default in accounting software, because it lets you spot a missing invoice, reconcile payments, and show a complete income record if your books are ever reviewed. A few conventions are worth adopting from invoice one: - **Start at 0001, not 1.** It looks established and leaves room to grow. - **Optionally prefix with the year**, like `2026-001`, and reset annually, or add a short client code. - **Never skip or reuse a number.** If you make a mistake, mark the invoice void and reissue with a new number rather than deleting it, so you don't leave a gap in the sequence. If you bill clients abroad, this stops being optional. The EU VAT Directive and [HMRC in the UK](https://www.gov.uk/invoicing-and-taking-payment-from-customers) require a sequential number that uniquely identifies each invoice, and Australia's ATO requires a unique identifier (without mandating a strict sequence), so gaps or duplicates can become audit red flags. Confirm the exact rules for your jurisdiction. ## Send it to the person who actually pays The person who hired you is often not the person who pays you. At anything larger than a sole proprietor, invoices are processed by accounts payable or a dedicated billing contact, and sending yours only to your day-to-day contact is a common reason an invoice sits unrouted and "lost." Before your first invoice, ask two questions: who or what email or portal should the invoice go to, and is a purchase order (PO) number required? Capture the correct legal business name and billing address while you're at it. The "bill to" entity that actually pays can differ from the contact you worked with, and getting it right up front prevents the invoice from stalling before anyone has even reviewed it. ## How to invoice a client for the first time A first invoice to a new client carries a little more risk than a repeat one, so the terms deserve thought. Net 7, Net 14, and Net 30 mean payment is due 7, 14, or 30 days after the invoice date; "due on receipt" means immediately. | Term | Due | Best suited to | | --- | --- | --- | | Due on receipt | Immediately | Small one-off jobs, deposits | | Net 7 | 7 days | Fast cash flow, smaller invoices | | Net 14 | 14 days | A balanced default for new clients | | Net 30 | 30 days | Established clients, larger companies | Net 30 is the most common B2B term, but shorter terms collect faster and are widely recommended for freelancers and new clients; Net 14 is the common balanced pick. Whatever you choose, put an explicit calendar due date on the invoice, not just "Net 14": a date removes the ambiguity about when "soon" is. [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) decodes Net 15, 2/10 Net 30, and the rest. Two more levers help with a first client. By Xero's own account, invoices that include an online payment option (a "pay now" button) get paid up to twice as fast as those without one (a vendor figure worth confirming on Xero's site). And asking for an upfront deposit, commonly 25% to 50% due at contract signing before work starts, is a standard way to reduce the risk of non-payment and confirm the client's commitment. Strong reluctance to pay any deposit is itself a useful signal. ## Itemize from tracked hours, not memory The line items are where invoices get disputed or trusted. A defensible invoice has one line item per task or deliverable, each showing a specific description, the hours or quantity, the rate, and the line total, with the grand total being the sum of those lines, not a round number you reached for. Itemized invoices are less likely to be disputed than a single vague line like "professional services," because the client can see exactly what they are paying for and why it took as long as it did. "Built homepage CSS, 3.5 hrs, $X" answers the question before it's asked. The catch is that itemizing only works if the hours are accurate. Logging your time as the work happens (rather than reconstructing the month at billing time) keeps the numbers provable instead of estimated after the fact. That tracked time is the real source document behind the invoice; our guide on [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) covers capturing them without a timer to babysit, and [PDF invoice generator for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers) shows how a clean log turns into the finished document. To bill by hand right now, the [free hourly and contractor invoice template](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) fills in from the browser and exports a PDF. ## How to invoice as a freelancer: a filled example Here is what those fields look like once they hold real work. The client name is a placeholder; swap in your own and the shape holds. Say you invoice a client, **Bright Harbor Co.**, for a week of design work: invoice `2026-014`, dated 5 September 2026, due 19 September 2026 on Net 14 terms. | Description | Hours | Rate | Amount | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Homepage build, HTML and CSS | 6.5 | $85 | $552.50 | | Content migration | 3.0 | $85 | $255.00 | | Two rounds of revisions | 2.25 | $85 | $191.25 | | **Subtotal** | | | **$998.75** | | Sales tax (0%) | | | $0.00 | | **Total due** | | | **$998.75** | Every line names a task, the hours behind it, and the rate, so the total is the sum of visible work rather than a round number. The due date is a calendar date, not just "Net 14," and the invoice number follows the sequence. Sales tax gets its own line even at 0%, so the client's accounts team can see it was considered. To fill one in without a spreadsheet, [the invoice generator](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) takes the same fields and line items and hands back a downloadable PDF. ## After you send, follow up on a schedule Send the invoice promptly after the work is done, while it's fresh, with a short professional email that states the due date. Then keep a follow-up cadence ready: a polite reminder around the first day past due, escalating from there. Most late invoices aren't refusals. They're invoices that slipped down someone's inbox, which is exactly why a unique number, a clear due date, and an easy way to pay all earn their place. ## Let your tracked time write the invoice If you bill by the hour, the slowest part of invoicing isn't formatting the document. It's reconstructing where the hours went. That's the part worth automating. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is a desktop time tracker for Windows, macOS, and Linux that records the active window automatically, with no timer to start. Keyword rules and optional AI sort your activity into client projects, billable is inherited per project, and the live billable total becomes a PDF invoice or a CSV export when you're ready to bill, itemized, dated, and scoped to the client you choose. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced, so hours don't fall through the gap between doing the work and charging for it. Window titles can stay on your device, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, and data is processed on EU servers and never sold. Pricing is flat: Pro is $9/mo for one seat, Team is $12/seat/mo, with a 14-day free trial and no card required. None of that replaces the judgment in this guide: who to bill, which terms, what deposit. It just means the line items and the total are a faithful record of the work rather than a month-end guess. Plans are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, there's a worked walkthrough in [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), and if you bill by the hour, [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) covers the workflow end to end. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I invoice a client for the first time? Send a simple document with your details, the client's details, a unique invoice number, the date, a line-by-line description of the work with quantities and rates, the total, and clear payment terms. Agree the terms and who receives it before you send. For a first client, a deposit or shorter terms like Net 14 protect you until you know they pay. ### What should an invoice include? A payable invoice needs your name and address, the client's billing details, a unique invoice number, issue and due dates, an itemized list of work with quantities and rates, the subtotal and any tax, the total due, and how to pay. Missing any of these is the usual reason an invoice stalls in a client's accounts-payable process. ### Who should I send the invoice to? Not always your day-to-day contact. Larger clients route payment through an accounts-payable inbox or a named finance person, and an invoice sent only to your project contact can sit unseen for weeks. Ask up front who receives invoices and whether they need a purchase-order number on it, then send there every time. ### What payment terms should a freelancer use? Net 14 or Net 30 are the common defaults, with shorter terms and deposits getting you paid sooner. Due on receipt suits small or one-off jobs. State the terms on every invoice, add a late-fee note if you use one, and offer an online payment option, since friction on the paying side is a real cause of delay. ## Keep reading - [How to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) - [PDF invoice generator for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers) - [How to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) - [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How to Track Billable Hours Accurately (No Timer) # How to Track Billable Hours Accurately (No Timer) > Why manual timers leak revenue, what actually counts as billable, and how automatic time tracking captures the hours you would otherwise forget to bill. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Most freelancers don't undercharge because their rate is too low. They undercharge because the hours never get written down. The quick client call between two other tasks, the after-hours bug fix, the twenty minutes spent reading a brief. Each one is billable, and each one is easy to forget by the time you sit down to invoice. This guide is about closing that gap: what counts as billable, why manual timers miss so much of it, and how to track billable hours accurately without babysitting a stopwatch. ## What actually counts as billable time? Billable time is any time you spend on work a client agreed to pay for. That's broader than "the hours I was heads-down in the deliverable." It includes: - Calls, standups, and async messages about the project - Research, reading briefs, and reviewing other people's work - Revisions and the small fixes that arrive after you thought you were done - Setup, deployment, and the admin a project genuinely requires If it only happened because the client hired you, it's a candidate for billing. The trick isn't deciding what's billable. It's **capturing it while it happens**. ## Why do manual timers leak hours? Start/stop timers depend on perfect memory and perfect discipline. In practice, three things go wrong: - **You forget to start it.** The work begins before the timer does, so the first minutes (sometimes the first hour) never get counted. - **You forget to stop it.** A timer left running overnight is worse than no timer: now you have to guess, and guessing low to be safe means giving away time. - **Context switching hides small work.** The five-minute reply and the ten-minute review are exactly the entries people skip, and they add up across a month. Every one of these failures rounds in the client's favour, not yours. Reconstructing a week from memory on invoice day makes it worse, because you only remember the big blocks. ## Four ways to capture billable time, compared Every way to track billable time is a trade between three things: how accurate it is, how much it interrupts your work day, and how much billable time it lets slip. Here is how the four common methods compare on all three. | Method | Accuracy | Effort during the day | Leakage risk | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Paper or spreadsheet | Low | High | High | | Manual start/stop timer | Medium | Medium | High | | Calendar reconstruction | Low to medium | Medium | High | | Automatic capture | High | Low | Low | ### Paper or spreadsheet Writing entries by hand after the fact is better than nothing and worse than everything else. You capture the big blocks and lose the small ones, because nobody stops to note a two-minute call in a spreadsheet. It is cheap and portable, and it leaks the most. ### Manual start/stop timer A timer is accurate when you remember it and useless when you do not. The accuracy is real for the sessions you actually start, but the whole method rests on catching every task switch, which is exactly what a busy day prevents. Forgotten starts and unlogged small tasks are where it bleeds. ### Calendar reconstruction Rebuilding the week from your calendar works when meetings are most of your billable time. Anything unscheduled (the heads-down build, the quick fix, the unplanned call) is invisible, so the method flatters meeting-heavy work and quietly undercounts everything else. ### Automatic capture An [automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records the active window as you work, so there is nothing to start and nothing to remember. Accuracy is high because it sees the small tasks too, and the effort moves to a short review pass instead of the work day. The one cost is categorization: raw activity has to be sorted into clients, which good tools handle with rules and AI. ## Which method should you use? Match the method to how your day actually runs. If you bill long, single-client focus blocks, a manual timer covers most of it and the leakage risk stays small. If you switch between clients all day, a timer leaks faster than you can fix it, and automatic capture is the only method that keeps up. Calendar reconstruction is a useful supplement when meetings dominate, rarely a complete answer on its own. Paper and spreadsheets are a fallback for work away from a computer, not a primary system for anyone billing by the hour. Whatever you pick, the deciding factor is leakage risk: the method that captures the work you would otherwise forget is worth more than the one that is tidiest to read. That is why automatic capture wins for most people who bill by the hour: it removes the memory step that every other method quietly depends on. ## A method that actually holds up Whatever tool you use, the reliable approach is the same three habits: 1. **Capture at the activity level, not the task level.** Record what you were actually doing (the app, the document, the site), so an entry exists even when you forgot you were "on the clock." 2. **Categorize by client and project.** Map your activity to the right client so billable time is grouped, not a soup of unlabelled minutes. 3. **Reconcile before you invoice.** Once a week, scan for time that's tracked but never billed, and bill it before it's forgotten. The [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) totals a week of entries and applies your billing increment. ## Let the tracking happen automatically The most reliable timer is the one you never have to start. Automatic, passive time tracking records the active window in the background and turns it into time entries for you, so the forgotten call and the after-hours fix are already captured by the time you invoice. This is the idea behind [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/): the desktop app records what you work on, sorts it into client projects with keyword rules (and optional AI categorization for the fuzzy cases), and adds up the billable total. When you're ready to invoice, the total is already there as a PDF, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable work that never made it onto an invoice: the reconcile step, done for you. If you bill by the hour, see [how it works for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) or [how it compares to Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). Attorneys billing matters contemporaneously can see the same idea in [time tracking software for lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers). ## The short checklist - Count calls, reviews, research, and revisions, not just heads-down work. - Capture time as it happens; don't reconstruct it on invoice day. - Group every entry under a client and project. - Reconcile weekly: find tracked-but-unbilled time and bill it. - Automate capture so a missed timer never costs you an hour again. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you track billable hours accurately? Capture the work as it happens instead of reconstructing it later. A running timer works only if you never forget it, which is why automatic tracking that records your active window is more accurate: it catches the short calls and context switches a manual timer misses. Then review, categorize by client, and confirm what is billable before you invoice. ### What counts as a billable hour? Any time your agreement lets you charge for: the client work itself, plus meetings, revisions, research, and communication tied to their project, unless your contract excludes them. Internal admin, your own marketing, and unpaid learning are non-billable. Settle the grey areas, like travel and email, with the client in writing before the work starts, not on invoice day. ### Is automatic time tracking more accurate than a timer? Usually, because it does not depend on memory. A manual timer is only as good as your discipline, and it fails hardest during deep focus when you are least likely to start it. Automatic capture records everything you touch and leaves the judgment, deciding which client each block belongs to, for a short review where you have full context. ### How do I stop forgetting to track billable time? Remove the step that fails. Reminders and nags interrupt focus to fix a problem interruptions caused, and you learn to ignore them within a week. The durable fix is to let capture run on its own and move your effort to a single review pass, where you confirm and categorize instead of remembering to press start all day. ## Keep reading - [Billable vs non-billable hours: what actually counts](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) - [How to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) - [Free freelance timesheet template (CSV)](https://billnotch.com/timesheet-templates) - [Billable hours tracker: six compared](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker) - [Billable hours best practices: seven rules](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-best-practices) - [How many billable hours per week is realistic?](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) - [How to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) - [What is a revenue leak, and how to find yours](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) - [Billable utilization rate, explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-follow-up-email [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Invoice Follow-Up Email: 3 Templates That Get Paid # Invoice Follow-Up Email: 3 Templates That Get Paid > Three copy-paste invoice follow-up email templates: a day-3 nudge, a firm day-14 chase and a final notice, plus when to send each and late-fee norms. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) September 3, 2026 9 min read Updated September 6, 2026 An **invoice follow-up email** is a short, factual message that restates the invoice number, the amount, and the due date, and asks for one thing: a date the client will pay. Most overdue invoices are not refusals. They are invoices that fell down an inbox, stalled in an approval queue, or never reached accounts payable at all, which is why a plain, unembarrassed reminder works far more often than a carefully worded one. Below are three templates for the three moments that matter: a nudge a few days past due, a firmer follow-up at two weeks, and a final notice at a month. Copy them, change the names, send them on schedule. ## When to send each one Chasing works when it is a cadence rather than a mood. Decide the schedule before the first invoice goes out, so sending the reminder is never a decision you have to make while annoyed. | When | Message | Tone | Ask | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 3 days past due | Gentle nudge | Assume an oversight | Confirm it was received | | 14 days past due | Firm follow-up | Businesslike, specific | A payment date, in writing | | 30 days past due | Final notice | Formal, no hostility | Payment or a call, by a stated date | Two rules apply to all three. Send them to accounts payable, not only to the person who hired you: the most common reason an invoice is unpaid at day 14 is that the payer never saw it. And attach the invoice again every single time, because "I'll dig it out" is where another week goes. Sending a reminder before the due date is optional and usually helpful on longer terms: a one-line note a few days ahead of a Net 30 deadline costs nothing and catches the approval delay while it's still fixable. ## Template 1: the day-3 nudge Assume the invoice was missed, not ignored. This email should be short enough that replying is easier than filing it away. > **Subject:** Invoice 2026-001, due August 25 > > Hi Dana, > > Just checking this one reached you. Invoice 2026-001 for $1,181.25 was due on August 25 and I don't have it marked as paid yet. > > I've attached it again in case it's easier. If it's already in your payment run, ignore me and I'll update my records. > > Thanks, > Sam No apology, no explanation of why you're writing, no "sorry to bother you." You are asking about work you delivered under terms you both agreed. The friendliness comes from brevity and from genuinely leaving room for the invoice to be already handled. ## Template 2: the day-14 follow-up Two weeks past due is no longer plausibly an oversight, so the email changes shape. It gets specific, it names a date, and it asks a question that cannot be answered with silence. > **Subject:** Invoice 2026-001, 14 days overdue > > Hi Dana, > > Following up on invoice 2026-001 for $1,181.25, issued August 11 and due August 25. It's now 14 days past due and still showing as outstanding on my end. > > Could you confirm the payment date, or let me know if something is blocking approval? If it needs a PO number or a different billing contact, tell me what you need and I'll reissue today. > > Invoice attached again for reference. > > Thanks, > Sam The offer to fix a problem is doing real work here. A large share of genuinely stuck invoices are stuck on something procedural (a missing purchase order, the wrong entity name, a vendor form nobody mentioned) and the client's side often assumes you already know. Naming those possibilities gets you an answer instead of an apology. If the reply is a promised date, write it down and follow up the day after it passes. A date that slips silently is the same problem wearing a friendlier hat. ## Template 3: the day-30 final notice At a month, the email becomes a record. Keep it formal and unemotional; you may want to be able to show it to someone later, and anger reads badly in a document that gets forwarded. > **Subject:** Final notice: invoice 2026-001, 30 days overdue > > Hi Dana, > > Invoice 2026-001 for $1,181.25 was issued on August 11 with Net 14 terms and is now 30 days past due. My previous emails on August 28 and September 8 are below. > > Please arrange payment by October 1, or reply with a date and I'll work with it. Under our agreement, balances more than 30 days overdue accrue a late fee of 1.5% per month, which I would rather not apply. > > If it's easier to resolve this on a call, I'm available Tuesday or Wednesday. > > Thanks, > Sam Three things earn their place. Quoting the earlier emails establishes the timeline without accusation. Naming a specific new deadline gives the message an edge that "as soon as possible" never has. And offering a call gives a client who has a real problem (cash flow, a dispute they haven't raised) an exit that isn't further silence. Whether to pause work at this point is a judgment call and depends on the relationship and what your contract says. What is not a judgment call is stopping the cadence: an invoice with no next scheduled contact is an invoice you have decided to write off. ## What to say about late fees A late fee only exists if you agreed it in advance. Mentioning one in a follow-up email when your contract never named it is unenforceable and reads as a bluff, so the time to decide on a late fee is when you write the contract, not when the invoice ages. Where freelancers do charge one, something in the range of 1% to 2% per month on the overdue balance is a common convention. Treat that as a norm rather than a rule: what you may charge, whether interest is capped, and what statutory entitlements exist without any contract clause all vary by jurisdiction. Several regions give business creditors a statutory right to interest on late commercial payments regardless of the contract. Which rules apply to you, at what rate, is worth ten minutes with someone qualified in your country. This is a description of common practice, not legal advice. In practice the fee's value is mostly as a deadline with teeth. Clients who pay slowly out of habit tend to move an invoice that has a cost attached, and clients who cannot pay will not be moved by any percentage. Applying it is optional every time; having agreed it up front is what makes the sentence in template three land. ## Prevent the chase upstream Every one of these emails is a failure of something earlier, and the earlier fixes are cheaper than the follow-ups. - **Shorten the terms.** Net 30 means a month of exposure before you are even allowed to ask. Net 14 is a reasonable default for freelance work, and due on receipt is fine for small one-off jobs. [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) covers the trade-offs, including early-payment discounts as a carrot instead of a fee as a stick. - **Take a deposit.** 25% to 50% up front, before work starts, both funds the project and tests the client's ability to pay while you can still walk away. - **Get the billing details on day one.** The AP email, the legal entity name, and whether a PO number is required. These three fields cause most of the stalls the day-14 email exists to unblock. - **Put a calendar date on the invoice,** not just "Net 14". A rule is negotiable in someone's head; a date is not. - **Send it immediately.** An invoice issued three weeks after the work finished is already competing with newer priorities. [How to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) walks the sequence, the [freelance invoice template](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template) has the fields laid out to fill in, and [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) removes the reconstruction step that makes invoices late in the first place. - **Track what's outstanding.** You cannot chase on a schedule if you don't know which invoices are past due and by how many days. ## Keeping the ledger without a spreadsheet That last point is the one most freelancers lose. Follow-ups happen when something tells you an invoice is 14 days late; they don't happen when the answer lives in a folder you'd have to go audit. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your working time automatically on Windows, macOS, and Linux, sorts it into client projects with keyword rules and optional AI, and turns the billable total into a numbered PDF invoice or a CSV export, issued the day the work ends rather than whenever you get around to reconstructing it. Invoices carry their status, so what's outstanding and how long it has been outstanding is a list you can look at, and the Revenue Leak Finder catches billable hours that never made it onto an invoice at all: [the quieter version](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) of not getting paid. Pro is $9/month for one seat and Team is $12/seat/month, flat, with a 14-day trial and no card required. Cheaper invoicing tools exist and so do cheaper trackers; the case here is having the hours and the invoices in one place, so the follow-up cadence has something to run against. None of that writes the email for you. But the hardest part of chasing an invoice is noticing that you should, and that part is a records problem, not a nerve problem. Start with [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client), then set your terms with [invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained). ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you politely ask for an overdue invoice? Keep the first nudge short and friendly: reference the invoice number and amount, note that it may have slipped through, and re-attach the invoice. Assume an oversight, not a refusal. Escalate the tone only as the days pass, and by the final notice state the consequence plainly. Most late invoices are process delays, not disputes, so a calm reminder usually works. ### When should I follow up on an unpaid invoice? A common cadence is a gentle reminder a few days after the due date, a firmer chase around two weeks late, and a final notice near 30 days. Send each to the person who actually pays, not just your project contact, and re-attach the invoice every time so no one can claim they never received it. ### What do you do when a client keeps ignoring invoices? Move from email to a call or a direct message, since silence over email is easy and a conversation is not. Confirm they have the invoice and the right payment details, ask for a payment date, and reference any late fee you stated up front. If it continues past your final notice, a formal demand or a pause on work is the next step. ### Should I charge a late fee on overdue invoices? Many freelancers do, commonly around 1.5 percent per month after a short grace period, but it only works if you stated it on the invoice before it was late. Treat it as a bargaining point and market practice rather than guaranteed law, since what is enforceable varies by region. Confirm the local rules before you rely on collecting it. ## Keep reading - [Invoice payment terms explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained) - [How to invoice a client, step by step](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) - [Freelance invoice template (free CSV download)](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-invoice-template) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/invoice-payment-terms-explained [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Invoice Payment Terms Explained: Net 30, Deposits & More # Invoice Payment Terms Explained: Net 30, Deposits & More > What invoice payment terms like Net 30 and 2/10 Net 30 mean, the early-payment discount math, and which terms get freelancers paid sooner. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 22, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Invoice payment terms** are the conditions you put on an invoice for how and when a client pays you: the "Net 30" or "due on receipt" line that quietly decides whether money lands in two weeks or two months. The codes are short, but the choice behind them is real: it shapes your cash flow, your client relationships, and how often you end up chasing money you've already earned. This guide explains what the common terms mean, what the math behind early-payment discounts actually costs, and which terms tend to get freelancers paid sooner rather than later. ## What invoice payment terms actually mean Most payment terms are built from one small convention. **"Net" means the full invoice amount, and the number after it is the count of calendar days from the invoice date by which payment is due.** So **Net 30** means pay the full amount within 30 days. **Net 15** shortens that window to 15 days, **Net 14** to two weeks, **Net 7** to a single week. **Net 60** stretches it to 60. Once you read the codes that way, the rest follow the same logic. The number is a deadline, the word in front tells you what's due, and the rest of this article is mostly variations on those two ideas. ## Common invoice payment terms, decoded These are the terms you'll meet most often, what each one means, and where it tends to fit. | Term | What it means | Best suited to | | --- | --- | --- | | Due on receipt | Payment expected as soon as the client receives the invoice | Small or one-off jobs, new clients | | Net 7 / Net 14 | Full amount due within 7 or 14 days of the invoice date | Freelancer default for steady cash flow | | Net 15 | Full amount due within 15 days | A middle ground between Net 14 and 30 | | Net 30 | Full amount due within 30 days; the most common B2B term | Corporate clients who require it | | Net 60 | Full amount due within 60 days | Large clients; hard on small suppliers | | 2/10 Net 30 | 2% discount if paid within 10 days, otherwise the full amount due in 30 | Nudging clients to pay early | | EOM | Payment due by the last day of the month the invoice was issued | Clients who batch payments monthly | | Deposit | A single upfront payment (typically 25 to 50%) before work begins | New clients and larger projects | | Milestone | A set percentage of the fee paid at defined project stages | Long projects billed in stages | | CIA / CWO / COD | Pay in advance, pay with the order, or pay on delivery | Product-style work and risky accounts | The first half of that list is about timing; the second half (deposits, milestones, advance payment) is about _when in the project_ money changes hands, which for freelancers often matters more. ## Payment terms compared: the trade-offs The decoder table above says what each term means. This one says what each costs you. Read the pro and the con together, because the term that collects fastest is rarely the one a big client will accept. | Term | Pro | Con | | --- | --- | --- | | Net 7 | Money lands fast, tight feedback loop | Corporate AP systems often cannot turn it around that fast | | Net 14 | A balanced default most clients accept | Still leaves a two-week float you are financing | | Net 30 | Standard for corporate clients, rarely questioned | Real payment often slips to 45 to 60 days | | Deposit (25 to 50%) | Filters non-payers, funds the start of the work | Some clients resist paying before they see output | | Milestone | Spreads risk across the project, no single big carry | More invoices to raise and track | | Late fee (1.5%/mo) | Gives a slow payer a reason to prioritize you | Enforceability varies by state and country, so check yours | The pattern most freelancers settle on: a short Net term for the balance, a deposit or milestones so you are never carrying the whole engagement, and a late fee stated up front so it is never a surprise. ## Net 15 vs Net 30: which should you use? Net 30 is the default a lot of clients reach for, and on paper it looks harmless. The catch is the gap between the term you write and the day you actually get paid. **Stated terms and real collection diverge**. Small businesses on Net 30 commonly see the money arrive closer to 45 to 60 days, once you account for approval queues and accounts-payable cycles. That gap is the case for shorter terms. **Net 15** halves the official wait and, in practice, tends to pull the real payment date forward too. For most freelance work, a sensible pattern is to **default to Net 7 or Net 14, and reserve Net 30 for corporate clients who genuinely require it**: protecting yourself with a deposit or milestones rather than financing a slow-paying client for a month. The longer the term, the longer you're effectively lending your work for free. ## "Due on receipt": what it means and when to use it **Due on receipt** means exactly what it says: payment is expected as soon as the client gets the invoice, with no grace window built in. It's the firmest of the common terms, which makes it a good fit for **small or one-off jobs and new clients** you haven't yet built a payment history with. It's less suited to large companies whose systems can't physically pay on the day an invoice arrives. For them, a short Net term is more realistic than a deadline their process can't meet. ## The hidden math of 2/10 Net 30 **2/10 Net 30** offers a 2% discount if the client pays within 10 days, with the full amount otherwise due in 30. The 2% looks small, but the math runs the other way than most people expect. Declining that discount means paying full price 20 days later than you could have. Annualize that and **passing up a 2/10 Net 30 discount is equivalent to borrowing at roughly 37% a year.** The formula is (discount ÷ (100% − discount)) × (365 ÷ (net days − discount days)), which works out to about 37% (slightly lower if you use a 360-day year). The exact figure depends on the convention, but the takeaway doesn't: an early-payment discount is expensive credit to leave on the table, whether you're the one offering it or the one deciding whether to take it. ## Deposits and milestones: getting paid before the end For anything beyond a quick job, the most reliable way to protect cash flow isn't the Net term at all. It's collecting money earlier in the project. - **A deposit** is a single upfront payment before work begins, **typically 25% to 50%** of the fee. It filters out clients who were never going to pay and funds the start of the work. - **Milestone payments** split the fee into portions tied to defined stages: for example, 40% at kickoff, 30% at draft approval, and 30% on final delivery, so you're never carrying the whole engagement on credit. Both shift risk away from the freelancer, which is exactly why they're worth proposing on larger projects rather than billing 100% at the end. ## What late payment actually costs Late payment isn't an edge case; it's the baseline most freelancers work against. According to Intuit QuickBooks' [2025 US Small Business Late Payments Report](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/small-business-late-payments-report-2025/), a January 2025 survey of 2,487 US small businesses: **56% were owed money from unpaid invoices, averaging about $17,500 per business, and 47% had invoices overdue by more than 30 days.** A [Bonsai analysis of three years of freelance invoicing data](https://www.hellobonsai.com/blog/late-freelance-payment) found that **29% of freelance invoices were paid at least one day late**, with a notable gap by gender: female freelancers saw late payments on 31% of invoices versus 24% for men. (Bonsai sells freelance invoicing software, so read it as vendor data, but it is data from real invoices, and the underlying method is stated.) You can push back on this with terms. A **common freelancer late fee is 1.5% per month**, often written as "1.5% per month or a flat fee, whichever is greater," after a short grace period. Treat that as market practice rather than law. US states set differing usury caps, so confirm what's enforceable where you operate. In the **UK**, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts legislation gives B2B suppliers a [statutory right to interest](https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-recovery) of **8% plus the Bank of England base rate**, plus fixed compensation per invoice (GOV.UK guidance, current as of 2026). The [EU Late Payment Directive (2011/7/EU)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32011L0007) sets a comparable floor of at least 8 percentage points above the European Central Bank reference rate. ## Sample payment terms you can copy These are generic templates to adapt to your own work and local rules, not legal advice. Run anything you rely on past a professional in your jurisdiction. - "Payment due within 14 days of the invoice date (Net 14)." - "Payment due upon receipt." - "50% deposit due before work begins; remaining balance due Net 14 on final delivery." - "Milestone schedule: 40% on project start, 30% at draft approval, 30% on final delivery." - "2% discount if paid within 10 days; full amount due within 30 days (2/10 Net 30)." - "A late fee of 1.5% per month applies to balances unpaid after the due date." ## Where the terms meet the invoice Good payment terms only help if they reach the client on a clean, itemized invoice that goes out on time. That's the part that tends to slip: the work gets done, the hours get tracked, and the bill is the thing that waits. The terms you set don't start their clock until the invoice is actually sent. See [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) for the document those terms ride on, or fill the [free hourly and contractor invoice template](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator), which turns the term you pick into a calendar due date on the invoice. This is the seam [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is built to close. The desktop app records your active window automatically on Windows, macOS, and Linux, sorts the work into client projects, and keeps a live billable total, so when it's time to bill, the [invoice generates straight from your tracked hours](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) as a PDF, with your payment terms on it, rather than something you rebuild by hand. The Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time that was tracked but never invoiced, so the hours don't sit past their due date because you forgot to send the bill at all. The plans are flat (Pro at $9/mo, Team at $12/seat) on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, with a 14-day trial. Set the terms deliberately, send the invoice promptly, and the codes do their job. The rest is making sure every billable hour actually reaches a client before the clock you set has any chance to run. ## FAQ ### What does Net 30 mean on an invoice? Net 30 means the full invoice amount is due within 30 calendar days of the invoice date. The number is the deadline in days; Net means the whole amount, with no discount. Net 14 shortens it to two weeks and Net 7 to one. In practice, Net 30 payments often arrive closer to 45 to 60 days. ### What payment terms get freelancers paid fastest? Shorter terms and earlier collection. Net 7 or Net 14 pulls the real payment date forward versus Net 30, and a deposit collects before work even starts. Due on receipt is the firmest option for small or one-off jobs. Adding an online payment option and stating a late fee up front both help too. ### How does the 2/10 Net 30 discount work? 2/10 Net 30 offers a 2 percent discount if the client pays within 10 days, otherwise the full amount is due in 30. Passing up that discount is like borrowing at roughly 37 percent a year, because you pay 2 percent to delay payment by 20 days. It is expensive credit to leave on the table. ### Should a freelancer charge a late fee? Many do: a common figure is 1.5 percent per month after a short grace period, stated on the invoice before it is ever late. Treat it as market practice, not law. US states set differing caps, and the UK and EU give B2B suppliers a statutory interest right instead, so confirm what is enforceable where you operate. ## Keep reading - [How to invoice clients from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) - [What to look for in freelance billing software](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software) - [How to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) - [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Memtime Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks # Best Memtime Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks > Memtime captures automatically and offline, but never invoices and sorts nothing for you: five alternatives compared on what happens after capture. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) September 5, 2026 10 min read Updated September 6, 2026 People shopping for **Memtime alternatives** are rarely unhappy with the tracking itself. Memtime captures everything you do, silently, without a timer, and it does it on the machine rather than in someone else's cloud. What sends people looking is what happens after the capture: the sorting is still yours, and the billing happens somewhere else entirely. Nobody leaves an automatic tracker to get a stopwatch back. You are shopping for the second half of the job. If you have not decided to leave yet, the [full Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) weighs the tracker on its own terms before this shortlist. The baseline first. Memtime sells three per-user plans. Billed annually the headline rates are **Basic at €15 / $18**, **Connect at €22 / $26**, **Premium at €30 / $35** per user per month. The default quarterly cycle costs more, annual saves up to 20%, and a two-year term saves up to 33% (Memtime's own example puts Basic at about €10/month on the two-year term). There is a free trial with no card required, but **no free plan**. Prices are quoted in ten currencies on [Memtime's pricing page](https://www.memtime.com/pricing). Check there before you budget. ## What Memtime does well, and where the gaps are Concede the strengths first; they are genuine and several are rare. Memtime's capture is **fully automatic and offline**: it records locally and the data stays on the device. That is a real privacy position, not a marketing line, and it is why many Memtime users chose it over cloud trackers. It ships **native apps for Windows, macOS and Linux**, which is unusual. Most commercial trackers here cover two of the three at best. Basic already includes **built-in project management**, calendar integrations and unlimited custom reports, so it is not a bare recorder. And Connect adds **100+ software integrations** plus sync with project software, a serious hand-off story if you live in a project tool. Four things push people to look anyway. - **There is no invoicing at all.** Memtime exports to project and billing software instead of generating the invoice itself. A deliberate choice, but it means permanently running two tools: one that knows what you did, one that bills for it. See [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) for what that hand-off costs each month. - **Project assignment is manual, not sorted for you.** The capture is automatic; the categorization is not. You still assign captured blocks to projects by hand. If your reason for wanting [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) was to stop doing admin, half the admin survived. - **There is no free plan.** A trial, yes, with no credit card, but nothing permanent at zero. - **It is the highest entry price here.** At $18 per user/month billed annually, Basic is the most expensive starting point in this comparison, and the cheapest headline rate needs a **two-year billing commitment**: a cash-flow decision, not just a discount. ## What to look for in a Memtime alternative You already want automatic capture, so these criteria are all downstream of it. - **Whether the tool sorts, or just records.** A passive log you convert by hand is a different product from one that proposes project assignments. This is the biggest split in the field. - **Whether billing is native or a hand-off.** Built-in invoicing, an export to accounting software, or nothing. If the invoicing gap is why you are leaving, this column decides it. - **Whether the Linux app survives the move.** If Linux is your daily machine, a lot of this list disappears. [The Linux tracker field](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) is smaller than the marketing suggests. - **Where the data lives.** Memtime keeps it on the device; almost everything else syncs to a server. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, decide it before you shortlist. - **The shape of the price.** A cheaper monthly rate that needs two years upfront is not the same offer as a flat month-to-month seat. ## The Memtime alternatives, compared Five options, each trading something different. Treat the table as a map, not a quote. _Details as of September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [Memtime](https://www.memtime.com/pricing), [Timely](https://timely.com/pricing), [Toggl Track](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [RescueTime](https://www.rescuetime.com/pricing), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing)._ | Tool | Capture model | Project sorting | Invoicing | Linux desktop | Entry price | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Memtime | Fully automatic, offline | Manual | None (exports) | Yes | $18/user/mo (annual) | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window | Rules + optional AI | Native PDF + CSV | Yes | $9/mo, one seat | | Timely | Automatic, AI drafts | AI, you approve | Native + QuickBooks | No | $9/user/mo yearly | | Toggl Track | Timeline log you convert | Manual | Basic, built-in | No (deprecated) | Free, then $9/license | | RescueTime | Fully automatic | Manual | None surfaced | No (community) | Paid, see pricing page | | Clockify | Timer + Auto Tracker | Manual | Built-in (paid) | Yes | Free, then $3.99/seat | **BillNotch** matches what most people leaving Memtime describe wanting: automatic capture that also sorts and bills. Its full case, caveats included, is in its own section below. **Timely** closes the sorting gap head-on. It captures automatically, then uses AI to **draft** entries you review and approve, so the work shrinks to confirming or correcting rather than assigning from scratch. It invoices natively and sends those invoices to QuickBooks Online in a click. Two real caveats. There is **no native Linux app**: macOS, Windows, web and mobile only. And there is **no free plan**, just a 14-day trial, then Starter at $11 monthly or $9 yearly per user, capped at 5 users and 20 projects, with Premium at $20 / $16 and Unlimited at $28 / $22. Tasks is a paid add-on from around $5 per person. Timely's comparison table does not reveal which tier includes Invoices, so confirm before buying. See [BillNotch vs Timely](https://billnotch.com/compare/timely) and [Timely alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/timely-alternatives). **Toggl Track** is the pragmatic pick if you want a mature, well-reported tool and will give up some automation for it. Its **Timeline** is a passive log of apps and sites you viewed for more than ten seconds, which you convert into entries yourself: a step down from Memtime's capture, not up. Timeline runs on the **macOS and Windows desktop apps only**, and the native Linux app is deprecated. Invoicing exists but is basic: Reports, Export, Create Invoice, with CSV and PDF output and a hand-off to QuickBooks or Xero. The upside is a Free plan for a limited number of users, then Starter at $9 per license/month, with Premium listed at $14 per license/month for the first year of Premium annual, renewing at $18. See [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). **RescueTime** is the closest thing here to Memtime's tracking philosophy, minus the offline part. Capture is **fully automatic**, and it adds focus tooling (the Assistant, Focus Sessions, Goals and Alerts) that Memtime does not. Its Timesheets plans add shared clients and projects, role-based access and **billable rates**. But **no invoice generation is surfaced on its pricing page**, so treat it as a data source you export from and bill elsewhere, which leaves the invoicing gap where you found it. Linux was officially dropped: help docs list Windows, macOS, iOS and a browser extension. It sells paid plans, including a Timesheets-inclusive tier; see their pricing page for current figures. **Clockify** is the right answer if the invoicing gap moved you and price matters. It has a **native Linux desktop app**, **built-in invoicing on paid plans**, and an **Auto Tracker** that passively records activity. The catch: the Auto Tracker is a log you convert yourself, so you keep Memtime's sorting problem while gaining the billing. It is also the cheapest entry here by a distance: a free-forever plan, then BASIC at $3.99 per seat/month billed annually ($4.99 monthly), rising through STANDARD at $5.49 / $6.99 and PRO at $7.99 / $9.99 to ENTERPRISE at $11.99 / $14.99. See [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative). The pattern is the one that made you look: tools that capture automatically tend not to bill, and tools that bill well hand you the sorting. The [combination of automatic capture and built-in invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing) is the scarce part. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is aimed at exactly one migration: keep the automatic capture, drop the two jobs Memtime leaves on your desk. Its desktop app records the active window automatically, with no timer to start. Keyword rules plus optional AI [sort that activity into client projects](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) and land the result as **drafts you confirm**. Suggestions are never silently applied. Billable status is inherited per project, so the running total becomes a native PDF invoice or a CSV export without retyping, the whole [capture-to-invoice loop](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-with-invoicing) in one place. A **Revenue Leak Finder** flags the [unbilled gap](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak): time you tracked but never invoiced, which otherwise surfaces only when you reconcile by hand. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux. Now the honest parts. **BillNotch is not the cheapest option here.** Clockify's entry tier undercuts it substantially and keeps a free-forever plan, and Toggl's Starter matches the per-license figure while also offering a free tier. BillNotch is Pro at **$9/month for one seat** and Team at **$12/seat/month**, flat, no usage metering, 14-day trial with no card. The case is the combination, not the price. **And if your hard requirement is that tracking data never leaves the machine, stay on Memtime.** BillNotch syncs to a server. Window titles can stay on your device, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers and is never sold, but that is a different promise from offline-only, and if offline-only is why you picked Memtime, nothing here outweighs it. Two smaller notes: capture happens in the desktop app while invoicing lives in the dashboard, connected but not the same window; and automatic capture is reliable on X11, while Wayland's locked-down active-window access limits every Linux tracker, BillNotch included. ## The bottom line Route yourself by the gap that made you look. If it is **the sorting**, Timely and BillNotch are the only two here that propose project assignments rather than handing you a log. If it is **the invoicing** and price is tight, Clockify is the natural move, especially on Linux. If it is **the price alone** and you can bill elsewhere, RescueTime is cheaper and just as automatic, though you lose Linux. If it is **the two-year commitment**, most of this list bills monthly or annually without one. And if none of it is really a gap (if offline-only capture on a native Linux app is what you bought) Memtime still does that, and switching for the invoicing would cost you the reason you chose it. Everyone else: shortlist the two that match your platform and billing model, trial both, and check current numbers on each vendor's site. Plan details are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best Memtime alternative? It depends on the gap that made you look. If you want captured time sorted into projects rather than a log you assign by hand, Timely and BillNotch are the two here that propose assignments. If the invoicing gap moved you and price is tight, Clockify is the natural pick, and it runs on Linux. Match your platform and billing model, then trial two. ### Does Memtime do invoicing? No. Memtime records your time automatically and offline, but it never generates an invoice. It exports the captured data to project and billing software instead, so you run two tools: one that knows what you did and one that bills for it. Alternatives like BillNotch and Clockify build invoicing in, so the tracked hours become a bill in the same place. ### Is there a Memtime alternative that runs on Linux? Yes, but the list is short. Memtime itself ships a native Linux app, and among these alternatives BillNotch and Clockify do too. Timely has no Linux app, Toggl's was deprecated, and RescueTime dropped official Linux support. If Linux is your daily machine, shortlist the tools with a current native app before you compare anything else. ### Does Memtime keep tracking data offline? Yes. Memtime records locally and the data stays on the device, which is a genuine privacy position and often the reason people pick it. Most alternatives sync to a server instead. BillNotch can keep window titles on each device and processes data on EU servers, but that is a different promise from offline-only. If offline-only is a hard requirement, stay on Memtime. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/pdf-invoice-generator-freelancers [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / PDF Invoice Generator for Freelancers: Automatic vs Manual # PDF Invoice Generator for Freelancers: Automatic vs Manual > PDF invoice generator for freelancers: a blank template vs generating the invoice straight from tracked, billable-flagged time, and why retyping costs. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **PDF invoice generator** turns the hours you already tracked into a finished, client-ready PDF, instead of retyping them by hand into a blank template. The automatic route generates the invoice straight from billable-flagged time entries, so nothing gets re-keyed and no hour goes missing. ## Two ways to make a freelance invoice Every freelance PDF invoice comes from one of two places: a blank form you fill in, or a record of work you convert. **Manual generators and templates** start empty. You open a Word, Google Docs, or spreadsheet template (or a free online invoice maker) and type in the line items, dates, rates, and totals yourself. The output looks professional, but every number is copied from somewhere else by hand. **Generating from tracked time** starts with data you already have. If you logged your hours during the week, the invoice is a view of that log: pick the client and the date range, and the line items, quantities, and amounts assemble themselves. You review instead of retype. The difference matters most at the end of the month, when memory is thin and the billable hours are spread across days you've half-forgotten. ## Generate a PDF invoice in the browser If you want a finished PDF right now without installing anything, the [free invoice generator](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) runs in the browser and downloads a PDF you can send. It does not track your time; it is the blank-form route done well, for the fixed-price and occasional invoices where that is the right tool. The walk-through: 1. **Fill your details and the client's.** Add your business name, address, and email, then the client's billing entity and address. These are the fields an accounts team checks first. 2. **Set the invoice number, dates, and terms.** Give it a unique number, pick the issue date, and choose terms: due on receipt, Net 7, Net 14, Net 30, or a custom due date, which sets the payment deadline for you. 3. **Add line items.** For each row, type the description, the hours, and the rate. Hours accept either a decimal like `7.5` or an `h:mm` value like `7:30`, and both resolve to the same number, so you can copy straight from a timesheet in whichever format you keep. Hours times rate fills the line total. 4. **Add tax and any discount.** Label the tax (sales tax or VAT) and set the percent, and apply a percentage or fixed discount if you offer one. The subtotal, tax, and total recalculate as you type. 5. **Pick a currency and download.** Choose USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, or AUD, then download the PDF, export a CSV, or print. The file is built in your browser, so nothing is uploaded. The tool is the fast path for a one-off or fixed-price invoice. For recurring hourly work across clients, the next sections are why converting from tracked time beats retyping into any generator, this one included. ## What belongs on a freelance PDF invoice Whichever route you take, [a complete, payable invoice](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) needs the same fields. Missing any of these is the usual reason a client's accounts team sends it back. | Field | Why it matters | | --- | --- | | **Invoice number** | Unique, sequential, for the client's records and your bookkeeping | | **Issue + due date** | Sets the payment clock and your terms (e.g. net 14) | | **Your details** | Legal name, address, tax/VAT ID where required | | **Client details** | Their billing entity and address, not just a contact name | | **Line items** | What you did, the quantity (hours), the unit rate, the line total | | **Subtotal, tax, total** | Tax broken out separately; the grand total unmistakable | | **Payment instructions** | Bank/IBAN or a payment link, plus accepted methods | The line items are where the two approaches diverge. A template gives you empty rows. A time-based generator fills those rows from the entries you flagged as billable. Each task already carries its duration and its project. ## Why retyping costs you money Manual entry has two failure modes, and both are quiet. **You miss hours.** The 20 minutes on a Tuesday call, the quick fix on Friday night, if you're reconstructing the month from memory, those don't make the invoice. They're real work that goes unbilled, every month, on every client. **You make errors.** Transposed rates, a date in the wrong month, a line item double-counted. Each one is either money lost or an awkward correction after the client has already received the PDF. Generating from tracked time removes the retyping step entirely, so there's nothing to mis-key and nothing to forget. The hours on the invoice are the hours you recorded, not the hours you could remember. Our guide on [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) walks through that handoff end to end. ## The billable flag does the filtering The piece that makes time-based invoicing trustworthy is a **billable flag** on each entry. Not all tracked time is chargeable. Internal admin, business development, a coffee break, the hour you spent learning a tool. You want that recorded for your own visibility, but it must not land on a client's bill. A billable flag lets you separate the two as you work, so generating an invoice is just "every billable entry for this client, this period." This is why a clean [freelance timesheet](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-timesheet) is the real source document. If the timesheet is accurate and each entry is correctly flagged, the invoice is automatic and correct. If the timesheet is a guess, no generator can save it, manual or otherwise. ## When a manual generator still makes sense Automatic isn't always the answer. A blank template is fine when: - You bill **fixed-price**, not hourly: the invoice is one line, no hours to sum. - You invoice **rarely**: one client, once a quarter, and tracking would be overkill. - You need a **one-off** document: a deposit, a reimbursement, a credit note. For recurring hourly work across several clients, though, the manual route taxes you a little every cycle: the reconstruction, the cross-checking, the hours that slip through. ## Choosing your approach Match the tool to how you actually bill: 1. **Mostly fixed-price, invoice occasionally** → a template or the [free hourly and contractor invoice generator](https://billnotch.com/tools/invoice-generator) is enough. 2. **Hourly, one or two clients** → tracked time helps, but a spreadsheet can keep up. 3. **Hourly, multiple clients, monthly** → generate from tracked, billable-flagged time; the time saved and the hours recovered compound fast. If you're in that third group, [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) tracks your hours automatically in the background and turns the billable ones into a native PDF invoice, so the document you send is a faithful record of the work, with nothing retyped and nothing left off. However you invoice, the principle holds: the most accurate invoice is the one you convert from a real log of your time, not the one you rebuild from memory at month's end. Related: what to look for in [freelance billing software](https://billnotch.com/blog/freelance-billing-software), and the [best freelance time tracking with invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing). ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I make a PDF invoice for free? Use a browser invoice generator: fill in your details and the client's, add line items with hours and rates, set tax and terms, and download the PDF. BillNotch's free tool does this with no signup and no upload. If you track your hours, a better route is to generate the invoice from that log so nothing is retyped. ### What should a freelance PDF invoice include? A unique invoice number, issue and due dates, your legal details, the client's billing entity, itemized line items with quantity and rate, the subtotal, any tax broken out, the total due, and payment instructions. Missing any of these is the usual reason a client's accounts team sends the invoice back. ### Should I generate an invoice from tracked time or a template? It depends on how you bill. For fixed-price or occasional invoices, a blank template or the browser generator is enough. For recurring hourly work across several clients, generating from tracked, billable-flagged time is more accurate: the hours on the invoice are the hours you recorded, not the ones you could remember at month-end. ### Can I enter hours as h:mm on an invoice? In the browser generator, yes. Each line item accepts hours as a decimal like 7.5 or as h:mm like 7:30, and both resolve to the same value, so you can copy straight from a timesheet in whichever format you keep. It multiplies hours by rate to fill the line total for you. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/project-profitability [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Project Profitability: How to Know If a Project Pays # Project Profitability: How to Know If a Project Pays > Project profitability in one formula: revenue minus time cost minus expenses, plus effective hourly rate and why untracked hours hide real losses. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) September 1, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Project profitability** is what the project earned minus what it cost you to deliver, and for service work the dominant cost is time. The formula is short enough to hold in your head: > **Project profit = revenue − time cost − direct expenses** > **Project margin = (project profit ÷ revenue) × 100** The arithmetic is easy, so project profitability analysis almost never fails on the maths. The reason so many agencies and freelancers can't answer "did that project make money?" is the middle term: time cost is only as accurate as the hours you recorded, and the hours nobody records are exactly the ones that turn a good project into a bad one. ## What counts as time cost Time cost is every hour spent on the project multiplied by what that hour costs. Two things people leave out, both expensive. The first is the non-delivery hours. Kickoff calls, status updates, the Slack thread about scope, the invoice you wrote at the end. That work exists because the project exists, so it belongs to the project, even though it never appears in a deliverable. The habit of counting only "real" work is how a project that consumed 140 hours gets recorded as 100. The second is the cost rate itself. If you employ people, use their loaded cost (salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead) not their salary divided by 2,080, which understates them by a third or more. If you're solo, you have no payroll to point at, so use the rate you would have earned on other work. An hour spent on a fixed-price project you underquoted is an hour not sold at your standard rate, and that is a real cost whether or not money changed hands. ## Effective hourly rate: the number that settles arguments Margin tells you whether a project paid. Effective hourly rate tells you whether it was worth doing instead of something else. > **Effective hourly rate = revenue ÷ total hours actually worked** Compare it to your target rate and the answer is immediate. A $12,000 project delivered in 100 hours earned $120 an hour. The same project delivered in 160 hours earned $75. Nothing about the invoice changed; the second version just quietly cost you 60 hours you could have sold. This is also the number that makes fixed-price quotes improve over time, because it converts "that one felt heavy" into a figure you can put next to the next quote. If you don't have a target rate to compare against, [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) derives one, and the [consulting rate calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/consulting-rate-calculator) turns it into an hourly, day and retainer figure. ## A worked example A fixed-price website project, quoted at $12,000 against an estimate of 100 hours, an implied $120 an hour. | Who | Hours | Cost rate | Time cost | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Senior designer | 62 | $65 | $4,030 | | Junior designer | 46 | $40 | $1,840 | | Account manager | 30 | $55 | $1,650 | | **Total** | **138** | | **$7,520** | Add $480 of direct expenses (stock photography and a font licence) and the picture resolves: | Line | Amount | | --- | --- | | Revenue | $12,000 | | Time cost | −$7,520 | | Direct expenses | −$480 | | **Profit** | **$4,000** | | **Margin** | **33%** | A 33% margin is a respectable project. But the effective hourly rate is $12,000 ÷ 138 = **$87**, against the $120 the quote assumed. The project made money and still underperformed the estimate by 38 hours, and only the second number tells you that. Quote the next one the same way and you will make the same 38-hour mistake again. ## Why untracked hours destroy margins silently Now run the same project with imperfect records. Suppose 22 of the account manager's 30 hours were never logged: the calls, the email, the scope conversations, each too short to feel worth recording. The reported project looks like this: | Line | Reported | Actual | | --- | --- | --- | | Hours | 116 | 138 | | Time cost | $6,310 | $7,520 | | Profit | $5,210 | $4,000 | | Margin | 43% | 33% | | Effective hourly rate | $103 | $87 | Ten points of margin, invented by omission. Nothing was falsified; some hours simply never made it into a system, and the missing hours were all of one kind: short, interruptive, non-delivery work. That bias is the dangerous part. Untracked time doesn't scatter randomly across a project, it concentrates in exactly the category most likely to be underestimated, so the projects that look best on paper are often the ones bleeding the most account-management time. The consequences compound. You quote the next project from a 43% margin that never existed. You keep the client type that appears most profitable and is not. You raise the rate on the wrong service line. A margin computed from partial hours isn't a slightly noisy number, it is a number biased in one direction, and it always points toward taking more of the work that is quietly losing. The same missing hours on an hourly engagement are money you never invoiced at all: [what a revenue leak is](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) covers that side, and [how to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) runs a short audit that finds them. ## Fixed-price and hourly fail in different ways The failure mode depends on how you sold the work, and the fix is not the same. On **hourly** work, unrecorded time hits revenue directly. Every hour you worked and didn't log is an hour you didn't invoice, so profitability and billing are the same problem and capture solves both. Margin is largely set at quoting time by the rate. On **fixed-price** work, revenue is fixed no matter what you record, so unrecorded time can't reduce your invoice. It only hides your true cost. That feels harmless and isn't: the entire value of tracking a fixed-price project is learning what it actually took, so the next quote is better. Untracked hours on fixed-price work don't cost you this project, they cost you the next three, because you re-quote a losing shape as though it were a winner. Which is also why fixed-price work needs the same [billable and non-billable split](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) as hourly work, even though nothing on it gets billed by the hour. Retainers sit between the two and inherit the worst of both: fixed revenue plus an open-ended scope, where the only defence is knowing your hours per month against the fee. ## Measuring it without a month-end ritual Project profitability computed once a quarter from reconstructed timesheets is worse than useless, because you'll act on it. It has to be a by-product of ordinary work rather than a task somebody remembers to do. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) records your active window in the background on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so the short non-delivery hours land in the same place as the deep work: no timer to start, and nothing to reconstruct on Friday. Keyword rules and optional AI sort activity into client projects, billable status is inherited per project, and the reports give you hours and billable ratios per project and per member, which is the raw material both formulas above need. Invoices are generated from the same tracked time as a PDF or CSV, and the Revenue Leak Finder surfaces billable hours that never reached an invoice. Pro is $9/month for one seat and Team is $12/seat/month, flat, with a 14-day trial and no card required. It is not the cheapest option in either category, and a spreadsheet plus a stopwatch is genuinely free. The case is that profitability math falls apart on incomplete hours, and automatic capture is the only version of hour-collection that doesn't depend on remembering. Whatever you measure with, measure per project rather than per month. Monthly totals average a losing project into a winning one and tell you nothing about either; see [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) for the capacity side of the same picture, and [how many billable hours in a year](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) for what you have to sell in the first place. If you bill by project phase, the same per-project math applies to each phase, which is the whole point of [time tracking software for architects](https://billnotch.com/for/architects). ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you calculate project profitability? Subtract the project's costs from its revenue. The costs are the hours worked times your cost rate, plus any expenses and subcontractor fees. What is left is profit; divide it by the hours worked and you get the effective hourly rate the project actually paid. Untracked hours make both numbers look better than they are, which is why measured time matters. ### What is a good profit margin for a project? There is no universal figure, because it depends on your cost base and field. The more useful test is the effective hourly rate: what the project paid per hour actually worked, expenses included. If that rate sits well below your target rate, the project underperformed even if it looked profitable, and the fix is a better estimate or higher price next time. ### Why do untracked hours hide losses? Profit is revenue minus cost, and cost is driven by hours. When hours go untracked, the recorded cost is too low, so the margin looks healthier than it is. A fixed-price project can read as profitable on paper while the real effective rate, counting every hour you actually spent, is a fraction of what you meant to earn. ### Hourly, fixed-price, or retainer: which is most profitable? Each fails differently. Hourly bills every hour but caps your upside; fixed price rewards speed and punishes a bad estimate; a retainer is profitable only if the work stays inside the agreed scope. None is safest on its own. The common protection is tracking the real hours behind every model so you can see which projects actually paid. ## Keep reading - [What is a revenue leak?](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) - [How to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) - [Billable utilization rate: formula and benchmarks](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Rize Alternatives in 2026: Tracking + Invoicing # Rize Alternatives in 2026: Tracking + Invoicing > Rize tracks time automatically but hands off invoicing-ready data instead of the finished invoice, and skips Linux. Honest Rize alternatives, compared. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 10, 2026 9 min read Updated September 6, 2026 If you're weighing **Rize alternatives**, it's usually for one of two reasons: you want the same hands-off, automatic capture Rize is known for, but you also need to actually send a client an invoice, or you work on Linux, which Rize doesn't support. Rize is a genuinely good automatic tracker, and the honest gap is narrower than older comparisons suggest. It's worth getting right before you switch. This is a fair look at where Rize ends and what fills the rest. Rize captures time automatically and now tracks billable hours too, but it produces _invoicing-ready data_ rather than a finished invoice, and it runs only on macOS and Windows. Below: what Rize does well, exactly where it stops, a sourced head-to-head, and how to pick. ## What Rize gets right Start with the strengths, because they're the part you'll miss if you pick wrong. Rize tracks automatically (no start/stop buttons, no manual entries, no timers to forget) running in the background and using AI to sort each activity into projects, clients, and tasks (per rize.io/features/automatic-time-tracking). That's the same capture model that makes [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) attractive in the first place: the short reply and the ten-minute file both land on the record without you having to remember them. Two things have changed recently that older "Rize alternatives" write-ups get wrong, and it's worth correcting them so you compare the current product: - **Rize now tracks billable hours.** It tracks billable versus non-billable time, lets you set hourly rates, and breaks work into total hours, billable hours, and a billable amount (per rize.io/features/billable-time-and-reporting). It is no longer a pure productivity dashboard. - **Rize is no longer solo-only.** It markets team time visibility and team profitability analytics, with per-seat team plans, so it competes for small teams as well as individuals. If a clean automatic capture engine with AI categorization is the whole job, Rize already does that part well, and any honest alternative has to match it before it can claim to beat it. ## Where Rize stops: invoicing-ready data, not the invoice Here's the distinction that actually matters, and it's a real one rather than a knock. Rize produces what it calls **"invoicing-ready time data"**: client, project, duration, hourly rate, and descriptions that map directly to invoice line items. What it does not do is **generate or send the invoice itself.** To bill a client, you export a CSV for import into FreshBooks, QuickBooks, or Xero, or push the data through a Zapier integration into one of those accounting tools (per rize.io/features/billable-time-and-reporting). So the accurate framing is not "Rize can't help you bill". It can, and the data it hands off is well-structured. The framing is **invoicing-ready data versus a finished, sent invoice.** That difference cuts both ways: - If your accounting already lives in QuickBooks or Xero, the handoff may be exactly what you want. Rize feeds the billing tool you already trust, and you change nothing about how invoices go out. - If you'd rather not run a separate billing subscription and reconcile two systems by hand each month, the handoff is the chore you're trying to delete. That's the gap an alternative has to fill. The mechanics of getting from tracked time to a sent bill (filtering by client, keeping only billable entries, totalling to decimal hours, applying a rate) are the same either way; they're laid out in [how to invoice from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software). The only question is whether your tool does that last step for you or hands the numbers to another app that does. ## Rize alternatives, compared The clearest contrast is Rize against a tool built to close that invoicing gap while keeping the same automatic capture. Both columns below are sourced: Rize from its own docs, BillNotch from its product. _Details as of September 5, 2026: confirm current numbers on each vendor's own pricing page, since plans shift: [Rize](https://rize.io/pricing), [Timely](https://www.timely.com/pricing/), [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing)._ | Feature | Rize | BillNotch | | --- | --- | --- | | Capture | Automatic, no timer | Automatic, no timer | | Categorization | AI into projects, clients, tasks | Keyword rules + optional AI | | Billable tracking | Yes: rates, billable vs non-billable | Yes: inherited per project | | Invoicing | Invoicing-ready data; CSV/Zapier to FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Xero | Native PDF invoice in-app, plus CSV export | | Platforms | macOS, Windows | Windows, macOS, Linux | | Free option | 7-day trial, no permanently free tier | 14-day trial, no card | | Entry price | Basic $9.99/mo billed annually ($12.99 monthly) | Pro $9/mo (1 seat); Team $12/seat/mo | A few honest caveats on that table. On **price**, the two entry tiers are close, and that's the point. The difference isn't a lower sticker, it's what's included and how predictable the bill stays. Rize's higher individual and team tiers exist (team plans start around $20 per seat per month with a two-seat minimum), but every Rize figure here is **unverified as of September 5, 2026**: its pricing page was mid-transition and internally inconsistent when this was checked, so confirm the current numbers at rize.io/pricing rather than trusting any figure you read in a comparison post, including this one. BillNotch's plans are flat with no usage-based fees, so the number you sign up for is the number you pay. On **capture**, the two are genuinely similar: both record automatically and sort with AI, so neither leaks the hours a forgotten manual timer would. The two real differences are the invoicing step and the platform list. ## Other tools people shortlist Rize isn't the only name that comes up. If you're casting a wider net, four other tools show up on Rize shortlists. This table compares them on the things that actually separate them, capture model, categorization, invoicing, and Linux, and leaves price out on purpose, since those move and several are hard to pin down. Confirm current specifics on each tool's own site before you commit. | Tool | Capture | Categorization | Invoicing | Linux | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Rize | Automatic, no timer | AI into projects | Invoicing-ready data, export | No | | Timely | Automatic, AI drafts you approve | AI | Hand-off to QuickBooks Online | No | | Toggl Track | Manual timer + passive log | No | Basic, built-in | No (deprecated) | | Clockify | Manual timer + Auto Tracker | No | Built-in on paid plans | Yes | | [ActivityWatch](https://activitywatch.net/) | Automatic, local and open-source | Rules, manual | None, raw data | Yes | | BillNotch | Automatic, no timer | Keyword rules + optional AI | Native PDF in-app | Yes | **Timely** is the closest to Rize on capture: it drafts entries from automatic activity for you to approve, but it hands invoicing to QuickBooks Online and has no Linux app. **Toggl** and **Clockify** are manual-timer trackers, each with a passive recorder you convert by hand; Clockify invoices on paid plans and runs on Linux, Toggl's invoicing is basic and its Linux desktop is deprecated. **ActivityWatch** is the open-source pick for people who want capture that stays on their own machine, but it does not invoice at all. The trade-offs across the whole automatic-tracking field, what counts as genuinely passive versus "automatic" in name only, are laid out in [automatic time tracking software, compared](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software). ## How to choose The decision comes down to which Rize limitation actually applies to you. Three quick reads: - **You love Rize's capture but want one tool to also produce the invoice.** This is the most common reason people look. You want native PDF invoicing so tracked, billable hours become a bill without a second subscription or a monthly CSV reconcile. Weight the invoicing column. - **You work on Linux.** This narrows the field fast. Rize's own download docs list macOS and Windows only, with no Linux version available, unverified as of September 5, 2026 (per [docs.rize.io](https://docs.rize.io/)). If a teammate or your own machine runs Linux, a tracker has to ship a Linux build, and most native trackers don't. - **Your billing already lives in QuickBooks, Xero, or FreshBooks, and you're happy there.** In that case Rize's handoff is a feature, not a flaw. It feeds the system you already use. The honest answer here might be to stay, or to pick whichever tracker integrates most cleanly with your accounting tool. Match the tool to the failure you're fixing. Invoicing features don't help if your real problem is Linux support, and a Linux build doesn't help if your real problem is the two-system billing shuffle. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is built for the first two readers above, and it's worth being specific about why rather than waving at "better." Its desktop app (Windows, macOS, **and Linux**) records the active window automatically, with no timer to start, the same hands-off model Rize uses. Keyword rules, plus optional AI, sort that activity into client projects, and billable status is inherited per project, so you set it once instead of tagging every entry. The piece that follows from holding capture and billing in one place is the **invoice itself**: the live billable total becomes a native PDF invoice inside the app, or a CSV export when your accountant wants the raw numbers. That's the head-to-head difference with Rize: a finished, sent document versus invoicing-ready data you move into another tool. The same single system also powers a **Revenue Leak Finder**, which flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the kind of [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) a two-tool setup can't see because no one app holds both the tracked and the billed hours. On privacy, the capture is limited to the active app and its window title (no screenshots, no keystrokes) and those titles can stay on your device per machine. You connect each device with an API key you issue and can revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. To be straight about the trade-offs: always-on automatic capture is a heavier approach than starting a stopwatch yourself, and not everyone wants it, though if that part appealed about Rize, it's a wash. And if your billing genuinely belongs in QuickBooks or Xero, Rize's export may suit your stack better than switching to in-app invoicing. Pricing is flat: Pro is $9/mo for one seat, Team is $12/seat/mo, with a 14-day free trial that doesn't ask for a card; the full plan details are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, and the sourced side-by-side with Rize is in the table above. ## The bottom line There's no single best Rize alternative, only the best fit for the limitation that sent you looking. Rize is a strong automatic tracker that now handles billable hours well. The honest gaps are that it produces invoicing-ready data instead of generating the invoice, and that it runs on macOS and Windows but not Linux. If those two gaps are your problem, an automatic tracker with native invoicing and a Linux build, like BillNotch, is aimed squarely at them. If they aren't, if your accounting already lives elsewhere and you're on a supported platform, Rize may be the right tool to keep. Whatever you choose, confirm the current pricing and platform support on each vendor's own site before you commit, because both move. Then narrow to the one or two tools that actually fit how you work and bill, and trial the survivors rather than the whole list. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best Rize alternative? It depends on which Rize limit sent you looking. If you want the same automatic capture but a finished invoice in one tool, BillNotch is aimed there. If you need Linux, Rize does not ship it, so the list is Clockify, ActivityWatch, or BillNotch. If your billing already lives in QuickBooks or Xero, Rize's export may be worth keeping. ### Does Rize do invoicing? Not a finished invoice. Rize produces invoicing-ready data, client, project, duration, rate, and descriptions, then exports it by CSV or Zapier into FreshBooks, QuickBooks, or Xero, where the invoice is actually created. If you would rather not run a second billing tool, an alternative like BillNotch generates the PDF invoice from the tracked hours itself. ### Does Rize run on Linux? No. Rize's own download docs list macOS and Windows only, with no Linux build, unverified as of September 5, 2026, so confirm on their site. If Linux is your machine, the automatic and open-source options that run natively are Clockify, ActivityWatch, and BillNotch. Most native trackers skip Linux, so this narrows the field quickly. ### Is Rize free? No. Rize offers a trial rather than a permanent free plan, and its paid pricing was mid-transition and internally inconsistent when checked, so treat any figure as unverified as of September 5, 2026 and confirm at rize.io/pricing. If a free tier matters, Clockify keeps one and ActivityWatch is open-source and free to self-host. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/scope-creep-billing [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Scope Creep Examples: How to Spot, Bill and Stop It # Scope Creep Examples: How to Spot, Bill and Stop It > Five scope creep examples freelancers hit, the early signs, how to bill each one, and the change-order script that reprices work without a fight. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 20, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Scope creep** is work that grows beyond what the client agreed to pay for, one small request at a time, without anyone stopping to re-price it. Nobody plans it and nobody announces it. A "quick tweak" here, an extra round of revisions there, and by week six you are doing 30% more work for the same fee. The five **scope creep examples** below show how it sneaks in and how to bill each one. The reason it hurts freelancers more than employees is simple: your time is the product. An extra afternoon of unpaid work is not an inconvenience, it is a direct cut to your rate. ## What is scope creep? Scope creep in project management is usually framed as a planning failure. For a freelancer it is simpler than that: the gap between the deliverables in your agreement and the deliverables you actually produce. It is not the same as a difficult client, and it is not the same as bad estimating. - **Bad estimating** means the agreed work took longer than you thought. That is your risk to carry. - **Scope creep** means the work itself changed. That is the client's cost to carry, if you ask. Almost every scope-creep problem is really a failure to notice which of those two is happening. If you cannot tell them apart at the end of the month, you will absorb both. ## What are the early signs of scope creep? Creep announces itself quietly. The tells are linguistic before they are financial: - **"While you're in there…"** The single most reliable phrase. It attaches new work to old work so it sounds like continuation, not addition. - **A new stakeholder appears.** Someone who was not in the kickoff starts giving feedback. Their feedback is a new brief in disguise. - **Revisions stop converging.** Round three should be smaller than round two. If each round is the same size, you are not revising, you are redesigning. - **The deliverable list grows in Slack, not in the contract.** Anything agreed in a thread and never written down is scope you are unlikely to bill. - **You start working evenings on a project that was fine two weeks ago.** Your calendar notices creep before your invoice does. One of these is normal. Three of them in the same fortnight means the project has changed shape and the price has not. ## How do you respond to scope creep mid-project? Do not refuse, and do not silently absorb it. Do the third thing: price it, immediately, in writing, before the work starts. The goal is to make additional work feel routine rather than confrontational. A change-order note that works, in four sentences: > Happy to take that on. It sits outside what we scoped in the original agreement (which covered X, Y, Z), so it would be an extra **6 hours at my usual rate**, and it moves the final delivery date to **the 14th**. Want me to go ahead on that basis? I can start as soon as you confirm. Why that shape works: 1. **Yes comes first.** You are not blocking the request, you are pricing it. 2. **It names the original scope.** This is where a written agreement earns its keep, because you are quoting the document, not your memory. 3. **It quotes time and a date.** Schedule impact is often more persuasive to a client than money. 4. **It asks for a confirmation.** One line of "yes, go ahead" in email is the approval record you will need at invoice time. Send it the same day. A change order sent a week later reads like a complaint; sent immediately, it reads like project management. ## How do you bill for scope creep? You bill for it the way you bill for anything else: as tracked time against an approved change. The practical difference is that the approval and the hours need to be visibly attached to each other. | Situation | How to bill it | | --- | --- | | Hourly project | Log the extra work to the same project, note the change-order date in the entry, invoice as normal | | Fixed-fee project | Raise a separate change-order line on the invoice: what was added, hours, rate | | Retainer | Bill the overage above the monthly hour cap, or roll it into next month if your agreement allows | | Client refused to approve | Do not do the work. If you already did, bill it once and treat it as tuition | On a fixed-fee project, keep the change order as its own invoice line rather than quietly inflating the project total. A client who can see "Additional: second homepage concept, 6h" will usually pay it. A client who sees the total jump with no explanation will query the whole invoice. The one habit that makes all of this easier: keep tracking hours even on fixed-fee work. You are not billing by the hour, but you need the hours to know whether the fee still makes sense. [Billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) covers where the line sits, and [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) covers what your hour is worth when you re-price. ## Five scope creep examples, and how to bill each Creep is easier to catch when you have seen its usual shapes. Five common scope creep examples, and the billing move for each: 1. **The extra revision round.** The contract covered two rounds; the client asks for a third. Bill it as a change-order line: "Additional revision round, 3h, at your rate." Name the cap it exceeded so the charge is obviously fair. 2. **The "while you're in there" add-on.** A small new feature bolted onto agreed work. Quote it before you touch it, log the hours against a change-order note, and invoice it as its own line rather than hiding it in the total. 3. **The new stakeholder's rebrief.** Someone who missed kickoff wants changes that reshape the deliverable. That is a new brief, not feedback. Reprice the delta in writing and get a one-line approval before starting. 4. **The scope that grew in chat.** Deliverables agreed in Slack and never written into the contract. Summarize them back in an email, price the additions, and treat the client's "yes" as the record you bill against. 5. **The endless "quick" fixes.** Individually tiny, collectively a day a week. Track every one, then bill the aggregate on a fixed cadence rather than absorbing them because each felt too small to mention. The thread through all five: the work changed, so the price gets a chance to change too, quoted the day it appears and backed by hours you actually tracked. ## What contract terms actually prevent scope creep? This is not legal advice, and a real contract for real money deserves a real lawyer. But most freelance agreements that leak scope leak it in the same few places, and they are worth understanding before you sign anything. - **An explicit deliverables list.** Named, countable outputs. "A website" is not a deliverable; "five page templates, two rounds of revisions each" is. - **A revisions cap.** The most common source of unbounded work. State the number and state what happens after it. - **An out-of-scope clause.** A sentence establishing that work outside the deliverables list is quoted and approved separately, at a stated rate. - **A definition of "done."** What event ends the project: sign-off, launch, a date, or a period of support after delivery. - **A response-time expectation on the client side.** Projects creep when they stall, because a three-week client silence turns into re-briefing and re-familiarisation you never quoted for. None of these prevent a client from asking. They give you a document to point at when they do, which is the whole job. The clause is a conversation aid, not a weapon. ## How does time data prove that scope creep happened? Contract clauses settle who owes what in principle. Time data settles it in fact, and it is the part most freelancers cannot produce when they need it. The argument you want to be able to make is concrete: _"We scoped 40 hours. Here is where the 62 went, by week."_ That is a very different conversation from _"this project has been a lot more work than expected."_ The first is evidence, the second is a feeling, and clients respond to them completely differently. To have that record, tracking has to happen while the creep is happening, not reconstructed afterwards from memory. Reconstruction systematically undercounts exactly the work that creep is made of: the fifteen-minute calls, the "quick" reworks, the re-reading of a thread to figure out what changed. That undercount is a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) with a specific cause, and [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) walks through capturing it without babysitting a timer. This is where BillNotch fits: its desktop app records the active window automatically, so the small out-of-scope work is logged whether or not you thought to time it. Keyword rules (with optional AI for the ambiguous cases) sort that activity into the right client project, the Revenue Leak Finder flags tracked time that never reached an invoice, and the total becomes a PDF invoice with the change-order hours visible as their own line. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with a 14-day trial and no card required. ## The bottom line Scope creep is not a client problem or a discipline problem. It is an accounting problem: work changed and the price did not follow, because nobody was watching the gap in real time. Name the change the day it appears, quote it in one short message, and keep a record of the hours that proves what actually happened. The rest is downstream of the record. If you want to know how much creep has already cost you, [run a revenue audit on one week](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) and see what has no invoice line against it. Then get the billing mechanics right in [how to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client), and check your real number with [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). Architects bill this same slippage as additional services, phase by phase, which is what [time tracking software for architects](https://billnotch.com/for/architects) is built to catch. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you bill for scope creep? Name it before you do the work, not after. When a request falls outside the agreed scope, send a short change order that states the extra work, the price, and the new timeline, and get a yes in writing before you start. Billing creep as a surprise line on the final invoice is what starts fights; pricing it up front does not. ### How do you say no to scope creep politely? You rarely say no; you say yes with a price. Acknowledge the request, explain it is outside the current scope, and offer to do it as a small add-on with its own cost and timeline. That reframes the conversation from refusal to a normal business choice, and most clients either approve it or drop it, which is exactly the outcome you want. ### What is the difference between scope creep and a bad estimate? A bad estimate is work you agreed to that took longer than you thought; you absorb it, because you set the price. Scope creep is new work the client added after the agreement, so it is theirs to pay for. Confusing the two makes you eat both. Tracked time is what tells them apart on any given project. ### Can time tracking prove scope creep happened? It helps. A dated log of what you worked on shows when new tasks appeared that were not in the original brief, which turns a disagreement about memory into a record. It will not settle a genuine contract dispute on its own, but it gives you the evidence to price a change order and to show the client where the extra hours went. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How to Stop Losing Billable Hours: a Revenue Audit # How to Stop Losing Billable Hours: a Revenue Audit > Stop losing billable hours: run a 30-minute revenue audit on one week, find the gap between time worked and time billed, and close it for good. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 6 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **To stop losing billable hours, audit the gap between the time you actually work and the time that ends up on an invoice**. Then close it by capturing work automatically instead of relying on memory. Most freelancers don't undercharge because their rate is too low; they undercharge because hours leak out before they ever reach the invoice. Here's the uncomfortable part: the hours you lose are invisible by definition. You can't miss what you never wrote down. A revenue audit makes the invisible measurable. ## Where billable hours actually leak Lost time isn't one big mistake. It's dozens of small ones that never get logged: - **The 6-minute task.** A client emails a quick question. You answer it, tweak one file, reply. Twelve minutes, gone, too small to feel worth a timer, so it's never billed. - **Context switches.** You jump between three clients in an afternoon. The work happened; the attribution didn't. By 5pm you genuinely can't reconstruct who got which 40 minutes. - **Off-hours work.** The Sunday-night fix, the reply from your phone, the call you took in the car. None of it near your tracking setup. - **[The forgotten timer](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers).** You meant to start it. You started 25 minutes in. You guessed the difference and rounded down, because rounding down feels honest. Each of these is a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak): billable work that quietly never becomes revenue. Individually they're trivial. Added up across a year, they're a meaningful chunk of your income working for free. ## Run the audit: a 30-minute exercise You don't need software to start. You need an honest reconstruction of one ordinary week. 1. **Pick last week.** Not a quiet week, not a crunch week, a normal one. 2. **List what you invoiced.** Pull the hours you actually billed each client, by day. 3. **Reconstruct what you did.** Open your calendar, sent-mail folder, Git history, Slack, and browser history. Walk through each day and note every block of client work you can find evidence of. 4. **Compare.** Line up "what I did" against "what I billed." 5. **Tally the gap.** Add up the work that has evidence but no invoice line. A worked example for a single Tuesday: | Activity | Evidence | Billed? | Minutes lost | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Replied to 3 client emails | Sent folder | No | 35 | | Reviewed a PR | Git timestamp | No | 25 | | "Quick" design tweak | File modified | No | 40 | | Took a scope call | Calendar | Partially | 20 | That's **120 minutes** (two billable hours) gone in one unremarkable day. Run the full week and the annual figure usually stops people cold. Here is why. Scale a daily leak across a working year, using an $85 rate and about 46 working weeks after time off. These are illustrative round numbers, not your exact figures, but the shape holds at any rate: | If you lose per day | Per week (5 days) | Per year (~46 weeks) | At $85/hour | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 30 minutes | 2.5 h | ~115 h | ~$9,775 | | 1 hour | 5 h | ~230 h | ~$19,550 | | 2 hours (the day above) | 10 h | ~460 h | ~$39,100 | Even the top row, half an hour a day, is close to ten thousand dollars a year of work you did and never billed. The Tuesday above was a two-hour day, and you will not lose two hours every day, but you do not need to for the total to land hard. ## Why willpower doesn't fix this The standard advice is "just be more disciplined with your timer." It doesn't work, and not because freelancers are lazy. Manual time tracking asks you to do two jobs at once: the work, and the meta-work of narrating the work. The moment you're deep in a problem (exactly when the billable value is highest) is the moment you're least likely to remember the stopwatch. You're optimizing for flow, and flow is the enemy of remembering to click "start." So losing billable hours isn't a character flaw. It's a design flaw in manual tracking. The fix isn't more willpower; it's removing the dependency on willpower entirely. ## Stop losing billable hours by capturing automatically The reliable fix is to **stop deciding what to track and start recording everything by default.** This is the idea behind [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker): instead of starting and stopping timers, your computer records which application and window you're working in, continuously, in the background. At the end of the day you have a complete, timestamped record of where your hours went, including the 6-minute tasks and the Sunday-night fixes you'd never have logged by hand. The shift in your workflow is the whole point: - **Manual:** Remember to start → work → remember to stop → reconstruct what you forgot → undercharge to be safe. - **Passive:** Work → review an already-complete record → assign blocks to clients → invoice the real number. You stop reconstructing the past from fragments and start editing a record that's already there. The few minutes of cleanup at day's end replace an hour of forensic guesswork at month's end, and you bill what you earned instead of what you happened to remember. A practical way to run this is to let a passive tracker quietly record your active windows, group that activity into client projects, and then flag any block that never made it onto an invoice, so the leak surfaces before the invoice goes out, not months later when it's unrecoverable. [BillNotch for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) does exactly this: it records automatically, categorizes activity into projects, and its Revenue Leak Finder points at the billable time you haven't invoiced yet. The window titles can stay on your device, so the audit doesn't cost you privacy. If you want to know what a real revenue audit turns up, the fastest way is to let a tool run for two weeks and read your own number. For the full method, see [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours); for what the widely quoted figures on this actually rest on, see [time tracking statistics](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics). ## Frequently asked questions ### Why do freelancers lose billable hours? Not from laziness, from how manual tracking works. The hours that leak are the small ones: a six-minute reply, a context switch between clients, a Sunday-night fix far from your timer. Each feels too small to log, so it never gets billed, and manual timers fail hardest during deep focus, exactly when the work is most valuable. ### How do I run a billable-hours audit? Take one normal week and reconstruct it from evidence: calendar, sent mail, version history, chat, and browser history. List every block of client work you can find, line it against what you actually invoiced, and total the work that has evidence but no invoice line. That gap, times your rate, is what you lost that week. ### How much money do lost billable hours add up to? It depends on your rate and how leaky your week is, so measure rather than guess. As a scale, losing just 30 minutes of billable work a day is roughly 115 hours a year, near ten thousand dollars at an $85 rate. The daily leak feels trivial; the annual total is what changes behavior. ### Does willpower fix lost billable hours? No, and not because freelancers lack discipline. Manual tracking asks you to do the work and narrate it at the same time, and the moment you are deepest in a task is the moment you are least likely to remember the timer. The durable fix removes the dependency on memory by capturing the hours automatically. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/time-audit [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / How to Do a Time Audit (The Freelancer Method) # How to Do a Time Audit (The Freelancer Method) > How to run a week-long time audit as a freelancer: the categories to use, what the data usually reveals, and how to turn it into rate decisions. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 27, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 A **time audit** is a week of honest measurement: you record where every working hour actually goes, sort it into categories, and compare the result against where you assumed it went. For freelancers the gap is usually uncomfortable and always useful, because your rate, your capacity and your pricing all rest on a number most people have never measured. The point is not self-discipline. It is a baseline. You cannot decide whether to raise your rate, drop a client or hire help until you know what your week is really made of. ## What is a time audit? A time audit is a fixed-length measurement of how your working time is distributed, run once, on purpose. It differs from ordinary time tracking in two ways: it covers **everything**, not just billable client work, and it has an end date. You are trying to answer three questions: 1. How many hours did I actually work? 2. How many of those hours were billable? 3. Where did the rest go? Most freelancers can guess question one, are wrong about question two, and have no answer at all for question three. Question three is where the money is. ## How do you run a week-long time audit? One ordinary week. Not your quietest, not your worst. Here is the method. **Day 0: set your categories before you start.** Deciding categories mid-week corrupts the data. Five or six is plenty: - Client work, billable (by client) - Client communication (email, calls, Slack) - Revisions and rework - Business admin (invoicing, chasing payment, bookkeeping) - Sales and proposals - Internal work (your own site, learning, tooling) **Days 1 to 5: record at the point of work, not at the end of the day.** This is the part that decides whether the audit is worth anything. Retrospective reconstruction reliably loses the small stuff, and the small stuff is the finding. If you are logging by hand, write the entry when you switch tasks, not when you remember. **Include the edges.** The 7am email triage, the call you took walking, the twenty minutes after dinner. Excluding them because they were "not really work" is how the audit tells you a comfortable lie. **Day 6: total it.** Hours per category, hours per client, and your billable share of the whole. **Day 7: run one week more if the week was strange.** A single week that happened to contain a launch or a dead spell is a story, not a baseline. Two weeks is enough for most people. If a week of manual note-taking sounds like exactly the discipline problem you were trying to solve, that is a fair objection. It is the reason [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) exists: the computer records the active window in the background and you categorise afterwards, which turns the audit into a review job instead of a memory job. ## A simple time audit template If you are recording by hand, keep the sheet narrow enough that filling a row takes seconds. Five columns is enough: | Time block | Activity | Client | Billable? | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 09:00 to 09:40 | Inbox and replies | Mixed | Partly | Two client threads, one admin | | 09:40 to 11:15 | Homepage build | Acme | Yes | Uninterrupted | | 11:15 to 11:30 | Status call | Acme | No | Outside scope, unbilled | | 11:30 to 12:10 | Chasing an unpaid invoice | \- | No | Overhead | Copy it into a spreadsheet with one tab per day. The Notes column is the one people drop first and the one that makes the totals readable a week later: "Partly" with no note beside it is a row you cannot categorise on day six. ## How should you categorize what you find? Once you have the raw hours, sort them along two axes. Most people only use the first one, and the second is where decisions come from. **Axis one: billable or not.** Straightforward, and covered properly in [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours). **Axis two: does this scale with revenue, or is it fixed overhead?** Client work scales: more clients, more hours. Bookkeeping mostly does not. Proposal writing sits awkwardly in between. This axis tells you what to fix and what to price in: | Category | Typical share of a working week | What to do with it | | --- | --- | --- | | Billable client work | The number your rate depends on | Protect it | | Client communication | Often larger than expected | Decide what is billable, in writing, per client | | Revisions and rework | Grows quietly on fixed-fee work | Cap it in the agreement | | Admin and invoicing | Fixed overhead | Automate or batch it | | Sales and proposals | Lumpy, unavoidable | Price it into your rate | The shares are deliberately left blank. Anyone who tells you the correct percentages for a freelance week is guessing, and the honest ones say so. We went through which of these widely quoted figures survive scrutiny in [time tracking statistics](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics), and most do not. ## What does a time audit usually reveal? Three findings come up again and again. Yours may differ, which is the point of measuring rather than reading. **Admin is bigger than you think.** Invoicing, chasing late payment, expense sorting and inbox management often consume the equivalent of a full working day a week. It is genuinely necessary work and it is genuinely unpaid, which means it belongs in your rate calculation rather than in your resentment. **Your billable share is lower than your assumption.** Almost nobody bills 40 hours out of a 40-hour week, and nobody should expect to. What matters is knowing your actual figure so you can price against it rather than against a fantasy. [Billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) has the formula, and [how many billable hours per week is realistic](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) has the benchmarks. **One client is quietly more expensive than the rest.** Not the one you dread. Usually the pleasant one who sends lots of small requests. When you total the calls, the "quick questions" and the extra rounds, their effective hourly rate can be half of what their contract says. That is [scope creep](https://billnotch.com/blog/scope-creep-billing), and it only becomes visible when the hours are attributed by client. The fourth finding is harder to see in a single week: the tax you pay for jumping between clients all day. It shows up as short, fragmented blocks that never add up to a full task, and it deserves its own measurement. ## How do you turn the audit into a decision? An audit that ends in awareness was a waste of a week. Each finding maps to a specific decision. - **Low billable share, full calendar.** You are busy but underpaid. Raise your rate or cut the overhead, and use your measured billable hours (not 2,080) as the divisor when you recalculate: [how much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) walks through the arithmetic. - **High admin load.** Batch it into one block a week, or remove the manual step entirely. Invoicing is the usual culprit and the easiest to automate. - **One client eating disproportionate time.** Re-price at renewal, cap revisions, or move them to a retainer that reflects reality. - **Billable work that never reached an invoice.** This is not a capacity problem, it is money you already earned and did not collect. [Stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) covers the reconciliation. - **Capacity genuinely full at a rate that works.** Congratulations: the decision is whether to raise prices or find help, not whether to work more evenings. Re-run the audit in six months, not next week. The value is in the comparison. ## Making the audit continuous The one-week audit is a snapshot, and snapshots go stale. The version that keeps paying is the one that runs by itself: capture every hour automatically, categorise it into client projects, and check the billable-versus-worked gap before each invoice rather than once a year. That is what BillNotch does. The desktop app records the active window with no timer to start, keyword rules (plus optional AI for ambiguous activity) sort it into projects, and the Revenue Leak Finder surfaces tracked time that never made it onto an invoice. Hours become a PDF invoice or a CSV export from the same place. Pricing is flat: Pro at $9/month for one seat, Team at $12 per seat, with a 14-day trial and no card. It is not the cheapest tracker in the category; the case for it is that capture, categorisation and invoicing sit in one tool rather than three. Where to go next depends on what your week showed. If the surprise was your billable share, start with [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate). If it was the amount of unpaid client work, read [billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) and settle the grey areas with your clients in writing. If you run a firm, the busy-season version of this audit is [time tracking software for accountants](https://billnotch.com/for/accountants), which records the hours you would otherwise write down. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a time audit? A time audit is a short period, usually a week, where you record everything you actually work on and then read the result. The goal is not to bill it but to see where the hours really go: which clients, which tasks, how much is billable, and how much unpaid work you had not noticed. It turns a vague sense of being busy into numbers. ### How do you do a time audit? Pick a normal week and log every work block as you go, including small tasks like calls, email, and context switches. Tag each block by client and by whether it is billable. At the end of the week, total the categories and look for the surprises. Doing it from memory defeats the point, so capture as you work or track automatically. ### How long should a time audit last? One representative week is usually enough to reveal the pattern, and two weeks smooths out an unusual one. Avoid auditing a week you already know is atypical, like a launch or a holiday stretch. If you want the picture to stay current instead of going stale, run capture continuously rather than repeating a manual audit every quarter. ### What does a time audit usually reveal? Most people find their billable share is lower than they assumed, that admin and unpaid client work eat more of the week than expected, and that a specific client or task type is quietly unprofitable. The exact percentages vary by person, so anyone quoting a single correct breakdown is guessing. Your own numbers are the only ones that matter. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-developers [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Developer Time Tracking: VS Code, WakaTime and Billing # Developer Time Tracking: VS Code, WakaTime and Billing > Developer time tracking without an editor plugin: capture VS Code and terminal time by window title. A WakaTime alternative that bills hours to clients. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 18, 2026 7 min read Updated September 7, 2026 **Time tracking for developers** breaks in a specific way: the work is fragmented, deep, and spread across a dozen tools, so the start/stop timer (the thing most time trackers are built around) is the first casualty of a focused coding session. You sit down to fix a bug, surface three hours later, and the timer either never started or has been running since lunch. Good developer time tracking doesn't ask you to remember; it records what you did and sorts it afterward. The honest fix is a method that captures your work whether or not you remember to. ## Why timers fail for software developers A coding day is a stack of interruptions, and the research on what they cost is sobering. [Gloria Mark's work at UC Irvine](https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf) found it takes an average of about **23 minutes** to return to a task after an interruption (23 minutes and 15 seconds in the original study). In her later studies, the average time someone spends on a single screen before switching attention has fallen to roughly **47 seconds** (down from about 2.5 minutes in 2004) documented in her 2023 book _Attention Span_. And the interruptions aren't all external: Mark's research found we interrupt ourselves roughly as often as others interrupt us. For a developer, that translates into dozens of context switches a day: VS Code to the terminal, terminal to a failing test, test to a Stack Overflow tab, tab to a Slack ping, Slack to a Jira ticket, and back. Psychologist Sophie Leroy named the lingering cost of those jumps **attention residue**: part of your mind stays on the previous task after you've moved to the next one. A start/stop timer asks you to add one more deliberate action (remember to click) to a day already defined by not remembering where the last twenty minutes went. It's close to the worst possible tool for the job. ## What developer time tracking actually has to capture Here is the part most tools get wrong. A software developer's billable time covers far more than the minutes spent typing code. It's the PR review in the browser, the architecture discussion in Linear, the debugging session in a terminal, the deploy you watched in a CI dashboard, the client call on your calendar. If a tracker only sees one of those windows, it undercounts the work, and undercounting is a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) that always rounds in the client's favour. So the real requirement for **time tracking for software developers** is coverage: it has to see every window you cycle through, not only the editor. Then it has to do something useful with that raw timeline (sort it into the right client or project) without becoming a surveillance dashboard your manager reads. ## Automatic time tracking for programmers: the main approaches Most developer-friendly trackers are some flavour of automatic, but they differ in what they watch and what they do with it. Here is how the common options compare. Pricing shifts often, so confirm the current number on each vendor's page before you commit. Prices here were checked September 5, 2026. | Tool | How it captures | Scope of capture | Sorts time to clients/projects | Free plan | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **WakaTime** | Automatic, editor/IDE plugins | Coding inside the editor only | Coding stats; invoices on Premium | Yes (limited history) | | **RescueTime** | Automatic, background | Every app and website | Productivity reports, not client billing | Yes (Lite, individuals) | | **Timely** | Automatic ("Memory") + AI | App and website activity | Yes, AI-drafted project time | No (trial only) | | **Memtime** | Automatic, fully local/offline | All computer activity, on-device | Yes, manual project assignment | No (trial only) | | **Toggl Track** | Start/stop timer (+ private Timeline) | Timer entries; Timeline is a memory aid | Yes, timer-based | Yes | A few honest notes on each: - **WakaTime** is the developer-native option, and it does its job well: automatic coding stats pulled straight from plugins for 80+ editors and IDEs, with no timer to start. The trade-off is scope: it measures activity _inside_ the editor, so the browser PR review, the Jira ticket, and external terminal tools aren't counted as time. Its free plan keeps only a short window of recent dashboard history; unlimited history and invoices live on the Premium plan (around $12/month billed monthly, or $99/year. Confirm current pricing on [WakaTime's site](https://wakatime.com/pricing)). - **RescueTime** captures everything automatically (every app and website in the background) but it is built around productivity reporting and focus scores, not mapping hours to clients and projects. It does have a free tier (RescueTime Lite) for individuals; paid Premium for one person runs roughly $6.50 to 12/month depending on billing, with a 14-day trial of Premium. Confirm the current numbers on [RescueTime's site](https://www.rescuetime.com/pricing). - **Timely** uses automatic capture (its "Memory" feature) plus AI categorisation to draft project time for you. It is a capable per-user tool priced from $11/user/month (Starter) up to $28/user/month (Unlimited), with a free trial but no free plan. - **Memtime** records all computer activity automatically and keeps the raw data offline on your own machine rather than in the cloud: a strong privacy stance. It has no free plan and costs $18 per user per month billed annually (checked September 5, 2026). - **Toggl Track** is worth naming because it is popular with developers, but it is fundamentally a start/stop timer. It does offer an optional desktop Timeline that privately records your app and website use as a memory aid (useful for reconstructing a day) but that data is private to you and does not bill by itself. It has a free plan and paid tiers at $9 and $18 per user per month. The pattern is clear: the tools that don't depend on you remembering (RescueTime, Timely, Memtime, and active-window trackers generally) all use [passive, automatic capture](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) precisely because it survives a deep-work session. The ones built on timers are accurate only when your discipline is. ## Developer time tracking without timers The approach that fits a coding day is [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers): a lightweight desktop app records the [active window](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) (the app and window title in the foreground, and how long it stayed there) and reconstructs your hours from what you actually did. There is no timer to start, so a three-hour debugging tunnel doesn't vanish from your records. Passive time tracking for coders only earns its keep if it does two more things after capture: 1. **It categorises automatically.** Raw windows aren't billable hours until they're sorted into the right client or project. Keyword rules handle the deterministic cases (a repo name, a ticket prefix, a client's domain) and AI can sort the fuzzy remainder. 2. **It respects the data.** A developer's window titles are sensitive: branch names, file paths, client names, private tabs. The right tool lets you keep titles on-device and records the active window only: no screenshots, no keystrokes. That is the line between [personal tracking and surveillance](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker). Done that way, the output is a complete, sorted record of where your time went, built with zero timer clicks. ## VS Code time tracking without an extension You don't install anything inside the editor. The desktop app is a background [automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) that reads the active window title the operating system already exposes, and VS Code writes a useful one: `auth.ts - billing-service - Visual Studio Code`. That single string carries the file you had open and the workspace folder around it, which is usually enough to know which client the hour belongs to. The sorting runs on a keyword rule. Every project holds a list of keywords, and when the folder or repo name in a title matches one, the time lands on that project on its own. Add the `billing-service` folder as a keyword on your Acme project, and every VS Code window from that repo bills to Acme with nothing left to click. Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, and any JetBrains IDE behave the same way, because the capture is the window title, not a plugin. It runs identically on Windows, macOS, and [native Linux](https://billnotch.com/linux), so the editor and the operating system you code on don't change the method. Here is the honest limit. Because it reads the title and not the editor's internals, it attributes time to the editor and usually the file and project, but it cannot break the hour down by programming language, git branch, or commit. There is no per-language chart. If you want one, an editor-plugin tool is the right pick; if you want the hour on an invoice, this is. ## Tracking coding time across terminal, browser and editor A coding hour is rarely one window. You read a failing test in the terminal, check a library's docs in the browser, review a pull request on GitHub, then drop back into the editor. A tracker that only watches the editor bills the smallest slice of that hour. The desktop app already sees the terminal, because it captures whatever app is in the foreground by name, so iTerm, Windows Terminal, or a plain shell all count as worked time. For the browser, the [Chrome extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) reports the domain of the active tab (github.com, the docs site, your staging URL) and nothing else by default, so research and PR review get sorted to the right project instead of falling through the cracks. Map a domain to a project the same way you map a folder name, and those tabs bill themselves. Once the hours are approved they can travel onward. The [Jira integration](https://billnotch.com/integrations/jira) pushes tracked time back to the matching issue as a worklog, so the ticket and the invoice tell the same story without you entering the numbers twice. ## WakaTime alternative for freelancers who bill WakaTime and CodeTime are good at a job BillNotch doesn't do. Their editor plugins read from inside VS Code and JetBrains and report per-language, per-file, per-branch stats, leaderboards, and streaks. If you want proof that you wrote Rust for six hours this week, use one of them. Neither one sends your client an invoice. That is the split worth stating plainly. WakaTime is an analytics dashboard for how you code; BillNotch is a billing tool for what you're owed. It captures coding time automatically across every editor and app, sorts it into client projects, and turns the approved hours into a PDF invoice with an optional payment link. The trade is real: you give up the per-language breakdown and you get the hour on a bill. For a freelancer, that second half is usually the one that pays rent. Sanity-check what a project's hours are worth with the [billable hours calculator](https://billnotch.com/tools/billable-hours-calculator) first, then let the tracker keep the running total so you're not rebuilding the month from memory. And if the language stats still matter to you, nothing stops you running WakaTime for the insight and BillNotch for the billing at the same time. ## From captured time to a paid invoice Capturing time is only half the value for anyone who bills. Once a tracker already knows what you worked on and which project it belongs to, it can total the billable hours and turn them into an invoice: no re-typing, no spreadsheet at month end. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is built for exactly this loop, and for the way developers actually work. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux ([native Linux](https://billnotch.com/linux) included, which many trackers skip) and records the active window automatically with no timer to start. Keyword rules plus optional AI sort your activity into client projects; billable status is inherited per project, so the live billable total is always current. That total becomes a **PDF invoice or a CSV export** in a click, and the **Revenue Leak Finder** flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced: the hours that usually slip away. On privacy, window titles can stay on each device, you connect every machine with an API key you issue and revoke, and keyword matching runs on the device while the similarity check runs on our own servers. Only when you ask for AI suggestions on the review screen can genuinely novel activity reach a language model, and titles are never sold or used to train models. The [privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) has the full detail. It isn't the cheapest option on this page. Pro is $9/month for one seat and Team is $12/seat/month, with a 14-day free trial and no card required, and tools like WakaTime or RescueTime do their narrower jobs well. The case for BillNotch is the whole loop: [automatic capture](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) across every window, auto-categorisation into billable projects, and an invoice that writes itself, on flat pricing with no usage fees. If you are weighing options, it is worth reading [what passive time tracking is](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), [how automatic tracking software works](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software), or [how BillNotch compares to an automatic tracker like Rize](https://billnotch.com/blog/rize-alternatives). The right tracker for a developer is the one you never have to think about, because the work already demands all the thinking you've got. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you track VS Code time without an extension? Yes. A desktop tracker reads the active window title the operating system already exposes, and VS Code writes a useful one that carries the open file and the workspace folder. A keyword rule on the repo or folder name sorts that time to the right project on its own, so nothing is installed inside the editor and no plugin has to run. ### Does developer time tracking capture terminal and browser time? It should, because a coding hour is rarely one window. An active-window tracker sees whatever app is in the foreground by name, so the terminal counts as worked time alongside the editor. A browser extension can report the domain of the active tab, so pull-request reviews and documentation get sorted to the right project instead of falling through the cracks. ### Is BillNotch a good WakaTime alternative for developers who bill? They solve different problems. WakaTime reads from inside your editor and reports per-language and per-file coding stats, but it does not send an invoice. BillNotch captures coding time automatically across every editor and app, sorts it into client projects, and turns the approved hours into a PDF invoice. If you bill clients, BillNotch fits; if you want language charts, keep WakaTime. ### Does automatic time tracking work on Linux for developers? Yes, though the field is thin. Most automatic trackers skip a native Linux desktop app, so Linux developers end up on a web timer. BillNotch ships a native Linux tracker alongside Windows and macOS and records the active window the same way on all three, so the operating system you code on does not change the method. ### Does BillNotch have a VS Code or WakaTime plugin? No. BillNotch installs nothing inside your editor and ships no VS Code extension or WakaTime-style plugin. Its desktop tracker reads the active window title the operating system already exposes, which for VS Code carries the open file and the workspace folder. That means no per-language or per-commit charts the way WakaTime does them, but also no editor plugin to maintain, and it captures every app you use, not only the editor. ### What is the best time tracking software for engineers? It depends on what you need from the data. WakaTime is best for per-language and per-file coding stats inside the editor, but it does not invoice. If you bill for the time, BillNotch captures coding hours automatically across editor, terminal and browser, sorts them into projects, and turns them into a PDF invoice. ### How to track developer productivity? Editor plugins like WakaTime measure coding activity per language and file, which is useful for personal insight. For billable output rather than keystrokes, an active-window tracker records time across the editor, terminal and browser and sorts it into client projects, so you see the hours that turned into deliverables. ### What is the best way to track time on projects? The reliable way is passive capture, not a timer you must remember. A desktop tracker reads the active window, so time in the editor, terminal and browser is recorded automatically and sorted to a project by a keyword rule. You review the drafted entries and confirm them, so nothing is forgotten. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-freelancers [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Freelance Time Tracking: The Billing-First Guide # Freelance Time Tracking: The Billing-First Guide > Freelance time tracking is a billing problem: what to record, manual vs automatic capture, turning hours into invoices, and where the money leaks. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 6, 2026 12 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Freelance time tracking** is a billing problem wearing a productivity costume. Most time trackers descend from employee timesheets: tools built so a manager can see where a team's forty hours went. You don't have a manager. You have four clients, two or three rates, a week that fragments into twenty-minute pieces, and an invoice due on the first. The method that survives a payroll cycle is not the method that survives that, and the difference is worth real money over a year. ## Why freelance time tracking isn't employee time tracking Three structural differences drive everything else. **It's billing-first, not reporting-first.** An employee timesheet exists to allocate a salary that gets paid whether the sheet is accurate or not. Your log _is_ the invoice. An hour you fail to record isn't a reporting inaccuracy. It's revenue that no longer exists. That inverts the tolerance for error: a tracker that's roughly right about your week is fine for a manager and useless for you. **It's multi-client and often multi-rate.** Employee tracking usually sorts time into internal projects under one budget. Yours has to sort into separate legal entities, each with its own rate, its own agreed scope, and its own invoice. Attribution isn't a nice-to-have category field; it's the thing that determines who pays for the hour. Time recorded but attributed to the wrong client is worse than time not recorded at all, because it looks correct. **Nobody is watching, including you.** Employee tracking has an enforcement mechanism: a lead who notices the blank timesheet on Friday. Freelance tracking has nothing behind it but your own memory during the exact hours you are least likely to be thinking about administration. Anything that depends on discipline will be reliable in your good weeks and absent in your busy ones, and your busy weeks are the expensive ones to lose. There's a fourth difference that gets less attention: you also need the time you _can't_ bill. An employee's non-billable hours are their employer's problem. Yours tell you whether your rate works, because the admin, pitching, and revision sitting behind each billed hour is what turns your rate into your actual income. [How much to charge as a freelancer](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-as-a-freelancer) walks through that calculation, and [how many billable hours per week is realistic](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-many-billable-hours-in-a-year) gives you a benchmark. ## What you actually have to record Strip it back and there are four fields that matter, plus one that most people skip. - **When and how long.** Start, end, duration. Sounds obvious; the failure mode is granularity. If your log only knows you worked "Tuesday afternoon," you can't defend a line item. - **Which client and project.** The attribution that decides who pays. - **Billable or not.** The single flag that separates an invoice total from a diary. - **A description you'd be willing to show the client.** Not for compliance, for the awkward email three weeks later asking what the 4.5 hours on the 14th covered. - **The non-billable time too.** The one people skip, and the one that tells you whether the engagement is actually profitable. That billable flag is where most freelancers quietly lose money, because the boundary is genuinely ambiguous. Is the scoping call billable? The revision that the client considers a fix and you consider new work? The forty minutes reading their existing codebase or brand guidelines before you could start? Those aren't tracking questions, they're contract questions, and the tracking only works if you've settled them in advance. [Billable vs non-billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours) covers the grey areas and where to draw the line before the first invoice, not after the first argument. The practical rule: record everything, decide billability at the project level, and let the exceptions be exceptions. Tagging every entry by hand is the kind of overhead that gets abandoned in month two. ## Manual or automatic: the two honest approaches Every method is a variation on one of two ideas. Either you tell the tool what you're doing, or the tool observes it and you correct it afterwards. | Approach | How it works | Where it fails | Suits | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Start/stop timer** | You click start, you click stop | You forget, or you leave it running through lunch | Long, uninterrupted blocks on one client | | **End-of-day reconstruction** | You fill a timesheet from memory each evening | Memory rounds toward the round number and drops the small stuff | Steady, repetitive work you can recall accurately | | **Passive capture** | A desktop app records the active window; you review and sort | Needs review; records more than you may want recorded | Fragmented days across many tools and clients | | **Calendar-derived** | Meetings become entries automatically | Only sees scheduled work, which for most freelancers is the minority | Consultants and coaches who bill mostly in meetings | The timer is the default because it's the simplest thing to build, not because it's the best fit. Its failure isn't laziness. It's that starting a timer requires you to notice a task beginning, and deep work is defined by not noticing things. [Why freelancers forget to start timers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers) makes the case that this is structural rather than a discipline problem, which matters because the usual fixes (reminders, habit stacking, a bigger button) all treat it as a discipline problem. End-of-day reconstruction is more reliable than it gets credit for, if your work is regular. Its bias is predictable and one-directional: you round down, you forget the ten-minute jobs, and the small stuff you drop is exactly the stuff that adds up. Over a month that's a percentage point or two of your income, quietly. [Passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) flips the burden. A lightweight desktop app records which window is in the foreground and for how long, and you turn that timeline into entries afterwards. Nothing to start, so a four-hour tunnel doesn't vanish. The trade-off is real and you should weigh it: something is now recording your screen activity, and you have to be comfortable with where that data lives and what it captures. The good implementations record app and window title only (no screenshots, no keystrokes) and let the sensitive parts stay on your own machine. It is also the only honest way to answer [how much time you really spend in a tool like Notion](https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion), per client, since a button you forget to click cannot. [Time tracking without timers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers) compares the three timer-free approaches side by side if you want the longer version. There is no approach without a cost. Timers cost you attention. Reconstruction costs you accuracy. Passive capture costs you a review step and requires trusting a tool with your activity data. Pick the cost you'll actually pay every week. ## From tracked hours to a paid invoice Tracking that stops at a report is half a system. The handoff from hours to invoice is where a surprising amount of time and money goes, because it's usually manual: filter by client, filter by billable, total the durations, convert to decimal hours, multiply by rate, retype it all into an invoice template, send. Each step is a chance to lose something. The conversion catches people out (7 hours 45 minutes is 7.75 hours, not 7.45) and getting it wrong by a few minutes per entry compounds across a month. [How to calculate billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-calculate-billable-hours) has the formula and a worked example. The retyping step is worse: it's where entries get dropped, because nobody cross-checks a total they just typed. The rest of the invoice is a solved problem, but only if you're consistent about it: sequential numbering, the client's legal entity and the right recipient, clear payment terms, and a due date the client can't interpret creatively. [How to invoice a client](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-invoice-a-client) covers the mechanics end to end. The structural fix is to keep the tracked hours and the invoice in the same system, so the invoice is generated from the log rather than transcribed from it. That's rarer than you'd expect. Most automatic trackers hand off a CSV, and most invoicing tools want you to type hours in by hand. ## Choosing a tool without a feature matrix Five questions, in this order: 1. **Does it capture the way you actually work?** If your day is fragmented, a timer will underrecord it no matter how good the rest of the tool is. 2. **Does it attribute to clients without manual tagging?** Sorting a week of raw entries by hand is the chore that kills adoption. 3. **Does it invoice, or does it export?** Both are valid; know which you're buying. 4. **Does it run on your machine?** If you're on Linux the field narrows sharply, and web-only means no passive capture. 5. **Is the price shape predictable?** A per-seat price you can forecast is different from a base rate with metered fees on top. That last one is not hypothetical. Harvest's Teams plan starts at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) with invoicing included on every plan, but its own pricing page states that additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on usage on top of the base rate. Toggl Track's Starter plan is $9 per license per month and is where billable rates become available; Premium is $14 per license per month for the first year of annual billing and renews at $18. Both are solid tools. Both bill in shapes you should understand before you commit, and pricing moves, so verify the current numbers on each vendor's own site, checked September 5, 2026. [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is built around the capture-to-invoice loop specifically. Its desktop app runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and records the active window automatically, with no timer to start. Keyword rules (plus optional AI for the ambiguous remainder) sort that activity into client projects, and billable status is inherited per project rather than tagged per entry. The tracked total becomes a native PDF invoice or a CSV export, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced. On privacy: window titles can stay on-device, each machine connects with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. The honest part: it isn't the cheapest option. Pro is **$9/month for one seat**, Team is **$12/seat/month**, both flat with no usage fees, and there's a 14-day trial that doesn't ask for a card. Cheaper trackers exist and several of them are good. The case isn't price. It's that automatic capture and invoicing live in one tool, on a bill that doesn't move with your client count. If you bill mostly fixed-fee and don't need hour-level records, if a start/stop timer already works for your kind of work, or if a free tier is the hard constraint, something else will serve you better. The [freelancers page](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers) has the detail and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists the plans. ## The failure modes that actually cost you Four patterns account for most of the money freelancers lose in this process, and none of them is "forgot to track for a whole day." **Tracked but never invoiced.** The most common and the least visible. Hours are recorded correctly, then a project ends mid-month, an entry lands after the invoice went out, or a small client gets skipped in a busy period. Nobody notices, because the log looks complete and the invoice looks complete. They just don't match. That gap is a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak), and finding it requires comparing tracked hours against invoiced hours, something two separate tools can't do. **Systematic rounding down.** Not fraud in reverse, just a habit: 50 minutes becomes "about an hour" in the good direction for the client, every time. Rounding is fine; rounding in one direction only is a discount you never agreed to. **The unbilled edges.** Email, scheduling, the quick call, the fifteen minutes re-reading the brief. Individually too small to log, collectively a day a month. **Scope drift with no record.** The extra revision, the "while you're in there" request. If it isn't tracked as it happens, you have no evidence when the conversation gets awkward, and you'll usually absorb it. The audit that finds these takes about half an hour on a single week: pull everything you tracked, pull everything you invoiced, and look at the difference. [How to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) walks through it step by step. Most people are surprised by the number, and the surprise is the point. You can't fix a leak you've never measured. Start with the audit before you change tools. If it turns up nothing, your current method is working and you should keep it. If it turns up a meaningful gap, you'll know whether the problem is capture, attribution, or the invoice handoff, and that tells you what kind of tool to look for. From there, [what passive time tracking is](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) and [how to invoice from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) cover the two halves of closing it. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best way to track time as a freelancer? Capture it automatically and reconcile before you invoice. Manual timers leak the small, frequent tasks that make up a surprising share of billable work, so a tracker that records what you actually do and lets you confirm it later is more accurate. The test of any method is not how it feels to use but how much of your worked time reaches the invoice. ### Is free time tracking enough for freelancers? Often for capture, rarely for billing. Free tiers usually track time fine, but the parts that get you paid, billable rates, invoicing, and exports, are the first things moved to paid plans, as Clockify did in 2026. If you bill clients, judge a free plan by whether it turns hours into an invoice, not by the timer alone. ### How do I turn tracked hours into an invoice? Filter to one client and date range, keep only the billable entries, total them to decimal hours, and apply the rate. A tool that holds tracking and invoicing together does this for you and produces the PDF; otherwise you export a CSV into an accounting tool. The accuracy depends entirely on the hours being captured honestly in the first place. ### Should freelancers track non-billable time too? Yes, for your own visibility. Selling, admin, and learning are unpaid but they set your real billable share, which is the number that decides whether your rate holds. Tracking both, then flagging what is billable per project, keeps the client bill clean while showing you where the unpaid hours actually go. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-statistics [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Time Tracking Statistics 2026: Which Ones Hold Up # Time Tracking Statistics 2026: Which Ones Hold Up > The time tracking statistics worth citing in 2026, each with a named source, plus the famous time-theft and lost-hours figures that quietly fall apart. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 26, 2026 10 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Time tracking statistics get repeated far more often than they get checked. Search for them and you will find the same handful of dramatic figures (billions lost to distraction, a fixed share of payroll stolen, a tidy percentage of billable hours that vanish) copied from one marketing page to the next with no traceable source. This guide collects the time tracking statistics that actually hold up in 2026, names a source for each, and flags the popular ones that quietly fall apart when you look for the original study. ## The most-cited time tracking statistics for 2026, ranked by how well they hold up Before the detail, here is the short version. The numbers about **focus and interruptions** are the strongest, because they trace to primary research with stated methods. The numbers about **time theft and lost billable hours** are the weakest, because most of them trace to vendor surveys, extrapolations, or nothing at all. | Statistic | Source | How well it holds up | | --- | --- | --- | | Workers interrupted ~every 2 min, ~275 times a day | Microsoft Work Trend Index, June 2025 | Strong: primary telemetry (M365 only; sells Copilot) | | Average focused session ~13 min in 2025, down ~9% vs 2023 | ActivTrak State of the Workplace, 2023-2025 | Strong, but reflects monitored knowledge workers | | ~23 min 15 sec to return to a task after an interruption | Dr. Gloria Mark (UC Irvine), CHI 2008 | Strong study, but dated and a small office sample | | Time theft ≈ 7% of gross payroll | Software Advice / industry estimates | Weak: industry estimate, no peer-reviewed primary | | "$373M a year" lost to buddy punching | 2017 TSheets survey + BLS extrapolation | Weak: vendor survey from 2017, and **not** an APA stat | | Time-tracking software market ~$6.1B in 2025 | Mordor Intelligence, 2025 | Moderate: one firm's scope, not a settled figure | Each of these is unpacked below, with the caveats that the original figure carries. ## Focus and interruptions: the numbers that hold up This is the part of the topic with real evidence behind it. Microsoft's June 2025 Work Trend Index special report, [_Breaking down the infinite workday_](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/breaking-down-infinite-workday) (published 17 June 2025), found that employees are interrupted **roughly every two minutes** during core working hours: about **275 interruptions a day** from meetings, emails, and pings. The same report found the average worker receives **117 emails and 153 Microsoft Teams messages** on a typical weekday, with most emails skimmed in under 60 seconds, and that **40% of people online at 6 a.m.** are already triaging email. These are primary figures, but two honest caveats apply: they come from Microsoft 365 telemetry, so they describe knowledge workers inside the Microsoft ecosystem rather than every job, and the report's purpose is to make the case for Copilot. The telemetry is real; the framing is self-interested. [ActivTrak's State of the Workplace research](https://www.activtrak.com/resources/state-of-the-workplace/) (drawn from a 2023 to 2025 dataset spanning 1,111 companies and 163,638 employees) found the average focused work session fell about **9%, from 14 minutes 23 seconds in 2023 to 13 minutes 7 seconds in 2025**. Its measure of focus efficiency, the share of work time spent in uninterrupted focus, slipped to **roughly 60%** in 2025, down about five points. This reflects employees on ActivTrak's monitoring software, so it skews toward its own customer base. Worth presenting fairly: ActivTrak's own headline is not a doom story. The same research reports the **workday got shorter** (from 8h 53m to 8h 44m), **productive hours rose about 5%** to roughly 6h 36m a day, and people logged off earlier: the average workday end shifting from 5:21 p.m. to 4:39 p.m. So the "infinite workday" and "more productive, shorter days" narratives sit side by side in the data. Both can be true; attention got more fragmented even as total output held up. The most-quoted figure in this whole topic belongs to Dr. Gloria Mark of UC Irvine, whose study [_The Cost of Interrupted Work_](https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf), published at CHI 2008, found it takes a worker an average of **23 minutes 15 seconds to return to the original task** after an interruption. Two things are routinely lost when this number gets repeated: it is a **2008** observational study with a small office sample, and the 23 minutes is the time to return to _that specific task_, not a generic "time to refocus." Her 2023 book _Attention Span_ adds a related figure: average sustained attention on a single screen fell from about 2.5 minutes in 2004 to roughly 47 seconds in recent measurements. For anyone who tracks time, the practical takeaway from this cluster is simple. If your attention breaks every couple of minutes, a tool that asks you to remember to start and stop a timer is fighting the grain of the workday. That is the structural reason behind [why freelancers forget to start timers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers), and the argument for [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) that records work without a manual prompt. ## Billable hours statistics: mostly illustrations, not data Here is where the topic gets thin. You will see confident **billable hours statistics** like "freelancers lose 15 to 40 percent of their billable hours," "professionals lose 5 to 10 billable hours a week," or "services firms lose 15 to 25 percent of billable hours a year," usually attached to a dramatic dollar figure. We tried to trace these and could not find an underlying study behind any of them. They originate in competitor marketing blogs and get recycled. The dollar amounts ($23,400 a year, $200,000 for a ten-person team) are rate-times-hours arithmetic, fine as a worked example but not a measured fact. We will not repeat them here as statistics, and you should be skeptical when you see them stated as one. What can be said responsibly is narrower, and it comes from firm-level benchmarks rather than headline statistics. [SPI Research](https://spiresearch.com/)'s 2025 [Professional Services Maturity Benchmark](https://get.kantata.com/rs/677-LEJ-696/images/2025-ps-maturity-benchmark.pdf) (PDF, published February 2025, based on a survey of 403 firms) put average billable utilization at **68.9% for 2024**, down from 73.2% in 2021 and below the 75% the report treats as optimal. Agencies sit lower by design: the agency-finance specialist Parakeeto puts healthy [agency-wide net utilization](https://www.parakeeto.com/blog/resource-utilization-capacity-planning-for-marketing-agency-2/) at **50 to 60%** (2021 guidance), with delivery staff at 65 to 85%, because agency headcount carries more non-billable roles. Both are benchmarks for firms, not measurements of freelancers: context for your own number, not a description of it. If you want the mechanics rather than the folklore, the honest place to start is your own number. See [billable utilization rate](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-utilization-rate) for the formula and how to measure it, and [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours) for capturing the inputs accurately. The best-measured version of this comes from law firms, where Clio counts it every year. Its Legal Trends data put the average lawyer's utilization at **37% in 2024**: 2.9 billable hours out of an 8-hour day, rising to 3.0 hours in 2025 ([Clio, how to calculate utilization](https://www.clio.com/blog/how-to-calculate-utilization-rate/); [2025 benchmarks](https://www.clio.com/resources/legal-trends/benchmarks/)). Recording the hour isn't the end of it: lawyers collect about **$910 of every $1,000** they bill, a realization rate that compounds with utilization to shrink the amount that actually lands. Those are law-firm figures, not freelancer ones, but they are the rare billable-hours statistic drawn from an annual primary count rather than a marketing page. The reason a real, measured loss exists for many freelancers is not a statistic but a mechanism: work that gets done but never invoiced. That is what a [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) is, and unlike the borrowed percentages above, it is something you can measure on your own books in an afternoon: [stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) walks through that audit. ## Where do the famous time theft statistics come from? The **time theft statistics** that circulate are the most misattributed numbers in this entire subject, so it is worth being precise about provenance. The famous **"$373 million a year"** buddy-punching figure originates from a 2017 survey of 1,000 U.S. employees commissioned by **TSheets** (now QuickBooks Time), in which 16% admitted clocking in for a colleague, combined with a Bureau of Labor Statistics extrapolation. It is a vendor-sponsored estimate from 2017, and, critically, it is **not** an American Payroll Association statistic, even though most blogs attribute it to the APA. That single misattribution is the most common error on this topic. The claim that **time theft costs around 7% of gross payroll** comes from industry estimates, typically a Software Advice survey (in which 43% of employees admitted padding their timecards) plus buddy-punching math. State it only with that attribution attached: "industry estimates suggest", never as a peer-reviewed finding. The 43% padding figure is itself a real but older self-report survey. Then there is a tier of numbers you should treat as unverifiable: **"$450 to $550 billion a year lost to time theft," "75% of U.S. businesses affected,"** and **"4.5 hours a week lost per employee."** These are routinely attributed to the American Payroll Association (or, for the 4.5 hours, to Robert Half), but no locatable primary publication backs them up. The same goes for round figures like "$650 billion a year in workplace distractions" or "a 38% loss in billable revenue to time leakage" that appear on some competitors' 2026 statistics pages with no citation. They are zombie stats: repeated until they sound official. We leave them out rather than launder them. ## The market and the shift toward automatic tracking If you want a sense of how big this category is, **cite the estimate you can actually read, and say whose it is.** [Mordor Intelligence](https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/time-tracking-software-market) put the time-tracking software market at **$6.1 billion in 2025**, forecast to reach **$11.43 billion by 2030**, a **13.38% CAGR** (report page last updated July 2025). That is one firm's scope decision, not a settled fact: other analyst houses publish materially different 2025 figures for the same category, and their methodologies sit behind paywalls we could not open to check what each one counts as "time tracking." Treat any single definitive market size, including this one, as an estimate with a name attached rather than a measurement. The clearer productivity statistics trend is directional rather than numeric: **AI-assisted, automatic time tracking** (activity auto-categorization, anomaly detection, and less manual data entry) is now a standard direction across the category, according to multiple market-research summaries. Be wary of the precise adoption percentages floating around ("80% of employees use AI tools," "32% efficiency gains"); the ones we checked carried no primary source. The trend is well supported; the exact figures usually are not. ## What do the honest numbers mean for your own tracking? Strip away the unverifiable stats and a consistent picture remains. Attention is fragmented: interrupted every couple of minutes, with focused stretches measured in single-digit minutes. That is precisely the environment in which manual timers leak: you cannot reliably start and stop a stopwatch in a day that breaks 275 times. The defensible response is to stop relying on memory and capture the work automatically. That is the gap BillNotch is built for. Its desktop app (for Windows, macOS, and Linux) records the **active window automatically**, with no timer to start. Keyword rules, with optional AI for the ambiguous cases, sort that activity into **client projects**, and billable status is inherited per project, so the live billable total assembles itself instead of being reconstructed from memory at the end of the month. From there the total becomes a **PDF invoice or a CSV export**, and the **Revenue Leak Finder** flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced, turning the vague "freelancers lose X% of billable hours" folklore into a number you can actually see and recover on your own data. On the honest trade-offs: BillNotch is not the cheapest option in the category. Flat pricing is **Pro at $9/month for one seat** and **Team at $12 per seat**, so if sticker price is the deciding factor, lower-cost tools exist. What it offers instead is automatic capture, auto-categorization into billable projects, and built-in invoicing in one place, with privacy handled by keeping window titles on-device per device, connecting each device with an API key you issue and revoke, and processing data on EU servers that is never sold. There is a 14-day trial with no card; the full breakdown is on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page. ## Key takeaways - The strongest **time tracking statistics** are about focus and interruptions: Microsoft (interrupted ~every 2 minutes), ActivTrak (~13-minute focus sessions), and Gloria Mark's 2008 CHI study (~23 minutes to return to a task). - ActivTrak's data also shows shorter workdays and rising productive hours. Present that counter-narrative honestly rather than cherry-picking the decline. - Most **time theft statistics** are weakly sourced. The "$373M" buddy-punching figure is a 2017 TSheets vendor survey, **not** an APA stat, and the "$450 to $550 billion" and "75% of businesses" claims have no locatable primary source. - "Freelancers lose 15 to 40% of billable hours" and similar **billable hours statistics** trace to marketing blogs, not studies; measure your own utilization and leaks instead. - The market is best cited with a name attached: **Mordor Intelligence put it at $6.1B in 2025**, growing about 13% a year, and automatic, AI-assisted tracking is the clear directional trend. The most useful number is not in any of these reports. It is the gap between the hours you worked and the hours you billed last week. [Find your revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) and [run the audit](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours); that is the one statistic you can actually change. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the 23-minute refocus statistic real? It traces to real research: Gloria Mark's study The Cost of Interrupted Work, published at CHI in 2008, found it took about 23 minutes on average to return to a task after an interruption. It is often quoted without the source and stretched into claims the study never made, so cite the original and note it was a small 2008 office sample, not a universal law. ### Do freelancers really lose 15 to 40 percent of billable hours? Treat any single percentage with suspicion. There is no authoritative study behind the widely repeated figures, and the honest position is that leakage varies too much by person to pin to one number. The useful move is not to cite a statistic but to measure your own gap between hours worked and hours billed for one week. ### Is the $450 billion lost to time theft figure credible? No, not as usually cited. The large time-theft and lost-revenue dollar figures that circulate in this category rarely name a verifiable source, and several trace back to vendor marketing rather than research. When a statistic cannot be tied to a named, datable study, the safer assumption is that it was invented or badly paraphrased, so leave it out. ### What time tracking statistics can I actually trust? The ones with a named primary source you can open: a dated research report, a peer-reviewed study, or a named industry benchmark. This post cites those and flags the ones that fall apart. The most useful number, though, is your own: the gap between the hours you worked and the hours you billed last week. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Automatic Time Tracking App: Time Tracking Without Timers # Automatic Time Tracking App: Time Tracking Without Timers > An automatic time tracking app logs your hours without a start/stop timer. The three timer-free methods (passive, calendar, rules) and who each suits. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 **Time tracking without timers** means logging your work hours automatically (without ever clicking start or stop) by recording what you actually do (active app, calendar event, or rule) and turning it into time entries after the fact. An **automatic time tracking app** does exactly that: instead of remembering to run a stopwatch, the tracking happens in the background and you review it later. Most hourly billing depends on a habit nobody reliably keeps: starting a timer the moment you switch tasks. Skip it once and you've lost the entry. Timer-free tracking removes the habit from the loop entirely. ## What an automatic time tracking app does An automatic time tracking app runs in the background and records the active window, the app, and the document you have in focus, then turns that raw activity into time entries you review later. There is no timer to start, so the work that usually slips (the two-minute reply, the unplanned call, the after-hours fix) is already on the record. The rest of this guide covers why manual timers leak that work, the three timer-free methods, and how to keep the review pass fast. ## Why timers fail freelancers and small agencies Manual timers assume perfect discipline across a messy day. In practice: - You forget to start it when a client calls or a Slack thread pulls you in. - You forget to stop it through lunch, so a 20-minute task logs 90. - Context-switching between three clients means three timers you'll never juggle cleanly. - At week's end you "reconstruct" hours from memory, which usually means undercounting. The result is **leakage**: real billable work that never makes it onto an invoice. The fix isn't more willpower. It's a method that captures time whether or not you remember. ## Why timers get forgotten A timer asks for three things in order, all of them before you've done any work: notice you're starting something billable, decide which client it belongs to, then click start. That sequence has to fire perfectly every time, including the times you're rushing, interrupted, or already mid-thought. It breaks hardest exactly when the work is most valuable. The deeper the focus, the lower the odds you paused to press a button first. A Slack ping drops you straight into a client task with no natural gap to start anything, and a two-minute reply never feels worth timing until you've sent forty of them unbilled. The timer is least reliable when you're most engaged, which is backwards for a tool whose whole job is to capture your work. So the forgotten timer is a structural problem, not a discipline one. Reminders and nags interrupt focus to fix a problem caused by interrupting focus, and you learn to ignore them inside a week. The only fix that holds is to stop depending on the memory step at all. ## The three approaches to timer-free tracking There's no single way to track time without a stopwatch. There are three, and they suit different work styles. ### 1\. Automatic (passive) tracking A lightweight desktop app runs in the background and records [which application and window you have in focus](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), and for how long. At the end of the day you get a timeline of what you actually touched (`Figma → client-homepage.fig`, `VS Code → acme-api`, `Chrome → Notion doc`) already broken into blocks. This is the most complete approach because it captures everything, including the small tasks you'd never bother starting a timer for. It's the foundation of [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), and it pairs well with AI that sorts those raw blocks into the right client and project. It is also how you learn [how much time you actually spend in Notion](https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion) or any single app, without ever starting a timer on it. The tradeoff: it sees raw activity, so the categorization step matters. Good tools learn your patterns; weak ones leave you sorting a wall of entries by hand. ### 2\. Calendar-based tracking Your day is already partly documented in your calendar: the client call, the planning block, the design review. Calendar-based tracking turns those events into time entries automatically. If your meetings dominate your billable hours, this gets you most of the way there with zero new tooling. The tradeoff: it only knows what's on the calendar. Heads-down work (the two hours of actual building between meetings) is invisible unless you block it out in advance, which is its own kind of manual habit. ### 3\. Rule-based tracking You define rules once, and the system applies them forever: "any time in the `acme-redesign` folder is billable to Acme," or "Slack workspace X belongs to Client Y." Rules are powerful as a layer on top of automatic tracking: they convert raw activity into categorized, billable entries without per-entry effort. That folder rule is exactly how [time tracking for software developers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-for-developers) maps a repo name to a client, so VS Code and terminal hours bill themselves. The tradeoff: rules need setup and occasional maintenance. They're best for stable, recurring client relationships rather than one-off projects. ## Timer vs. no-timer, side by side | Factor | Manual timer | Timer-free tracking | | --- | --- | --- | | Requires you to remember | Yes, every task switch | No, runs in background | | Captures forgotten work | No | Yes | | Accuracy of small tasks | Poor (rarely started) | High | | Effort during the day | Constant | None | | Effort at review time | Low | Moderate (categorize/confirm) | | Best for | Single deep-focus blocks | Multi-client, switch-heavy days | The honest summary: timers move the effort to _during_ the work, where it's most disruptive and most often skipped. Timer-free tracking moves it to a single _review_ pass, where you're calmer and have full context. ## Who timer-free tracking suits, and who it doesn't It's a strong fit if you: - Bill multiple clients and switch tasks often. - Keep forgetting to start timers (almost everyone). - Want defensible hours backed by what you actually did, not a guess. - Care about catching unbilled time before you send the invoice. It's a weaker fit if you work in long, single-client deep-focus sessions where one timer covers the whole day, or if your work happens mostly away from a computer where nothing can observe it. ## How to make the review step painless The one cost of going timer-free is the daily or weekly review. Keep it fast: 1. **Review same-day.** Five minutes each afternoon beats an hour of archaeology on Friday. 2. **Let rules do the first pass.** Confirm the categorization instead of building it from scratch. 3. **Merge tiny fragments.** Roll a scatter of two-minute blocks into the task they belong to. 4. **Round the same way every time.** If your contract or client rounds to the nearest 6 or 15 minutes, apply that convention consistently. BillNotch itself records to the second and shows decimal hours, so any rounding is a billing decision you make, not a setting in the tool. Do this and your hours become both more accurate and easier to defend than anything a manual timer produces. For the broader workflow (from capture to invoice) see [how to track billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). ## Where BillNotch fits [BillNotch](https://billnotch.com/) is built on the automatic approach: its [automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) runs quietly on Windows, macOS, or Linux, records your active window without any timer to start, and uses AI to sort that activity into the right client projects. Its Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you almost didn't invoice, and you can [generate a PDF invoice straight from the confirmed hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-with-invoicing). If you'd rather keep your data close, window titles can stay on your device. Pro is $9/mo with a 14-day trial, and if you're weighing options, here's [how BillNotch compares to Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). Timers ask you to be a perfect record-keeper all day. Timer-free tracking just asks you to look back once, and bill for everything you find. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is automatic time tracking accurate? It is usually more accurate than a manual timer, because it records every app and window you touch instead of only the tasks you remembered to time. The raw capture is precise to the second. What needs your judgment is categorization: deciding which client each block belongs to, which you confirm in a short review rather than reconstruct from memory a week later. ### Is timer-free tracking surveillance? It depends on what the tool records and where the data goes. Active-window tracking logs the app and window title on your own machine; it is not screenshots or keystroke logging. The privacy question is whether that data leaves your device. BillNotch can keep window titles local and never sends them to third parties, so capture does not have to mean monitoring. ### Does automatic time tracking work offline? The capture does. A desktop tracker records your active window locally whether or not you are connected, then syncs when the connection returns, so a dropped link never loses hours. Fully offline-only tools exist too, like Memtime, which keep everything on the device. If offline capture is a hard requirement, confirm the tracker records locally before it uploads. ### Can you bill from timer-free tracking? Yes, once you confirm the entries. The review pass turns raw activity into categorized, billable hours, and a tool that also invoices can generate the bill from those confirmed hours. BillNotch flags billable time you almost missed with its Revenue Leak Finder and produces a PDF invoice from the approved total, so the captured time reaches the invoice. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/timecamp-alternatives [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best TimeCamp Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks # Best TimeCamp Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks > TimeCamp is cheap and invoices, but slices features across four tiers and meters its AI by usage: five alternatives compared on cost predictability. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 25, 2026 11 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Most people shopping for **TimeCamp alternatives** aren't unhappy with the tracking. TimeCamp captures time well and gives away more on its free plan than almost anyone in the category. What sends people looking is the shape of the cost rather than the size of it: the feature you need sits two tiers up, the AI add-on bills by usage instead of a flat seat price, or the product keeps steering toward screenshots and monitoring when all you wanted was a clean client invoice. First, the baseline, with a caveat. TimeCamp runs a free-forever plan plus four paid tiers: Starter (Time & Billing), Premium (Profit & Productivity), Ultimate (Management & Security), and a contact-sales Enterprise. The paid ladder lands at roughly $3 to $10 per user/month depending on tier and billing term. Treat that as a range, because [TimeCamp's own pricing page](https://www.timecamp.com/pricing/) currently shows two different sets of figures for the same three tiers in two sections of the same page. Confirm the charge at checkout. ## What TimeCamp does well, and where the gaps are The free tier alone rules TimeCamp back in for a lot of people. It covers unlimited users and unlimited projects, with timesheets, web, desktop and mobile apps, a browser plugin, a time clock kiosk, geofencing, CSV import and idle tracking. It also includes automatic tracking with keywords, which is unusual to hand out free: most vendors put any form of [passive capture](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) behind a paid plan. Invoicing arrives at the entry-level paid tier rather than the top one, and exports to QuickBooks and Xero. The pricing page names desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, which puts it ahead of several better-known trackers. Four things send people looking anyway. - **Features are sliced thin across four tiers.** Billable time, budgets and apps-and-websites tracking start at Premium. Billable rates, expenses, labor costs, fixed-fee projects and timesheet approvals sit at Ultimate. If your job is [billing clients by the hour](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-hours-tracker), the rate-and-cost machinery is at the top of the ladder, not the bottom. - **The AI Time Tracker is metered by token usage.** TimeCamp's own note estimates about $6 per user/month in tokens for time entry suggestions, with $10 in credits during the trial. That is usage metering on top of the seat price, so your monthly total becomes a forecast rather than a number. - **The product leans into monitoring.** Screenshots are an Ultimate feature, and TimeCamp markets employee, activity and productivity monitoring alongside the tracking. For a manager watching a floor of staff that may be the point. For a freelancer billing clients it's the wrong shape. - **The published pricing contradicts itself.** As of August 2026 the same page shows two conflicting sets of tier prices, so you can't do a clean cost comparison from the page alone. None of that makes TimeCamp a poor tool. It means the right replacement depends on which of the four is bothering you. ## What to look for in a TimeCamp alternative - **Pricing shape, not sticker price.** Flat per seat, usage-metered, or term-discounted. A cheap seat with metered AI on top is harder to budget than a dearer flat one. - **How time gets captured.** Manual timer, a passive log you convert yourself, or fully automatic with no timer to start. - **Where invoicing sits.** Built in and billing-grade, basic, gated behind a high tier, or handed to an integration. - **Monitoring posture.** Whether the tool is built to bill clients or watch employees. - **Platform coverage.** A native desktop app on the operating system you use, not a browser tab. This narrows the field faster than anything else. ## The TimeCamp alternatives, compared None of these is a drop-in clone, and each trades something. Read the table as a map rather than a quote. | Tool | Tracking model | Invoicing | Free tier | Pricing shape | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | TimeCamp | Automatic, keyword-based | From entry paid tier | Yes, unlimited users | Four tiers plus metered AI | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window | Native PDF + CSV | No, 14-day trial, no card | Flat per seat, no metering | | Clockify | Manual timer + Auto Tracker | Paid plans | Yes, free forever | Four tiers, low entry price | | Toggl Track | Timeline, a passive log you convert | Basic, built in | Yes, limited users | Per license, Premium renews up | | Memtime | Fully automatic, offline | None, exports out | No, trial only | Per user, term-discounted | | RescueTime | Fully automatic | None surfaced | Not listed | Per user, two product lines | _Details as of September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [TimeCamp](https://www.timecamp.com/pricing/), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [Toggl Track](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Memtime](https://www.memtime.com/pricing), [RescueTime](https://www.rescuetime.com/pricing)._ **Clockify** is the closest like-for-like swap, and the strongest answer if the free plan is what's keeping you on TimeCamp. It keeps a free-forever tier, and its paid ladder is the cheapest here: BASIC at **$3.99 per seat/month billed annually** ($4.99 monthly), STANDARD at $5.49, PRO at $7.99, ENTERPRISE at $11.99, with Enterprise adding a choice of data region across the EU, UK, USA or Australia. Invoicing is built in on paid plans, and there's a native Linux desktop app with an **Auto Tracker**, a passive recorder much like TimeCamp's keyword tracking. Two catches: Clockify slices features across four tiers exactly the way TimeCamp does, so if tier-slicing is your complaint you're swapping one ladder for another, and the Auto Tracker is activity you convert into entries yourself, not automatic project sorting. See [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative), the wider field in [Clockify alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026), and its [2026 free-plan changes](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026). **Toggl Track** is the move if you want a more polished, less monitoring-flavoured product and will pay more per seat for it. It keeps a free plan for a limited number of users, with Starter at **$9 per license/month** and Premium at **$14 per license/month for the first year of Premium annual, renewing at $18** on Toggl's own footnote. Its automatic capture is **Timeline**, a background log of apps and sites viewed for more than ten seconds that you convert into entries by hand. Two constraints: Timeline runs on the macOS and Windows desktop apps only, and the native Linux app is deprecated, so Linux users get the web app and a browser extension. Invoicing exists but is basic, a report export that becomes an invoice with a hand-off to QuickBooks or Xero. See [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). **Memtime** goes the other direction: fully automatic capture that runs offline, with data staying on your device, on native apps for Windows, macOS and Linux. If TimeCamp's monitoring posture pushed you out, Memtime is the cleanest antidote here, because there is nothing watching you. It is also the priciest per seat: Basic at **€15 / $18 per user/month**, Connect at €22 / $26, Premium at €30 / $35, all billed annually. The default quarterly cycle costs more, and a two-year term saves up to 33%. There's a free trial with no card but **no free plan**, no built-in invoicing, and project assignment is manual. If Memtime is on your shortlist, the [Memtime alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives) guide weighs it against four others on capture, sorting and invoicing. More options are in [time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux). **RescueTime** is fully automatic and cheap at the bottom, but it isn't a billing tool. It sells four plans across two product lines: Solo at **$7/month billed annually**, Solo+ at $12, Team at $10/user/month, Team+ at $16, with the Timesheets line adding shared clients and projects, role-based access control and **billable rates**. Be precise about that last one: rates exist, but no invoice generation is surfaced on its pricing page, so treat it as a data source you export from and bill elsewhere. Linux support was dropped and left to community builds. A pattern worth naming: the tools that capture fully automatically (Memtime, RescueTime) tend not to invoice, and the ones that invoice properly (Clockify, Toggl) hand you a log to convert by hand. The [combination of automatic capture and built-in invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing) is the scarce part, which is why the same tension turns up in [Timely alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/timely-alternatives). ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is aimed at one person leaving TimeCamp: the freelancer or small consultancy who wants automatic capture that sorts itself into client projects, invoicing in the same product, and a bill they can predict to the dollar. The desktop app records your active window automatically, so there is no timer to start, and keyword rules plus optional AI sort that activity into client projects. Suggestions land as drafts you confirm rather than being silently applied. Billable status is inherited per project, so the running billable total becomes a native PDF invoice or a CSV export with no retyping. A **Revenue Leak Finder** flags time you tracked but never invoiced, the [unbilled gap](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) that usually only surfaces when you reconcile by hand. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux. One architecture note: the desktop app does the capture, invoicing lives in the BillNotch dashboard. Connected, but not the same window. Now the honest part. BillNotch is **not the cheapest option here**. Pro is **$9/month for one seat** and Team is **$12/seat/month**, on a 14-day trial with no card. TimeCamp undercuts that at every paid tier, Clockify undercuts it by more, and TimeCamp has something BillNotch does not have at all: a free-forever plan with unlimited users. If budget is your hard constraint, or you need a large team on a tracker without a line item, pick TimeCamp's free tier or Clockify instead. The case here isn't price, it's that the pricing is **flat with no usage metering**, so AI sorting never arrives as a separate token bill on top of your seats, and that capture, categorization and invoicing sit in one product rather than three tiers apart. Window titles can stay on your device, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. One Linux caveat: automatic active-window capture is reliable on X11, while Wayland's locked-down access is a known limitation across every Linux tracker, BillNotch included. ## The bottom line There is no single best TimeCamp alternative, only the best fit for the gap that pushed you to look. If the free plan is what you'd miss, Clockify is the natural landing spot and costs least per seat. If you want a more polished product and don't need Linux, Toggl Track. If the monitoring and screenshots are the problem and you'd rather your data never left the machine, Memtime, accepting that you'll invoice elsewhere. If you only want to see where your hours go, RescueTime. And if you want automatic capture that sorts into client projects and turns into an invoice, on a bill you can forecast without a token estimate, that is where BillNotch is aimed. Decide your pricing shape and your capture model first, then trial the two survivors. The plan details are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, and the workflow end to end is in [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software). With TimeCamp, confirm the figure at checkout before you commit. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best TimeCamp alternative? It depends on what bothers you about TimeCamp. If the AI add-on billing by usage is the problem, a flat-priced tool like Clockify or BillNotch is easier to forecast. If you want billing without climbing four tiers, pick a tool where invoicing and rates sit low. If you want automatic capture and invoicing in one place, that points to BillNotch. ### Is TimeCamp really free? Its free plan is unusually generous: unlimited users and projects, timesheets, the apps, a kiosk, and even keyword-based automatic tracking, which most vendors gate behind paid plans. The catch is that billing-grade features climb the paid ladder, and its published prices currently conflict on the page itself, so confirm the real charge at checkout before you rely on it. ### Why is TimeCamp's pricing confusing? Two reasons. Features are sliced thin across four tiers, so billable rates, costs, and approvals sit near the top rather than the bottom, and the AI Time Tracker is metered by token usage on top of the seat price. TimeCamp estimates about $6 per user a month in tokens, which turns your bill into a forecast rather than a fixed number. ### Does TimeCamp run on Linux? Yes. TimeCamp's pricing page names desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux, which puts it ahead of several better-known trackers that skip Linux. Among the alternatives here, Clockify and BillNotch also ship native Linux desktop apps, so a Linux machine does not force you onto a browser tab. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/timely-alternatives [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Timely Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks # Best Timely Alternatives in 2026: 5 Honest Picks > Timely tracks automatically but skips Linux, has no free plan and adds seat costs fast: five honest alternatives compared on capture, invoicing and price. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) August 18, 2026 11 min read Updated September 6, 2026 Most people searching for **Timely alternatives** are not unhappy with the tracking. They are unhappy with something around it: the seat price after the team grew, the missing Linux build, the add-on on the bill, or realising invoicing runs through QuickBooks Online rather than the app itself. Timely does the hard part well. This is an honest look at what you give up by leaving, and which tool closes your gap. The baseline first. Timely sells three per-user tiers: **Starter at $11 billed monthly or $9 billed yearly** (capped at 5 users and 20 projects), **Premium at $20 monthly or $16 yearly** (up to 50 users, unlimited projects), and **Unlimited at $28 monthly or $22 yearly**. There is a **14-day free trial and no free plan**, and Tasks is a separate paid add-on starting at around $5 per person on top of any tier. Figures from [Timely's own pricing page](https://timely.com/pricing), checked September 5, 2026; confirm them there, because vendor pricing moves. ## What Timely does well, and where the gaps are The strengths first, because most alternatives below do not match them. Timely captures automatically, runs an AI pass that drafts entries from that capture, then asks you to approve or correct the drafts. That is the closest thing in this category to hands-off categorization. Almost every other "automatic" tracker records a raw log and leaves you to turn it into timesheet rows; Timely sorts first and asks you to check its work. Its billing hygiene is better than the category average too. The pricing page names **Mark as billed** (which exists specifically to stop you double-billing an hour), **locked time**, **required tags and notes**, **cost rates**, and **multiple currencies**. You only miss those after you have billed one hour twice. Four things send people looking anyway. - **There is no native Linux app.** Timely ships for macOS, Windows, web, and mobile. If Linux is your daily machine, the automatic capture engine (the whole reason to buy Timely) is not available as a desktop app. - **Pricing is per user, on three tiers, with hard caps.** Starter tops out at 5 users and 20 projects, so growth pushes you up a tier, not just onto another seat. Starter to Premium roughly doubles the yearly per-user rate, and Unlimited is higher again. - **There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial.** That matters if you wanted a light seat for a contractor, or a month running the tool alongside your existing one. - **Tasks is a paid add-on layered on the seat price.** It is billed on top of any plan, so the number you budget from the tier table is not the number you pay. One thing to check rather than assume: Timely's comparison table renders its per-tier checkmarks in JavaScript, so the tier at which **Invoices** becomes available is not readable from the page source. Confirm that matrix on Timely's page before you buy. And note the invoicing pitch itself is a hand-off, "create accurate invoices in Timely and send them to QuickBooks Online in a click": a bridge to an accounting product, not a billing system of its own. ## What to look for in a Timely alternative Name what you are optimizing for first. These tools are not interchangeable. - **Whether the sorting is done for you.** A raw activity log and an AI-drafted timesheet are both sold as "automatic tracking," but only one saves you the sorting. Leave Timely for a passive logger and the review step gets longer, not shorter. - **Where the invoice gets produced.** In the app, or exported to an accounting tool. The biggest split in the field. - **Native Linux desktop support.** Not a browser tab. The one criterion no budget fixes. - **Whether a free plan exists.** Some here have a permanent free tier, some are trial-only, and that changes how you pilot. - **The shape of the bill, not the sticker.** Flat per-seat, tier caps that force upgrades, add-ons, or usage metering. Forecastability beats entry price. ## The Timely alternatives, compared None of these is a drop-in replacement; each trades away something Timely gives you. | Tool | Tracking model | Invoicing | Linux desktop | Free tier | Entry price | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Timely | Auto capture, AI drafts, you approve | Hand-off to QuickBooks Online | No | No, 14-day trial | $9/user/mo yearly | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window capture | Native PDF + CSV | Yes | No, 14-day trial | $9/mo, one seat | | Toggl Track | Timeline log you convert | Basic, built in | No, deprecated | Yes, limited users | $9/license/mo | | Clockify | Timer plus Auto Tracker you convert | Built in on paid plans | Yes | Yes, free forever | $3.99/seat/mo annually | | RescueTime | Fully automatic | None on pricing page | No, community only | Not surfaced | $7/mo billed annually | | Memtime | Fully automatic, offline | None, exports instead | Yes | No, free trial | $18/user/mo annual | _Details as of September 5, 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing page: [Timely](https://timely.com/pricing), [Toggl Track](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [RescueTime](https://www.rescuetime.com/pricing), [Memtime](https://www.memtime.com/pricing)._ **Toggl Track** is the safe lateral move if you want a mature, well-reported tool and can live without the AI step. Its automatic feature is **Timeline**, a background log of every app and website you view for more than ten seconds, which you convert into entries by hand: [passive tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker), not project sorting. Timeline runs on the macOS and Windows desktop apps only, and the native Linux app is deprecated, so Linux users get the web app and browser extension. Invoicing exists but is basic: export a report, generate an invoice, or hand off to QuickBooks or Xero. It does keep a free plan, which Timely does not. The wider field is in [Toggl alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives); the head-to-head, [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). **Clockify** is the answer when the seat price is what broke. The entry paid tier is $3.99 per seat per month billed annually, alongside a free-forever plan, a native Linux desktop app, and invoicing built in on paid plans. Its **Auto Tracker** is a passive recorder in the same family as Timeline: you convert the activity yourself. You trade Timely's AI drafting for a much lower bill and wider platform coverage. [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) compares the two loggers directly. **RescueTime** tracks fully automatically, with no review step at all. Two caveats matter if you bill clients. It surfaces **no invoice generation on its pricing page**. Billable rates exist on the Timesheets plans, but treat it as a data source you invoice from elsewhere. And Linux support was officially dropped; its help docs list Windows, macOS, iOS and a browser extension, Linux left to community builds. Solo starts at $7/month billed annually. **Memtime** is the privacy answer and one of only two tools here with a real Linux desktop. Tracking is fully automatic and **offline**, so captured data stays on the device, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The trades: **no built-in invoicing** (it exports to project and billing software instead), manual rather than AI-sorted project assignment, and an entry plan around $18 per user per month billed annually, above Timely's Starter, though longer commitments cut that materially. If Linux is why you are here, [the best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) covers that field. The pattern is familiar. The tools that capture without you (RescueTime, Memtime) do not bill; the tools that bill (Toggl, Clockify) hand you a log to sort. Timely is unusual because it does the sorting, which is why [automatic capture plus real invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing) is the thing to check on any replacement. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is aimed at one person leaving Timely: someone who wants the no-timer capture and the drafted entries, wants the invoice produced in the same product rather than pushed to an accounting tool, and needs Linux or does not want to be locked out of it later. The desktop app records the active window automatically (there is no timer to start) and keyword rules plus optional AI sort that activity into client projects. Suggestions land as **drafts you confirm**, never silently applied, the same review-before-it-counts principle Timely built its workflow on. Billable status is inherited per project, so the running billable total becomes a **native PDF invoice or a CSV export** with no retyping. A **Revenue Leak Finder** flags time you tracked but never invoiced, the [unbilled gap](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) most people only find by reconciling by hand. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux. Now the honest part. BillNotch is **not the cheapest tool here**. Clockify is, by a wide margin, with a free-forever plan and a paid entry tier under half of BillNotch's. Pro is **$9/month for one seat** and Team is **$12/seat/month**, on a 14-day trial with no card. That is level with Timely's yearly Starter rate, not under it. The argument is shape, not price: flat pricing, **no usage metering**, no add-on for tasks, so the number you forecast is the number you pay. Window titles can stay on your device, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it is never sold. **If cost is what pushed you off Timely, pick Clockify instead**: cheaper, free plan, Linux app, and it invoices. You do the sorting yourself, and for many people that is a fair swap. Two structural notes: the desktop app captures while invoicing lives in the dashboard, connected but not the same window; and on Linux, active-window capture is reliable on X11, while Wayland's locked-down access is a known limitation across every Linux tracker, BillNotch included. Plans are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, and the line-up is [BillNotch vs Timely](https://billnotch.com/compare/timely). ## The bottom line Route by the gap, not the brand. If Linux is what broke, the list is Clockify, Memtime, or BillNotch, and only two of those invoice. If the seat price or the tier caps broke it, Clockify is the clear move and Toggl Track the comfortable one. If you want fully automatic capture and will invoice elsewhere, RescueTime or Memtime both work, Memtime when data staying on the device matters. And if you liked the drafted-timesheet workflow but not the QuickBooks hand-off or the missing Linux build, that combination is where BillNotch is aimed. Decide first whether you need the sorting done for you or just the recording; that answer eliminates most of the list. The workflow end is covered in [how to invoice from time tracking](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software), and the case against a stopwatch in [time tracking without timers](https://billnotch.com/blog/time-tracking-without-timers). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best Timely alternative? Route by the gap that pushed you off Timely. If the seat price or tier caps broke it, Clockify is the clear move, cheaper with a free plan. If you want fully automatic capture and will invoice elsewhere, Memtime or RescueTime, Memtime for Linux. If you liked the drafted timesheets but not the QuickBooks hand-off or the missing Linux app, that is where BillNotch aims. ### Does Timely have a free plan? No. Timely offers a 14-day trial only, not a permanent free tier, which matters if you wanted a light seat for a contractor or a month running it alongside your current tool. Among the alternatives, Clockify keeps a free-forever plan and Toggl a limited free plan. BillNotch, like Timely, is trial-only with no card required. ### Does Timely run on Linux? No. Timely ships for macOS, Windows, web and mobile, with no native Linux desktop app, so its automatic capture engine is not available on Linux. If Linux is your machine, the alternatives with a real Linux desktop are Clockify, Memtime and BillNotch. The others leave Linux users on a browser tab or community builds. ### Does Timely do invoicing? Not as a billing system of its own. Timely's pitch is to create invoices and hand them to QuickBooks Online in a click, so the invoice is produced in an accounting product, not the tracker. If you want the bill made in the same app as the tracking, Clockify and BillNotch both build invoicing in, BillNotch as a native PDF from the tracked hours. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Best Toggl Alternatives in 2026: 6 Honest Picks # Best Toggl Alternatives in 2026: 6 Honest Picks > The best Toggl alternatives in 2026, compared fairly: BillNotch, Clockify, Harvest, RescueTime, Timely and Memtime: tracking, Linux, invoicing and price. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 8, 2026 8 min read Updated September 6, 2026 If you're weighing **Toggl alternatives** in 2026, it usually isn't because Toggl Track is a bad product. It's mature, well-designed, and its reporting is genuinely strong. The reason people start looking is narrower than that: one specific thing about how they work no longer fits: they're on Linux, they want capture that runs itself, or they want invoicing that goes deeper than a flat per-project export. This is a fair, specific look at where to go instead, and what each option actually trades. First, the baseline. Toggl Track's 2026 plans are **Free for up to 5 users**, **Starter at $9 per user/month**, and **Premium at $14 per user/month for the first annual year, then $18** (both billed annually), plus a custom Enterprise tier. Figures pulled from [Toggl's own pricing page](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/), checked September 5, 2026. Confirm them there before you decide, since vendor pricing shifts often. ## What Toggl Track does well, and where the gaps are It's worth conceding what Toggl gets right before listing reasons to leave. The free tier is generous for small teams, the apps are polished across desktop, web, and mobile, and the reporting and filtering are deep. For a lot of users, none of the gaps below will matter. But four of them send people searching. - **Its automatic capture is a passive log, not a finished timesheet.** Toggl's [passive tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) is the **Timeline** feature: a background recorder that logs every website and program you view for more than 10 seconds. It only runs while the desktop app is open, and (this is the key part) it's a record you **manually convert** into time entries. Toggl's own help describes it as a way to "fill in the gaps in your timesheets." It does not auto-create entries, and it does not sort them into projects for you. - **Timeline is macOS and Windows only.** The Calendar view that turns Timeline activity into entries lives in the macOS and Windows desktop apps. If you're on Linux, you don't get it. - **The native Linux desktop app was deprecated.** Toggl's official desktop tracker now ships for macOS and Windows only; Linux users are pointed to the web app and the browser extension. That's a real constraint if Linux is your daily driver. - **Invoicing is basic, and there's no AI categorization.** Toggl Track _does_ invoice (Reports → Export → Create Invoice, with CSV/PDF export and a hand-off to QuickBooks or Xero), so it's wrong to say it can't bill. But it's a basic, flat-rate-per-project generator, not a full billing system. And the core app has no built-in AI that assigns your tracked activity to the right project; the AI automations marketed around Toggl come from third-party integrations, not the native app. None of that makes Toggl a poor tool. It just means the right alternative depends on which of those four gaps is the one you're actually trying to close. ## What to look for in a Toggl alternative Before the list, name what you're optimizing for. Five things separate a genuine replacement from a lateral move. - **How time gets captured.** Manual timer, a passive log you convert, or fully automatic with no review. If forgotten timers are your problem, a like-for-like manual tool won't fix it. - **AI categorization.** Whether captured activity is sorted into client projects for you, or you do that sorting by hand. - **Linux support.** A native desktop app, not just a browser tab. This narrows the field fast. - **Invoicing depth.** Built-in and billing-grade, basic, or none at all. - **Pricing shape.** Flat per-seat, usage-metered, or annual-only upfront. The sticker price matters less than whether you can forecast the total. ## The Toggl alternatives, compared None of these is a drop-in clone. Each makes a different trade. Treat the table as a map, not a quote: prices and platforms move, so confirm the current details on each vendor's own site before you commit. _Details as of June 2026: verify on each vendor's own pricing and downloads pages: [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing), [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing), [RescueTime](https://www.rescuetime.com/pricing), [Memtime](https://www.memtime.com/pricing)._ | Tool | Tracking model | AI sorting | Invoicing | Linux desktop | Free tier | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Toggl Track | Timeline (passive log you convert) | No | Basic, built-in | No (deprecated) | Up to 5 users | | BillNotch | Automatic active-window capture | Yes | Native PDF + CSV | Yes | 14-day trial, no card | | Clockify | Manual timer + Auto Tracker (you convert) | No | Built-in (paid plans) | Yes | Yes | | Harvest | Manual timer | No | Built-in + payments | No (third-party only) | Yes (solo) | | RescueTime | Fully automatic | No | None | No (community only) | Check site | | Timely | AI-assisted, you approve | Yes | Native | No | No (trial only) | | Memtime | Fully automatic | No | None (integrates) | Yes | No (trial only) | **Clockify** is the closest single counterpart to Toggl, and the strongest answer if your gaps are Linux and invoicing. It has built-in invoicing on its paid plans, a real Linux desktop app, and that app includes an **Auto Tracker**: a passive recorder much like Timeline. The catch is the same one Toggl has: the Auto Tracker is activity you convert into entries yourself, not AI project sorting. It also keeps a free plan. If you mostly want Toggl-style tracking that runs on Linux and can invoice, Clockify is the obvious shortlist entry; here's [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative), a note on its [2026 free-plan changes](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026), and the head-to-head in [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify). **Harvest** is the pick if invoicing is the priority and you don't mind a manual timer. Its billing (invoices plus payments) is a genuine strength, and it keeps a free solo tier alongside paid plans. Two caveats: it captures nothing automatically (you start and stop the timer yourself), and there's **no official native Linux app**. The "Linux timer" listed on Harvest's site is explicitly a third-party build, not made by Harvest. If Harvest’s usage-based pricing is what pushed you to look, [the Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers the switch. Verify the current tier prices on [getharvest.com](https://www.getharvest.com/pricing) before you commit; see [BillNotch vs Harvest](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) for the side-by-side, or [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) for the head-to-head. **RescueTime** goes fully automatic, so it closes the "capture that runs itself" gap Toggl's Timeline leaves open. Two caveats. First, it **dropped official Linux support**: [its help docs](https://help.rescuetime.com/) now list Windows, macOS, iOS and a browser extension, with Linux left to community builds, so confirm the current platforms on rescuetime.com. Second, it was built for focus and productivity, not client billing: it has **no built-in invoice generation**, and sources disagree on how cleanly it breaks time into projects and clients. Treat it as an automatic data source you'd export and invoice from elsewhere, not a billing tool. **Timely** uses AI to draft entries from automatically captured activity, which you then review and approve: the closest thing here to hands-off categorization. The trade-offs: there's **no free plan** (trial only), and **no Linux app**. It ships for macOS, Windows, web, and mobile. Pricing is reported inconsistently across sources, so check timely.com directly. **Memtime** is fully automatic, runs natively on **Windows, macOS, and Linux**, and keeps captured data offline on your device: a strong fit if privacy and Linux both matter. Like RescueTime, though, it has **no built-in invoicing** (it integrates with billing tools instead), and project assignment is **manual**, not AI-sorted. There's no free plan, and its pricing is billed over a long term, so confirm the real per-month figure at [memtime.com](https://www.memtime.com/pricing) before quoting it. If Memtime is the tool you're actually weighing, the [Memtime alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives) shortlist compares five options on what happens after capture. More Linux-native options are in [the best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux). A useful pattern emerges: the tools that capture automatically (RescueTime, Memtime) tend not to invoice, and the tools that invoice well (Harvest, Toggl) tend to need manual input. The [combination of automatic capture and built-in invoicing](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-freelance-time-tracking-with-invoicing) is the rare part. ## Where BillNotch fits BillNotch is the featured pick for a specific reason, not a general one. It's aimed at the person leaving Toggl because they want capture that runs itself _and_ invoicing in the same app _and_ a native Linux desktop: the combination, not any one of those in isolation. Here's the honest framing. Individually, none of those features is unique. Memtime captures automatically on Linux, and RescueTime captures automatically on Windows and macOS. Clockify offers invoicing and has a Linux app with an auto-tracker. What's uncommon is having all of it in one place: BillNotch's desktop app records your active window **automatically** (there's no timer to start) and a mix of keyword rules and optional [AI sorts that activity into client projects](https://billnotch.com/blog/automatic-time-tracking-software) for you, rather than handing you a log to convert. Billable is inherited per project, so the live billable total becomes a **native PDF invoice or a CSV export** without retyping. A **Revenue Leak Finder** flags time you tracked but never invoiced: the [unbilled gap](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) that usually only surfaces when you reconcile by hand. And it runs on Windows, macOS, **and Linux** via a native app. On pricing, be clear-eyed: BillNotch's Pro is **$9/month for one seat** and Team is **$12/seat/month**, on a 14-day trial with no card. That is not cheaper per seat than Toggl's Starter plan, and it's well above Clockify's entry tier. The case isn't price. It's that the pricing is **flat**, with no usage metering, and that the whole loop lives in one app. On privacy, window titles can stay on your device per device, you connect each device with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. The trade-off is real: always-on automatic capture is a heavier approach than a stopwatch you control, and it won't suit everyone. If you prefer pressing start yourself, Toggl or Harvest will feel more natural. If budget is the hard constraint, Clockify stretches further. BillNotch's pitch is narrow and honest: automatic capture, AI project sorting, and built-in invoicing on a native Linux desktop, in one tool. The full plan details are on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page, the direct line-up is [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative), and [the Toggl alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) covers what replaces each Toggl habit if you have already made the call. ## The bottom line There's no single best Toggl alternative: only the best fit for the gap that pushed you to look. If it's Linux plus invoicing, Clockify is the natural move. If invoicing is everything and a manual timer is fine, Harvest. If you want fully automatic capture and will invoice elsewhere, RescueTime or Memtime, the latter if you need Linux. If you want AI-drafted entries and don't need Linux, Timely. And if you want automatic capture, AI categorization, and built-in invoicing together on Linux, that combination is where BillNotch is aimed. Narrow by your platform and your tracking model first, then trial the two survivors. That decision outlasts any single feature. And because prices and platforms keep moving, confirm the current numbers on each vendor's own site before you commit. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best Toggl alternative? It depends on the gap that pushed you off Toggl. If it is Linux plus invoicing, Clockify is the natural move and the cheapest. If invoicing matters most and a manual timer is fine, Harvest. If you want fully automatic capture, RescueTime or Memtime, the latter for Linux. If you want automatic capture, AI sorting and built-in invoicing together, that combination is where BillNotch aims. ### Is there a free Toggl alternative? Yes. Clockify keeps a free-forever plan with a native Linux app and invoicing on paid tiers, which makes it the usual pick when budget is the constraint. Harvest has a free solo tier. Toggl's own free plan covers up to five users. BillNotch has no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card, so price is not its argument. ### Does Toggl track time automatically? Only partly. Toggl's Timeline is a background log of every app and website you view for more than ten seconds, and it runs on the macOS and Windows desktop apps. You convert that log into entries by hand; it does not create or sort them for you. Fully automatic trackers like RescueTime, Memtime and BillNotch record and, in some cases, sort the activity themselves. ### Which Toggl alternatives run on Linux? Clockify, Memtime and BillNotch all ship a native Linux desktop app. Toggl's own Linux desktop tracker was deprecated, Harvest never had an official one, and RescueTime dropped Linux to community builds. On Linux, active-window capture is reliable on X11; Wayland's locked-down access is a known limit across every tracker, not just one. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / Toggl vs Clockify (2026): Price, Free Plans, Linux # Toggl vs Clockify (2026): Price, Free Plans, Linux > Clockify vs Toggl in 2026: a scored comparison of price, free plans, invoicing, privacy and Linux, plus the automatic tracker that invoices too. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) July 4, 2026 9 min read Updated September 7, 2026 **Toggl vs Clockify** is the default budget-tracker showdown, and in 2026 the honest answer shifted. These two have been the go-to free timers for years, but Clockify's June 2026 free-plan changes narrowed the price edge that used to settle it. Here is the verdict first, then a scored breakdown, current prices, and where an automatic tool changes the question entirely. - **Choose Clockify** if the free plan and the lowest paid price decide it. Its seats undercut Toggl at every tier, and it ships a native Linux app. - **Choose Toggl** if a cleaner interface and stronger reports are worth paying a little more, and you want fewer surveillance features in the mix. - **Choose neither** if you would rather time were captured automatically and turned into invoices. Both are manual at heart, so that job goes to a different kind of tool, like BillNotch. Both are capable and well-supported. The question is which of price, polish, or automation you are optimizing for. ## Toggl vs Clockify: the scored verdict Eight axes, each scored out of five for both tools, with a one-line reason. Prices behind the scores were checked on the vendors' own pages on **September 5, 2026**. | Axis | Toggl | Clockify | Why | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Price** | 3 / 5 | 5 / 5 | Clockify's paid seats undercut Toggl at every comparable tier. | | **Free plan** | 4 / 5 | 3 / 5 | Both cap near five users; Clockify moved invoicing and exports to paid. | | **Tracking UX** | 5 / 5 | 4 / 5 | Toggl's interface is the smoother of the two to live in. | | **Reports** | 5 / 5 | 4 / 5 | Toggl's reporting runs deeper; free Clockify reports cap at 31 days. | | **Invoicing** | 2 / 5 | 3 / 5 | Clockify's Standard tier bundles invoicing; Toggl has none native. | | **Automatic capture** | 3 / 5 | 3 / 5 | Both log your activity to review; neither sorts it into projects. | | **Privacy / screenshots** | 4 / 5 | 2 / 5 | Clockify's Pro tier adds optional screenshots and GPS; Toggl has neither. | | **Linux** | 2 / 5 | 5 / 5 | Clockify ships a native Linux desktop app; Toggl's is web only. | The scores split cleanly: Clockify takes price and Linux, Toggl takes interface, reports, and privacy. Nobody runs away with it, so the decision comes down to your one priority. ## Pricing in 2026 This is the clearest, most verifiable difference: **Clockify's paid seats cost less than Toggl's at every comparable tier.** If sticker price is your deciding factor, Clockify wins that outright. | Plan level | Toggl Track | Clockify | | --- | --- | --- | | Free | $0, up to 5 users | $0, up to 5 users | | Entry paid | Starter $9/seat/mo | Basic $3.99/seat/mo | | Billing tier | (invoicing is not native) | Standard $5.49/seat/mo | | Mid paid | Premium $14/seat/mo, then $18 | Pro $7.99/seat/mo | | Top published tier | Enterprise (custom) | Enterprise $11.99/seat/mo | Prices are the annual per-seat figures, checked on [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/) and [Clockify](https://clockify.me/pricing) on **September 5, 2026**; monthly billing runs higher on both (Clockify's tiers are $4.99, $6.99, $9.99, and $14.99 month to month, and Toggl's Starter is around $10). Two details decide how the table reads. Clockify's **Standard** plan at $5.49 is the one that includes invoicing, so for anyone who bills clients the real gap to Toggl's $9 Starter is wider than the entry rows suggest. And Toggl's **Premium** is $14 per seat for your first annual year, then it renews at $18, so budget for the second-year number, not the first. ## The free plans compared For years the summary was "Clockify gives you unlimited free users, Toggl is nicer." The first half is no longer true. As of **June 2026**, CAKE.com (Clockify's parent) capped the Free plan at **5 active users**, replacing the old unlimited-headcount model, and moved several features to paid: **billable rates, invoicing, CSV and Excel export, kiosk, shared reports, and project estimates.** Free reporting is now limited to a **31-day range** at a time, there are API and webhook limits on the free plan, and PDF export stays free while CSV and Excel go paid. The full breakdown is in [Clockify's free-plan changes explained](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026). Toggl's free plan covers "a limited number of users," widely read as up to about five, though Toggl does not state an exact figure. The practical effect: **both free tiers now sit at roughly five users**, so Clockify's longstanding headcount edge is effectively gone. What Clockify free still keeps is genuine, though: unlimited time tracking and unlimited projects for those five users, plus its free Auto tracker. ### The invoicing detail people get wrong A common claim is that "neither tool invoices for free." After June 2026, that claim is essentially right, and it is worth stating precisely why. Toggl has **no native invoicing**; it exports billable time for you to invoice elsewhere, and billable rates sit behind the paid Starter plan. Clockify free, after June 2026, has **no invoicing at all**: that now lives on Standard at $5.49. So the takeaway holds: **neither gives you real client billing for free.** To bill from your hours on either, you are on a paid plan. ## The tracking experience At their core, both are **manual timers**: you press start when you begin and stop when you finish. Each adds a way to recover time you forgot to log. - **Toggl Track** pairs the manual timer with a local **Timeline** that records the apps and sites you used, so you can drag those blocks into entries later. - **Clockify** pairs its manual timer and timesheet with an **Auto tracker** that does the same job, plus a kiosk mode and an approval workflow (approvals are paid in 2026). The important limit is shared: **neither uses AI to sort your tracked time into the right project or client.** Both keep a private activity recorder, but a human still assigns and approves every entry, so neither is fully passive. If removing that manual sorting step is the real goal, it helps to understand what genuine [passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) looks like before you choose, because both Toggl and Clockify stop short of it. ## Reports Toggl is the stronger reporting product. The dashboards read cleanly, summaries are quick, and profitability analysis arrives on Premium. It is the common reason people pay Toggl's higher seat price. Clockify's reporting is broad and capable, and arguably more generous on paid tiers for the money, but its free reports are now capped at a 31-day window, which bites if you review long ranges. ## Invoicing If turning tracked hours into a client bill matters, Clockify is the better of the two, and it is still limited. Clockify's **Standard** plan ($5.49) includes invoicing and recurring invoices, built from your billable time. Toggl has no native invoicing pipeline; it hands billing to accounting integrations and exports billable time for invoicing elsewhere. Neither is invoicing-first the way Harvest is, so if billing is central, see how the shortlist that includes it stacks up in [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl), or look past all three to a tool that builds invoicing in. ## Automatic capture and privacy Both tools include a private activity recorder (Toggl's Timeline, Clockify's Auto tracker) that logs the apps and sites you used. Useful, but it does not sort your day into billable projects. You still do that part. Privacy is where they diverge, and it is under-examined in most comparisons. **Clockify's Pro tier adds optional screenshots and GPS tracking**, along with activity monitoring, which some small teams find intrusive. **Toggl has neither.** If you track sensitive client work and want fewer surveillance features, Toggl is the lighter-touch option, and privacy-first tools that keep window titles server-side or on-device go further still. ## Linux If you work on Linux, this line decides it, and it is the opposite of what many comparison articles assume. **Clockify ships an official desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux.** A native Linux build is genuinely uncommon in this category. **Toggl Track's desktop app is Windows and macOS only**: its Linux desktop client was retired, though the web app runs fine in a Linux browser. So for a Linux user who wants a real desktop tracker, not a tab, Clockify is the one that supports you natively. If Linux is the hard constraint, the [best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/linux) rounds up the wider field. ## Toggl vs Clockify: who should pick which A short decision guide, stating the consensus honestly rather than as fact: - **Lean Clockify** if price matters most, you want native Linux, or you need invoicing without paying Toggl's higher seat cost. Its Standard tier at $5.49 bundles billing for less than Toggl's $9 Starter. - **Lean Toggl** if you value the interface and the reporting, and you would rather avoid the screenshot and GPS features Clockify adds on Pro. "Toggl wins on UX" is a widely held opinion, not a benchmark, but it is the usual reason people pay the premium. - **Either way**, expect to assign time to projects by hand, and do not expect free client billing. For a lot of teams the real choice is temperament and budget, which is why it is worth naming the one thing both leave on your plate. ## The third option: capture that also invoices The thread through everything above is that **both Toggl and Clockify still need a person in the loop**: to start or review the timer, then sort entries into projects, then (on a paid plan) turn that into a bill. If that manual chain is the part you actually want gone, that is a different category of tool, and it is the one BillNotch is built for. Be straight about price first: BillNotch is **not** the cheapest option here. Pro is $9 a month for one seat, which is more than Clockify's $3.99 Basic. If lowest sticker price is your goal, Clockify wins and it is not close. What BillNotch trades that for is a different workflow. Its desktop app runs on **Windows, macOS, and Linux** and records your active window automatically, so there is no timer to start. Keyword rules, with optional AI for the fuzzy cases, sort that activity into client projects, and billable status is inherited per project. The live billable total becomes a **PDF invoice or a CSV export** in the same app, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced, the kind of [revenue leak](https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak) that manual sorting tends to create. Window titles can stay on each device, pricing is flat (Pro $9/mo, Team $12/seat/mo), and there is a 14-day trial with no card. The honest framing: if you want a cheap, familiar timer and do not mind the manual steps, Clockify or Toggl is a fine answer, hard to beat on cost. For the direct feature tables, here is [BillNotch vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) and [BillNotch vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative). To widen the field, see the [best Clockify alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026), the [Clockify alternative switch guide](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative), or the [Toggl alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative), with full numbers on the [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) page. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Clockify or Toggl better? It depends on your priority. Clockify wins on price, with a strong free plan and cheaper paid tiers, and it ships a native Linux app. Toggl wins on interface polish and reporting, and it avoids the screenshot and GPS features Clockify adds on Pro. If you want time captured automatically rather than by manual timers, look past both to an automatic tracker such as BillNotch. ### Which is cheaper, Toggl or Clockify? Clockify is the cheaper of the two at every comparable tier: Basic is $3.99 per seat annually against Toggl's $9 Starter, checked September 5, 2026. Toggl costs more but bundles a smoother experience. For a predictable flat bill that also includes invoicing, BillNotch starts at $9 a month for one seat with no per-feature usage charges. ### What are the disadvantages of Clockify? Reviewers cite interface clutter and that useful extras sit behind paid tiers. Since June 2026 the free plan caps at five users, and invoicing, exports, and billable rates moved to paid. Higher plans add screenshots and GPS, which some users find intrusive. It is still capable and cheap, but the experience is a step below Toggl's. ### Does Toggl or Clockify do invoicing? Clockify includes invoicing on its Standard plan ($5.49); Toggl has no native invoicing and exports billable time for invoicing elsewhere. Neither is invoicing-first the way Harvest is. If turning tracked hours into client invoices matters, use a tool that builds it in, such as BillNotch, which tracks automatically and issues PDF invoices from the same data. ### Do Toggl or Clockify track time automatically? Both are primarily manual start and stop, each with a private activity recorder you review afterward. Neither reconstructs your day passively or sorts it into projects. Automatic trackers like BillNotch and Memtime record the active application in the background, so you recover billable time that manual timers forget, which is often the real difference in a freelancer's monthly total. ### Which is more private, Toggl or Clockify? Toggl is the lighter-touch option: it has no screenshots or GPS. Clockify adds both on its Pro tier, alongside activity monitoring, which can feel intrusive to a small team. Neither is a privacy-first design. Tools built around privacy keep sensitive data local or server-side; BillNotch, for example, can keep window titles on each device and never sends them to third parties. ### How much does Toggl cost? Toggl Track has a free plan for up to five users. Paid tiers are Starter at $9 per seat per month and Premium at $14 for the first year, then $18, both on annual billing. Toggl has no native invoicing, so billing is exported to other tools. Prices checked September 5, 2026. ### How much does Clockify cost per month? Clockify keeps a free plan capped at five users. Paid tiers on annual billing are Basic at $3.99 per seat, Standard at $5.49 which adds invoicing, and higher plans that add screenshots and GPS. Month-to-month pricing runs higher than the annual rates. Checked September 5, 2026. ### Why do companies use Clockify? Companies choose Clockify for its low cost and generous entry point: a free plan, cheap paid tiers from $3.99 a seat, invoicing on Standard, and a native Linux app. Larger teams also use its Pro monitoring features like screenshots and activity tracking, though those can feel intrusive. ## Source: https://billnotch.com/blog/what-is-a-revenue-leak [Blog](https://billnotch.com/blog) / What Is a Revenue Leak? Find & Fix Unbilled Time # What Is a Revenue Leak? Find & Fix Unbilled Time > A revenue leak is billable work you did but never invoiced. Where freelancers lose unbilled hours, and how to find and fix yours for good. [Adam A.](https://billnotch.com/about) June 14, 2026 7 min read Updated September 6, 2026 A **revenue leak** is billable work you actually did but never got paid for: the hours, expenses, and scope that quietly fall through the cracks between doing the work and sending the invoice. For freelancers and [small agencies](https://billnotch.com/for/agencies), it's the gap between the time you _worked_ and the time you _billed_, and it's almost always bigger than you think. Unlike a bad debt (an invoice a client refuses to pay), a revenue leak never even makes it onto an invoice. The work was delivered. The money was earned. It just evaporated before billing, so you never see it, and you never miss it. That's what makes it dangerous. ## Revenue leakage in professional services In corporate finance, **revenue leakage** is a well-worn term: the share of earned revenue a business fails to collect because of process gaps, pricing errors, missed renewals, or work delivered outside a contract. Consulting firms, agencies, and law practices treat revenue leakage as a measurable risk and build billing controls specifically to close it, because at scale even a few percent of billings is a large number. The freelancer version is the same mechanism at a smaller scale. A solo consultant has no finance team auditing realization rates, but the leak is identical: hours worked that never convert to billed revenue. The B2B framing calls it a control problem; the freelance framing calls it a forgotten call. Both describe money that was earned and then lost somewhere between delivery and the invoice. The difference is who catches it. A firm has a controller reconciling timesheets against billings every month. A freelancer has themselves, on invoice day, working from memory, which is the same weak point that let the money slip in the first place. That asymmetry is why solo leakage tends to run higher as a share of revenue: nobody is watching the gap. The fix is to give yourself the control a finance team would run, automatically. Put a recent week through the [revenue leak calculator](https://billnotch.com/revenue-leak-calculator) to size your own gap, then read [how to stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) for the routine that closes it. ## Where revenue leaks come from For people who bill by the hour, leaks cluster around a few predictable failures: - **Untracked time.** The five-minute call, the after-hours fix, the context switch back into a project: work that happened but no timer was running, so it was never logged. - **Forgotten entries.** Time you tracked on a sticky note or in your head, meaning to "add it later," and never did. - **Scope creep that never got re-quoted.** Extra rounds, extra features, "quick favours" that quietly became unpaid work. - **Unbilled expenses.** Software, assets, or subcontractor costs you fronted and forgot to pass through. - **Rounding down.** Logging 1 hour when you worked 1 hour 20, every day, across every project. None of these feel like much in the moment. Compounded across a month of clients, they add up to real money: work you completed, at your rate, that you simply gave away. ## What a leak actually costs: a worked example Numbers make the point better than warnings. Take a freelancer billing at $85 an hour. None of the leaks below feels large on any single day, so none gets fixed. Here is a plausible month, and it is an illustration, not a survey figure: | Leak source | Hours / month | At $85/hour | | --- | --- | --- | | Untimed calls and replies (about 15 min/day × 20) | 5.0 | $425 | | After-hours fixes never logged (one a week) | 2.5 | $213 | | An extra revision round, never re-quoted | 3.0 | $255 | | Rounding 1h20 down to 1h, roughly ten times | 3.0 | $255 | | **Total** | **13.5** | **$1,148** | That is about 13.5 hours a month, or roughly 162 hours a year, near $13,800 at the same rate. It is not a pricing problem, and raising the rate does not fix it. It is the same hours you already worked, delivered and earned, that never reached an invoice. Recovering even half of it is a bigger raise than most freelancers give themselves in a year. ## How to find your revenue leak You find a leak by comparing two numbers: the time you actually spent working, and the time that landed on an invoice. The bigger the gap, the bigger the leak. 1. **Reconstruct a real week.** Pick a recent week and list everything you worked on, including the small stuff: calls, reviews, research, revisions. 2. **Match it against what you billed.** Pull the invoices for that week and line them up against the work. 3. **Find the unmatched work.** Anything you did that isn't on an invoice is your leak. Multiply those hours by your rate. 4. **Look for the pattern.** Is it a specific client, a type of task, a time of day? Leaks are rarely random. They have a source. The catch: step 1 depends on memory, and memory is exactly what caused the leak. If you're reconstructing the week by hand, you'll miss the same hours you missed the first time. That's why the reliable version of this audit is automatic. ## How to stop the leak for good The durable fix is to remove the human step that fails. Instead of remembering to track, let tracking happen on its own, then reconcile against it before you invoice: - **Capture automatically.** [Passive time tracking](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) records the active window in the background, so the forgotten call and the late-night fix are logged whether or not you remembered them. - **Categorize by client.** Group every entry under a project so billable time is visible, not scattered. - **Reconcile before billing.** Each week, scan for time that's tracked but never invoiced, and bill it before it's forgotten. This is exactly what BillNotch's **Revenue Leak Finder** does: it watches your tracked time for billable work that never made it onto an invoice and surfaces it, so you can bill the money you already earned. The tracking is automatic, the categorization is automatic, and the leak audit runs continuously instead of once a quarter when you happen to think of it. ## The four gaps a leak finder flags A leak is not one thing. It shows up in a few distinct shapes, and each has a different fix. The Revenue Leak Finder watches your tracked time the way a firm's controller would reconcile timesheets against billings, and it flags four: - **Uninvoiced billable time.** Hours you marked billable, captured, and then never put on an invoice. After a short grace period, anything billable that is still sitting unbilled surfaces here. This is the classic leak: the work is done and approved, it just never got sent. - **Entries with no rate.** Billable hours logged against a project that has no billable rate set, so the time is worth zero on paper until you correct it. The hours are real; the price is missing. - **Time with no client.** Billable work not tied to any client. It will never reach a client invoice because there is nobody to send it to, so it waits, unattached, until you notice. - **Uncategorized time.** Captured activity that was never sorted into a project at all. Until it is categorized, nothing can judge it billable or not, so it sits outside every invoice by default. Naming the shapes is the point. Uninvoiced time needs billing, a missing rate needs a number, unassigned time needs a client, and uncategorized time needs sorting. A finder that separates them tells you which fix each row needs instead of leaving you to guess. ## The bottom line A revenue leak isn't a billing dispute or a collections problem. It's earned money you never asked for. The freelancers who keep the most of what they earn aren't the ones with the highest rates; they're the ones whose billed hours match their worked hours. Close the gap between the two and you give yourself a raise without raising your rate. Want the full workflow? Read [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours), learn [what counts as billable vs non-billable](https://billnotch.com/blog/billable-vs-non-billable-hours), or see how BillNotch [works for freelancers](https://billnotch.com/for/freelancers). For the audit in practice, here's how to [stop losing billable hours](https://billnotch.com/blog/stop-losing-billable-hours) before they leave the invoice. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is revenue leakage? Revenue leakage is earned revenue a business never collects because of process gaps: work delivered outside a contract, hours never billed, missed renewals, or pricing errors. In professional services it is treated as a measurable risk with billing controls built to close it. For a freelancer it is simpler but the same mechanism: billable hours you worked that never converted into an invoice. ### What is the difference between a revenue leak and bad debt? A bad debt is an invoice a client will not pay, so the amount is on your books and then written off. A revenue leak never reaches an invoice at all. The work was done and earned, but it slipped between delivery and billing, so you never see it and never chase it. Leaks are quieter than bad debt and usually larger. ### How much do freelancers lose to revenue leaks? There is no reliable published figure, and anyone quoting a precise percentage is guessing. The honest answer is to measure your own: compare the hours you worked in a week against the hours you billed, then multiply the gap by your rate. Even a handful of untimed hours a month compounds into thousands of dollars a year. ### How do I find my own revenue leak? Reconstruct one recent week, list every task including short calls and reviews, then line it against the invoices you sent. Anything worked but never billed is your leak. Doing this from memory misses the same hours twice, so the reliable version runs on automatic tracking that logs the work whether or not you remembered it. --- # Other pages ## Source: https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Automatic time tracker # An automatic time tracker that ends at the invoice > An automatic time tracker that records your active window, sorts the work into client projects and bills it as a PDF invoice. Windows, macOS and Linux. Most trackers described as automatic still hand you a timeline to sort out later. BillNotch is built around the whole distance: a desktop app records your work while you do it, the activity is matched to client projects, you approve anything the tracker is unsure about, and the billable total becomes a PDF invoice. The only step that asks for your attention is the one where your judgement actually matters. capture → categorize → review → invoice [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Passive vs automatic time tracking The two names describe the same thing from different angles. Passive time tracking means the record is made without you starting or stopping anything: the software watches the active window (the app, document, or site in front of you) and turns it into time entries. Automatic time tracking is that same capture read as a workflow, the tracker doing the logging so you don’t have to. Both are the opposite of a manual timer, where you press start when a task begins and stop when it ends, and the record is only ever as complete as your memory was that day. The distinction that matters is not the label but what happens after capture. A passive log that stops at a timeline still leaves you sorting a wall of activity by hand. BillNotch carries the same automatic capture through categorization, review, and an invoice, so the record becomes a bill rather than another report to read. ## How does automatic time tracking work? Four stages, and you are only present for the third. 1. 01 ### The desktop app records the active window Install it once on Windows, macOS, or Linux and sign the device in with an API key you issue. From then on it records which app and window is in front of you, second by second, and notices when you go idle. Nothing to start, nothing to stop. 2. 02 ### The activity is matched to a project A keyword matcher runs on your own machine first and stamps a project on the upload when it is confident. On the server, new activity is matched by similarity against the entries you have already confirmed, so the tracker gets more accurate at your work specifically, not at work in general. 3. 03 ### Anything uncertain waits for you on Review A suggested project is stored as a draft, never written silently onto the entry. Review shows the day’s drafts (plus any calendar meetings you connected) and you confirm, correct, or reject each one. Every correction becomes a rule that handles the next occurrence on its own. 4. 04 ### The billable total becomes an invoice Billable status is inherited from the project, so the total is already correct. Generate a PDF invoice for a client and period, or export the CSV. The Revenue Leak Finder then scans for billable time that was tracked and never invoiced. ## How active-window time tracking works The capture underneath all of this is simple. At any moment your operating system has exactly one window in the foreground, the app you are focused on, and it publishes a label for it: the application name and the window title. Windows exposes this through GetForegroundWindow and GetWindowText, macOS through NSWorkspace and the Accessibility API, and Linux through the active-window property on X11 or the compositor on Wayland. These are the documented interfaces that accessibility tools and window managers already use. The tracker polls them every few seconds, notices any change, and records how long each window stayed in front. That is the whole of active window time tracking: an application, a title, and a duration, sampled across your day. A window title is the text in the title bar, and it is often descriptive: the document name in Figma, the workspace folder in VS Code, the tab open in a browser. That is what makes the capture useful, because a keyword on a project or a client name sorts the time on its own. It is also why the title is the sensitive part, so BillNotch lets you keep window titles on the device that recorded them. What the method leaves out is the line between measurement and surveillance. There are no screenshots, no keystroke logs, no mouse tracking, and no screen recording. The tracker reads a label the operating system already publishes; it never reaches inside the app to read the body of a document, an email, or a message. A keylogger answers what you typed. Active-window tracking answers which app, for how long. Pointed at your own work and shown only to you, it is a measurement tool, not a monitor. ## What the tracker records, and what it never touches ### What it records - The application in the foreground and its window title. - How long each stretch of work lasted, to the second. - When you stopped touching the machine, so idle time is not billed. - Optionally, the domain of the tab you are on, via the browser extension. ### What it does not - No screenshots. The tracker never captures your screen. - No keystrokes. Nothing you type is read or stored. - No webcam, microphone, or location. - No page URLs or tab titles unless you opt in: the extension sends domains only. ## Is an automatic time tracker private? It depends entirely on where the data goes, so here is where ours goes. Activity syncs to your own BillNotch account over an API key you issue and can revoke; on the desktop that key lives in your operating system’s keychain, never in a config file. You choose the sync mode per device, and window titles can stay on the machine that recorded them. The matching that makes categorization work is deliberately local to the server: activity is compared against your organization’s own confirmed history using an embedder that runs in-process, so window titles are never sent to a model provider to be embedded. A language model is only involved for genuinely novel activity, and it never runs while your time is being ingested. Data is processed on EU servers and is never sold. This is a tracker built for the person doing the work, not for someone watching them. ## How it differs from a timer-based tracker A stopwatch measures the time you remembered to measure. That is a different quantity from the time you worked, and the gap is where hourly revenue quietly goes. ### With a manual timer - You start it, or you don’t, and the hour is gone. - The five-minute jobs never get one at all. - Friday is spent reconstructing Tuesday from memory. - The record is as good as your discipline was that week. ### With automatic capture - The work is recorded whether or not you thought about it. - Short tasks land in the log like everything else. - Friday is spent confirming a list, not rebuilding a week. - The record is what happened; your job is to price it. The manual timer is still there on the dashboard when you want one. Some work is easier to bracket by hand. It is simply no longer the thing your income depends on. It also answers a narrower question cleanly, like [how much time you actually spend in Notion](https://billnotch.com/integrations/notion), because the app you were in is part of every record. ## Why another time tracker? It is a fair question, and the category is genuinely crowded. But the tools in it tend to solve one half of the job. The timer apps built around invoicing still need you to press start, which is the exact moment the hour goes missing. The trackers that do fix the timer problem usually pay for it with surveillance (screen recording, screenshots on an interval, keystroke counts) and most of them stop at a report, leaving the bill to a second tool and a spreadsheet in between. Memtime is the honest exception on privacy, automatic and offline with no screenshots, but it still stops before the invoice, which [the Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) works through. BillNotch is the answer to both at once: capture that needs nothing from you, with no screenshots and no keystroke logging, and an invoice at the end of it. That combination is the whole claim: not that nobody else tracks time, but that the version which records your hours without watching you, and then bills them, is the one that was missing. [A time tracker without screenshots](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots) sets out that half in detail, down to where the window titles go. ## Where it runs The desktop tracker is a native app for **Windows**, **macOS**, and **Linux**: the third one matters, because most of this category skips it. Every release is built and tested on all three, and the [native Linux app](https://billnotch.com/linux) gets its own page on packaging and Wayland. Two optional companions feed the same log: a [Chrome extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) that reports the domain of your active tab to sharpen categorization, and a [Google](https://billnotch.com/integrations/google-calendar) or [Microsoft](https://billnotch.com/integrations/outlook-calendar) calendar connection that turns your meetings into suggested entries on the same review screen. ## What it will not do for you The review step is not a rough edge waiting to be smoothed away. It is the design. A suggested project sits in a draft column until you accept it, because an invoice is a claim you are making to a client and software should not make it on your behalf. If you want a tracker that decides silently and hopes you never audit it, this is the wrong one. The rest of the honest list: the tracker only sees the machine it is installed on, so work done on paper or in a meeting room needs a manual entry or a connected calendar. There is no mobile app. There is no free tier: a 14-day trial, then $9 a month. And on day one the categorization knows nothing about your clients; it earns its accuracy from the corrections you make in the first week. ## Start with the tracked hours you already lost A 14-day trial, no card. If you would rather read first: [how to track billable hours accurately](https://billnotch.com/blog/how-to-track-billable-hours). Weighing it against a timer you already use? [BillNotch vs Toggl Track](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) puts the two side by side, and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists both plans. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Clockify alternative # A Clockify alternative for the people who lost free invoicing > A Clockify alternative for people who lost free invoicing in 2026: automatic capture sorted into client projects and PDF invoicing on every plan. Most people searching this are not unhappy with Clockify. They are working out what to do now that the routine they had for free (track, mark billable, export or invoice) needs a subscription. This page covers what that routine looks like in BillNotch, what the move costs, and the common case where the right answer is to stay and pay Clockify instead. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What changed, briefly Announced in April 2026 and effective around mid-June: the free team was capped at five active users, and the billing half of the workflow (billable rates, invoicing, export) moved to the paid plans. Free is still $0 with no time limit and tracking itself is untouched, so the hole is specific rather than fatal: everything after the timer now needs a tier. [The full breakdown of the changes](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026) has the before-and-after table, the API limits and the current paid prices. ## What actually changes day to day The routine keeps its shape: same clients, same projects, the same billable and non-billable split, and moves where the clerical work sits. You stop starting a timer: the desktop app records the focused window and closes the interval when you stop touching the machine. You stop tagging every entry to a client and a project: keyword rules file what they recognise and hold the rest back. What you gain is a pass instead of a reconstruction. Mornings start on the Review screen with a short list of uncertain blocks rather than an empty week, and the month ends by picking a client and a date range rather than rebuilding the total somewhere else. What you give up is the certainty of pressing start yourself, and the $0. ## What replaces the workflow you lost ### Invoicing is not a tier you climb to A client and a date range produce a PDF invoice from the billable total on every BillNotch plan, with CSV export beside it. This is the exact step that moved behind Clockify’s paywall in June 2026. ### The auto tracker finishes the job Clockify’s Auto Tracker records the apps and sites you used and leaves you to convert that log into entries. BillNotch matches the same activity against your own project list and files it, so what you review is a short list of doubts, not a whole day. ### Billable comes from the project Billable rates are a paid Clockify feature applied per entry. In BillNotch billable status is inherited from the project, which means the running total is right without anyone maintaining it. ### Unbilled time gets found, not remembered The Revenue Leak Finder lists billable hours that never reached an invoice. It is the reconciliation nobody does by hand, which is why the hours it turns up are usually a surprise. For the whole loop end to end, [how to invoice from your time tracker](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) walks it from tracked hours to a sent invoice. ## What does switching actually involve? Export your Clockify data while your workspace still allows it. That export is a paid feature now, so check what you can get out before you cancel anything. Keep the file for your records. There is no Clockify importer here; you recreate clients and projects by hand, which takes a sitting, and tracking starts from that point forward. Then install the desktop app, connect it with a key you issue and can revoke, and let it record a normal week. The thing worth watching is the Review screen: the keyword rules learn how you name things, and after a few corrections the daily pass takes under a minute. If it never gets under a minute, capture is not fitting your work. ## When Clockify is still the right answer On price, Clockify beats us and it is not close. If what you want is a timer and a report, the free plan at five users or fewer is genuinely excellent and you should keep it. If you want invoicing back on a budget, Basic at $3.99 and Standard at $5.49 per user per month on annual billing are cheaper than switching, and you keep a tool you know. Clockify also ships native desktop apps for all three platforms. BillNotch is only the better answer for a narrow case: you bill by the hour, forgotten or half-remembered time is costing you real money, and you want the capture and the invoice in one place rather than a log you convert plus a bill you assemble. If that is not you, [the best Clockify alternatives for 2026](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026) weighs the cheaper options honestly, ours included. Leaving Harvest rather than Clockify? [The Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers that switch instead. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is BillNotch cheaper than Clockify? No, and it is not trying to be. Clockify’s Basic plan is $3.99 per user per month on annual billing and Standard, which is where invoicing sits, is $5.49; BillNotch Pro is $9 per month for one seat with no free tier at all. If price is the deciding factor, Clockify wins outright, even after the free-plan changes. ### What exactly did Clockify’s free plan lose in 2026? The billing half of it: billable rates, invoicing and export moved to paid plans, and the free team was capped at five active users. Unlimited tracking, unlimited projects and the $0 price stayed. Our post on the 2026 free-plan changes has the full before-and-after, including the tightened API limits. ### Should I just pay for Clockify instead of switching? Often, yes. If you liked Clockify and only lost invoicing, upgrading in place is cheaper than moving and you keep a tool you already know. Switching is worth considering when the capture that fills the invoice in for you is what you actually want back, beyond the invoice itself. ### Does BillNotch run on Linux like Clockify does? Yes. The desktop tracker is compiled for Windows, macOS and Linux in the same release and ships as a .deb, an .rpm and an .AppImage. Automatic capture works on X11 and on the Wayland compositors that expose the active window; the app tells you within seconds whether it can see your session. ## Try it before you renew anything 14 days, no card, and your Clockify workspace stays exactly where it is. If you would rather read first: [the 2026 free-plan changes](https://billnotch.com/blog/clockify-free-plan-changes-2026) covers exactly what moved behind the paywall, and [the alternatives roundup](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-clockify-alternatives-2026) surveys the whole field, and [Toggl vs Clockify](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-vs-clockify) settles the other cheap pairing. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Freelance invoicing software # 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) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Harvest alternative # Harvest alternative: what to switch to after the price increase > Harvest raised prices and added usage fees. Compare Harvest, Toggl, Clockify, Memtime and BillNotch on price, automatic tracking, invoicing and Linux. If you are looking for a Harvest alternative in 2026, you are almost certainly reacting to the bill. Harvest changed the shape of its pricing after the 2025 sale, and the free plan shrank. This is the decision version, not the survey: it points you to the tool that fits, the real cost of a Harvest alternative, and the point where staying on Harvest is the honest call. For the longer roundup of every option, there is [a separate best-of list](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-harvest-alternatives-2026). [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour at $10 an hour. ## Which Harvest alternative fits you Choose Toggl Track if you want a polished manual timer and a free tier for a small team. Choose Clockify if you want tracking that stays free for up to five people, even after the 2026 changes. Choose Memtime if you want automatic, offline capture and already invoice somewhere else. Choose BillNotch if you want automatic capture and invoicing on one flat price, with no usage-based fees. ## What changed at Harvest in 2026 Two things drove people to look, and they are unrelated. The first is the bill. Bending Spoons, the firm behind Evernote and WeTransfer, acquired Harvest in 2025, and the paid pricing was restructured. The per-seat rate held, but usage-based fees now stack on top, metered on your active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing. Harvest does not publish a per-unit rate, and for new accounts the charges begin at the second paid renewal, so the seat price is a floor rather than the full bill. The free plan shrank at the same time, to one seat and two projects. The renewals are what make the forums loud. On r/projectmanagement, one Harvest user, u/steffunnyshere, wrote that the plan they were told they would move to was [“$1,900 a month. That is not a typo.”](https://www.reddit.com/r/projectmanagement/comments/1rpbvck/this_harvest_app_price_increase_is_insane_and/) The rollout is staggered, so not every account has seen a jump, but that is the risk that sends people searching. The second reason predates the first by years: the timer is manual, so Harvest bills the hours you remembered to start. The full breakdown of the cost, plans and fees is on [what Harvest actually costs in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing). ## Harvest alternatives compared | Feature | Harvest | Toggl Track | Clockify | Memtime | BillNotch | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Cheapest paid, per seat, annual | $9/seat/mo\* | $9/seat/mo | $3.99/seat/mo | $18/user/mo | $90/yr ($7.50/mo) Pro, $120/seat/yr ($10/mo) Team | | Month to month | $11/seat/mo\* | About $10/license/mo | $4.99/seat/mo | No monthly billing (quarterly, annual or 2-year cycles) | $9 Pro, $12/seat Team | | Free tier | 1 seat, 2 projects | Up to 5 users | Up to 5 users | None, trial only | None, 14-day trial | | Usage-based fees | Yes | No | No | No | No | | Automatic passive capture | No, manual timer | Timeline, you convert | Auto Tracker, you convert | Yes, offline | Yes, sorted | | Built-in invoicing | Yes | No, exports | Yes, Standard tier | No | Yes, every plan | | Payment links | Yes | No | Not verified | No | Yes | | Linux desktop app | No | No | Yes | Yes, X11 | Yes | | Wayland window titles | n/a | n/a | Not verified | No, X11 only | wlroots and KDE | | Screenshots | Not verified | Not verified | Optional, Pro tier | No | Never | | Accounting sync | QuickBooks, Xero | QuickBooks, Xero | QuickBooks | Not verified | QuickBooks, Xero | Prices checked on the vendors’ pricing pages on September 5, 2026. \*Harvest adds usage-based fees on top of the seat price, and does not publish them per unit. BillNotch Wayland capture covers wlroots compositors and KDE, but not GNOME. ## Toggl Track as a Harvest alternative Toggl Track is the closest to a like-for-like swap if what you want is a polished manual timer. Starter is $9 per license per month billed annually, Premium is $14 for the first year and renews at $18, and the free plan covers up to five users with no time limit. The reporting is deep and the apps are well built. The catch is that it does not fix Harvest’s core problem: capture is still a timer you start, and the Timeline that logs your activity in the background is a record you convert into entries by hand, on macOS and Windows only. There is no current Linux desktop app, and it has no native invoicing, so you export billable time and bill elsewhere. The [Toggl alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) and [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) go deeper. ## Clockify as a Harvest alternative Clockify wins on price, and it is not close. Basic is $3.99 per seat per month on annual billing, Standard, where invoicing lives, is $5.49, and the free plan still covers up to five users. It ships a real Linux desktop app, which most of this list does not. Two things to know. The free plan was capped at five active users in 2026, and invoicing and export moved to the paid Standard tier around the same time. Its Auto Tracker records the apps and sites you used but hands you a log to convert, rather than sorting activity into projects itself, and screenshots are an option on the Pro tier if you want monitoring, which not everyone does. The [Clockify alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) covers what moved behind the paywall. ## Memtime, the automatic Harvest alternative Memtime is the one tool here that captures the way BillNotch does: fully automatic. It records your activity in the background and keeps it offline on your device. If passive capture is the feature you actually want, it is a strong pick, and its independent reviews are solid, 4.4 out of 5 across 125 reviews on GetApp. Two caveats matter. It does not invoice at all, so you export or sync your time into a billing tool elsewhere, and its Linux build is an X11-only AppImage with no Wayland support. Pricing runs higher than the rest: $18, $26 and $35 per user per month on annual billing, with no free tier and a 14-day trial. Its worst reviews are about silent auto-renewal and refused refunds, so read the terms before you commit. The [full Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) has the detail. ## BillNotch: capture and invoicing on one price BillNotch is the pick when you want both halves in one tool, automatic capture and invoicing, without the usage fees. The desktop app records your active window and sorts it into your projects, so there is no timer to start and no week to reconstruct. A client and a date range produce a PDF invoice from the billable total on every plan, with a Stripe payment link and QuickBooks or Xero sync, and the Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time that never reached an invoice. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux. It ships as a .deb, an .rpm and an .AppImage, with Wayland capture on wlroots compositors and KDE. There are no screenshots, ever. Be clear-eyed on price: Pro is $9 a month ($90 a year), and Team is $12 a seat ($120 a seat a year). Team is not cheaper per seat than Harvest’s base Teams rate; the difference is that the BillNotch number is flat, with no usage fees on top. See [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) and [Linux support](https://billnotch.com/linux). ## Moving off Harvest: what carries over and what does not Export first. Harvest lets you download your time and your client list as CSV, and your invoice history stays inside Harvest, so pull the export before you cancel and file it with your records. There is no one-click Harvest importer in BillNotch. You set up your clients and projects by hand, which for a freelancer with a handful of clients is one sitting rather than a project, and tracking runs forward from there. Rates carry the way you would expect: you can set an hourly rate at the client, member or project level. One thing does not carry over at all, and it is worth saying plainly: BillNotch has no recurring invoices. If a retainer client is billed the same amount every month on a schedule, Harvest does that and BillNotch does not. The 14-day trial with no card is enough to set up your projects and run a normal week in parallel, so you can compare the recorded total against the one you would have typed before you decide. ## What BillNotch will not replace A switch guide that only lists wins is not honest. Here is what Harvest and its ecosystem do that BillNotch does not, so you can decide with the trade in view: - Recurring invoices for retainer clients on a schedule. - Expense tracking against a project. - Project budgets and burn tracking. - Timesheet approvals and an approval workflow. - Retainers as a first-class concept. - Capacity and resource planning, which Harvest Forecast handles. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Harvest still free? Yes, within tight limits. Harvest keeps a free plan for one active seat and two active projects, which includes time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. As soon as you need a second seat or a third project you move to a paid plan. The free plan suits a solo user with a very small workload and little else. ### How much does Harvest cost per user in 2026? Teams is $9 per seat per month on annual billing, or $11 month to month. Enterprise is $14 per seat per month billed annually, or $17.50 month to month. On top of the seat price, paid plans on Flex billing add usage-based fees. The per-seat number held after the 2025 sale; the metered layer is what moves the total. Prices checked September 5, 2026. ### Does Harvest charge usage fees? On its Flex plans, yes. Harvest meters your active projects, active clients, active tasks and invoicing, and charges for what runs above each plan’s free allowance. It does not publish a per-unit rate on the pricing page, and for new accounts the usage charges begin at the second paid renewal, so the seat price is a floor rather than the full bill. ### What is the cheapest Harvest alternative with invoicing? Clockify Standard, at $5.49 per seat per month on annual billing, is the cheapest tool here with built-in invoicing. If you also want automatic capture rather than a manual timer, BillNotch bundles both at $9 a month for Pro or $12 a seat for Team, on flat pricing with no usage fees. Toggl and Memtime hand billing to other tools. ### Which Harvest alternative works on Linux? Clockify, Memtime and BillNotch all ship a Linux desktop app; Toggl and Harvest do not have a current native one. Memtime is an X11-only AppImage. BillNotch ships a .deb, an .rpm and an .AppImage, and its automatic capture works on X11 and on wlroots or KDE Wayland sessions, but not on GNOME Wayland. ### Can I move my Harvest data into an alternative? There is no one-click Harvest importer for BillNotch. Export your time and client list from Harvest as CSV and keep it for your records, then recreate your clients and projects by hand, which for a freelancer with a handful of clients is one sitting. Tracking runs forward from there; your Harvest invoice history stays in Harvest. ### What are some good alternatives to Harvest? The closest alternatives are Toggl Track and Clockify for tracking, Memtime for automatic capture, and BillNotch, which captures time automatically and invoices on flat pricing from $9 a month. Clockify Standard at $5.49 a seat is the cheapest with built-in invoicing. Which one fits depends on whether you need invoicing, automatic capture, or Linux support. ### What is the Harvest app used for? Harvest is a time-tracking and invoicing tool used by freelancers and agencies to log billable hours against clients and projects, send invoices, and track expenses. After its 2025 acquisition it moved to per-seat pricing plus usage-based fees, which is what sends many users looking for an alternative. ### Is the Harvest app legit? Yes, Harvest is an established, legitimate time-tracking and invoicing product used widely by agencies and freelancers. The complaints since 2025 are about pricing, a per-seat rate plus usage-based fees and a free plan cut to one seat and two projects, not about trust or reliability. ## The hours the price increase made expensive twice The hours you forgot to start a timer for are the ones the price increase made expensive twice: once in the higher bill, and again in the time that never made it onto an invoice. BillNotch records the hours for you and turns them into an invoice, on a flat price that does not move when you add a project or a client. If you would rather read first, [Harvest pricing in 2026](https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing) breaks down the real cost. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/harvest-pricing [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Harvest pricing # Harvest pricing in 2026, explained > Harvest pricing in 2026: Free, Teams and Enterprise plans, the new usage-based fees, seat math for 1 to 50 people, and flat-price alternatives compared. Harvest pricing in 2026 starts with a free plan for one seat and two projects, then two paid tiers billed per seat: Teams at $9 a seat per month on annual billing ($11 month to month), and Enterprise at $14 ($17.50 monthly). Since the 2025 sale, usage-based fees stack on top of those seat prices. Prices checked September 5, 2026. ## Harvest pricing, plan by plan Three plans, two of them paid. The seat prices are the base rate. What the grid below does not show, because the pricing page does not either, is the usage layer that sits on top of the paid plans. That comes next. | Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Free | $0 | $0 | One active seat and two active projects. Time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. | | Teams | $11 /seat | $9 /seat/mo ($108 /seat/yr) | Unlimited seats, billable and cost rates, team reporting, project and people CSV import, accounting and payment integrations. Usage fees apply. | | Enterprise | $17.50 /seat | $14 /seat/mo ($168 /seat/yr) | Everything in Teams plus profitability reporting, timesheet approval, activity log, unlimited custom reports, required notes and SAML SSO. Usage fees apply. | Plans and prices checked on getharvest.com/pricing on September 5, 2026. The trial is a fully functional 30-day trial with no credit card. Harvest advertises annual billing as 20% off, which works out to about 18% on Teams ($11 to $9) and 20% on Enterprise ($17.50 to $14). Harvest bills each paid plan as Flex (usage-based) or Unlimited (fixed usage fee); the seat prices above are the base rates. The paid tiers are mostly a features question. Teams adds unlimited seats, billable and cost rates, team reporting and CSV import, and it is where the accounting and payment integrations live. Enterprise is the compliance tier: profitability reporting, timesheet approval, an activity log, unlimited custom reports, required notes and SAML single sign-on. If none of the Enterprise features are load-bearing for you, Teams is the plan the seat math below assumes. ## What Harvest’s usage-based fees are Here is the part the pricing page does not spell out. Each paid plan is billed one of two ways. On Flex you pay the per-seat base rate plus usage-based charges calculated on your prior billing period. On Unlimited the usage fee is a fixed price instead. On Flex the metered items are your active projects, active clients, active tasks and invoicing. Each plan includes a free allowance, and you pay for what runs above it. Harvest does not publish a per-unit rate on the pricing page, and for new accounts the usage charges begin at the second paid renewal. So the seat price you sign up for is a floor, not the whole bill. To see your own number, open the billing page in your Harvest account, or ask Harvest for a full quote that includes usage before you renew. The reason this keeps landing in forums is the size of some renewals. On r/projectmanagement, one Harvest user, u/steffunnyshere, wrote that after the Bending Spoons acquisition the plan they were told they would move to was “$1,900 a month. That is not a typo.” You can read [the original thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/projectmanagement/comments/1rpbvck/this_harvest_app_price_increase_is_insane_and/) for the full account. Not every account sees a jump like that; the rollout has been staggered, and some accounts report no increase yet. ## Harvest seat cost calculator Drag the seat count and pick a plan to see Harvest’s base cost for a year against BillNotch’s flat price for the same seats. Keep in mind what the Harvest number leaves out: the usage fees are not in it, because Harvest does not publish them per unit. Seats 5 Harvest plan Billing Harvest Teams, 5 seats, billed annually $540 / year Base rate only. Usage-based fees are not included. BillNotch Team, 5 seats, billed annually $600 / year Flat per seat. No usage fees, no per-invoice charge. Harvest figures are base rates checked on getharvest.com/pricing on September 5, 2026. Harvest also meters usage-based fees on your active projects, clients, tasks and invoices, and publishes no per-unit rate, so those are not in the number above. Ask Harvest for a full quote before you renew. BillNotch Pro is a single seat at $90 a year; Team is $120 per seat per year billed annually, or $144 month to month. ## What changed, and when - Before November 7, 2024. Accounts that upgraded from a trial before this date may still sit on legacy plans, which is part of why two Harvest customers can quote very different bills. - 2025. Bending Spoons, the firm behind Evernote and WeTransfer, acquired Harvest. - After the sale. Harvest restructured paid pricing to a per-seat base rate plus usage-based fees on projects, clients, tasks and invoices, and cut the free plan to one seat and two projects. - 2025 into 2026. The new model reaches accounts at renewal on a staggered rollout, and for new accounts the usage charges begin at the second paid renewal. ## Is Harvest pricing worth it in 2026? For some workflows, yes. Harvest’s invoicing is mature and collects payment, expense tracking is built in, Harvest Forecast adds capacity planning, and there are more than fifty integrations including Asana, Slack, Stripe, QuickBooks and Xero. If you bill in clear blocks and lean on that ecosystem, the base seat price is competitive with the rest of the category. Where it stops being worth it is predictability and platform. Capture is a manual start and stop timer, so forgotten timers turn into unbilled hours. The usage fees make a monthly total hard to forecast as your project and client counts grow, which lands hardest on the busiest accounts. And there is no native Linux desktop app, which decides the question for part of this audience. The clearest overpay case is the account that grows into the usage fees. If you add clients and projects every quarter, the metered layer climbs with them while the sticker seat price stays the same, so the gap between what the pricing page shows and what you actually pay widens over time. ## Cheaper alternatives to Harvest If the usage fees are the problem, a flat per-seat tool keeps the number you sign up for the number you pay. [The Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) walks through what replaces each piece for someone leaving. [Toggl](https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative) and [Clockify](https://billnotch.com/clockify-alternative) are the cheapest polished timers, and [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) settles the usual shortlist. BillNotch sits in a narrower spot: automatic capture and invoicing on one flat price, at [$9 a month for Pro or $12 a seat for Team](https://billnotch.com/pricing). ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does Harvest cost? Harvest has a free plan at $0 for one seat and two projects, then two paid tiers billed per seat: Teams at $9 a seat per month on annual billing ($11 month to month), and Enterprise at $14 ($17.50 month to month). Usage-based fees apply on top of the paid plans. Prices checked September 5, 2026. ### Is Harvest free? Yes, within tight limits. The free plan covers one active person and two active projects, and includes time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. As soon as you need a second seat or a third project, you move to a paid plan. The free plan suits a solo user with a very small workload. ### Does Harvest charge per user? Yes. Teams and Enterprise are billed per seat. On Flex billing you also pay usage-based fees calculated on your prior billing period, so the per-seat rate is the base and the metered charges sit on top of it. Unlimited billing swaps the metered fee for a fixed one. ### What are Harvest usage fees? On Flex plans, Harvest meters your active projects, active clients, active tasks and invoicing, and charges for what runs above each plan’s free allowance. Harvest does not publish a per-unit rate on the pricing page, and for new accounts the usage charges begin at the second paid renewal. ### Did Harvest raise its prices? After Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in 2025, it restructured paid pricing to a per-seat base rate plus usage-based fees and cut the free plan to one seat and two projects. The per-seat number itself held, but many accounts have reported large jumps at renewal once the usage fees are added. ### How much is Harvest for a team of 10? Base cost only: Teams is about $1,080 a year on annual billing (10 seats at $108), or roughly $1,320 a year when billed monthly. Enterprise is about $1,680 a year annually. Usage-based fees are charged on top of those figures and are not published, so treat these as a floor rather than the full bill. ### What is the best software for time tracking and invoicing? It depends on budget and volume. Harvest and Toggl both start at $9 a seat, but Harvest adds usage fees; Clockify Standard at $5.49 includes invoicing; BillNotch captures time automatically and invoices on flat pricing from $9 a month for one seat, with no per-feature usage charges. Pick on whether you want automatic capture and a predictable bill. ## A bill that does not surprise you BillNotch is a flat $9 a month for Pro or $12 a seat for Team, with no per-project, per-client or per-invoice fee, and the desktop app records your hours so you are not billing from memory. The 14-day trial needs no card. If you have already decided to move, [the Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers what the switch involves. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/linux [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Linux # Linux time tracker that works on Wayland and ends at the invoice > A native Linux time tracker (.deb, .rpm, AppImage) that records active windows on X11 and Wayland, never takes screenshots, and turns hours into invoices. BillNotch is a native Linux time tracker that installs as a `.deb`, `.rpm` or `.AppImage`, records the active window on X11 and on Wayland under KDE and the wlroots compositors, and never takes a screenshot. On GNOME Wayland it reads app names only. It sorts the captured hours into client projects and turns them into a PDF invoice with an optional payment link. Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, KDE, Sway, all one download. .deb · .rpm · .AppImage [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Why Linux is where this category thins out Line up the trackers that record your work without a timer and most of them stop at Windows and macOS. Per their sites, Toggl no longer ships a Linux desktop app, and Timely and Rize are Windows and macOS only. Memtime ships one, but as an X11-only AppImage that says nothing about Wayland. On the open-source side, ActivityWatch does not invoice and Kimai tracks by hand, per their sites. So the Linux user who bills by the hour ends up gluing two tools together. BillNotch is one desktop app compiled for all three platforms in the same release. The hours it captures on Fedora or Ubuntu land on the same PDF invoice as everyone else’s, and the tracker core’s tests run on Linux, Windows and macOS in continuous integration. There is no reduced Linux build and no waiting list. There is a second reason the list is short. A lot of Linux trackers are hobby projects that stalled: the download link rots, the last release predates your desktop, and the issue tracker fills with Wayland reports nobody answers. TimeCamp’s own Ubuntu roundup says it plainly, that these tools get abandoned or left as unmaintained source. A commercial app you can hold to a release cadence is its own feature here. It is also a genuinely native app. The tracker is a small Rust core in a Tauri shell, not a bundled copy of Chromium, and the Linux AppImage is roughly 81 MB. ## Install the Linux time tracker Every release publishes three Linux packages, built from the same source. Pick the one that matches your distribution. .deb Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!\_OS Install it through your package manager or a double-click in the software centre. It updates when a new .deb lands, on your package-manager schedule, not the app’s. .rpm Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL derivatives Same story on the Red Hat side: install the .rpm, and future versions arrive as new packages you pull down. No in-app updater runs. .AppImage Any distribution, no install Mark it executable and run it, nothing touches the system. This is the only channel that updates itself: the AppImage checks for a newer build and replaces itself in place. The AppImage is a direct download, always the current stable build: [BillNotch-linux.AppImage](https://dl.billnotch.com/BillNotch-linux.AppImage) (roughly 81 MB). Mark it executable and run it. The `.deb` and `.rpm` are published with each tagged release, and the AppImage is the only channel that updates itself. One Linux-specific thing to know before you close the window: the app lives in the system tray, using the AppIndicator or StatusNotifier host your desktop provides. On desktops that run one (KDE, and GNOME with the AppIndicator extension) it keeps tracking after you close the window. Where no tray host exists, closing the window quits the app, so leave it open. If idle detection matters to you, avoid the Snap build of anything similar: strict Snap confinement blocks the D-Bus screensaver call that idle detection needs. The `.deb`, `.rpm` and `.AppImage` are not confined and do not have that problem. ## X11 and Wayland support, compositor by compositor This is the question that decides whether a Linux tracker is any use to you, so here is the specific answer rather than a checkbox. On X11 the active window is readable and capture simply works. On Wayland it depends on your compositor, because Wayland deliberately does not let one application read another’s window by default. BillNotch speaks the `wlr-foreign-toplevel` protocol, which covers the whole wlroots family plus KDE’s KWin. On an X11 session the active window is always readable; on GNOME Wayland, which answers no such protocol, the app records app names only. Wayland was designed so one application cannot snoop on the windows around it, which is good for security and awkward for an honest tracker that only wants a title. The fix the ecosystem settled on is an explicit protocol a compositor can choose to implement. The wlroots compositors implement it, KWin implements it, and Mutter has decided not to. | Session / compositor | Window titles | App names | Idle detection | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | X11 (any desktop) | Yes | Yes | Yes | The universal fallback. Works on GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, anything running an X server. | | KDE Plasma, KWin (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | KWin answers the wlr-foreign-toplevel protocol, so capture is complete. | | Sway (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | wlroots compositor. Titles read directly. | | Hyprland (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | wlroots, with Hyprland’s own IPC as a second source. | | river (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | wlroots compositor. | | Wayfire (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | wlroots compositor. | | labwc (Wayland) | Yes | Yes | Yes | wlroots compositor. | | GNOME, Mutter (Wayland) | No | Yes | Yes | Mutter exposes no title protocol. You get the app name and a banner. Use an Xorg session or the browser extension. | GNOME on Wayland is the one real gap, and it is worth stating plainly rather than hiding in a footnote. Mutter answers neither the wlr protocol nor an XWayland fallback, so on a stock GNOME Wayland session BillNotch cannot read window titles. It does not record a silent zero: each entry degrades to the bare app name, and the app raises a banner telling you capture is degraded. Your two ways out are to pick an “Xorg” or “X11” session from the login-screen gear menu, if your distribution still ships one, or to let the [browser extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) cover the web side of your work by domain. Wayland is a wall every automatic tracker on Linux hits, not a BillNotch quirk. ## What it records, and what it never does The tracker reads the active window’s title, the application name and the timestamps around each interval. That is the whole capture. There is no screen recording, no keystroke logging, no webcam, no GPS, and the browser companion reports domains only, never a full URL or a page title unless you opt in. If you want the argument in full, [the case against screenshots](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots) sets out why a title beats a picture for billing. Window titles can be sensitive, so you decide how much of one ever leaves the machine. Three sync modes control it: - LocalOnly keeps raw titles on the device. Nothing readable ships. - Smart, the default, redacts a matched title down to the project keyword before upload, and only sends an unmatched title so the server can categorize it. - Full uploads the raw title unchanged, for people who want the detail back in the dashboard. An unmatched title that reaches the server is compared against your own confirmed history by a local embedder that runs on our servers and calls no outside service. Only genuinely novel activity can reach a language model, and only when you ask for AI suggestions on the review screen, never in the upload path; titles are never sold or used to train models. The [privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) writes down exactly this. Two companions widen the same log without widening what is captured. The browser extension reports the domain of your active tab, github.com or figma.com, never the full URL or the page title unless you turn that on, which is how web work on a GNOME Wayland session still gets categorized. And a read-only Google or Microsoft calendar connection turns your meetings into suggested entries, so an hour spent away from the keyboard is not an hour lost. ## Where the API key is kept You connect the desktop app to your account with a key you issue and can revoke. On Linux that key goes into the Secret Service, GNOME Keyring or KWallet, whichever your desktop provides, and on a session without one, into the kernel keyring instead. It is never written to a dotfile, an environment variable or a config directory, and there is no plaintext fallback to fall back to. ## From active windows to an invoice Capture is half the job. As the app records, a keyword matcher runs on your own machine against your own project list and stamps a project when it is confident above a set threshold. Anything it is unsure of waits for you as a draft on the Review screen in the dashboard, rather than being guessed at and quietly billed. None of this depends on staying online. Every captured interval is written to a local SQLite file first and uploaded in batches once the network is back, and the uploads are idempotent, so a dropped connection or a reboot mid-sync can never bill the same hour twice. When you stop touching the machine the interval closes, so lunch, a phone call and an hour in a meeting room do not quietly accumulate against whatever window happened to be open. You confirm the day’s suggestions, billable status is inherited per project, and the running billable total adds itself up. A client and a date range become a PDF invoice with a Stripe payment link on your own connected account, and the same hours can push straight into [QuickBooks](https://billnotch.com/integrations/quickbooks) or Xero. The whole path, capture to paid, [the invoicing side](https://billnotch.com/freelance-invoicing-software) covers in detail. ## How it compares to other Linux time trackers The tools a Linux user actually weighs, side by side on the things that decide it. Where a rival’s Linux behaviour is not something we could confirm, the cell says so rather than guessing. | Feature | BillNotch | Memtime | Clockify | Toggl Track | ActivityWatch | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Native package formats | .deb, .rpm, .AppImage | .AppImage only | .deb, .rpm, .AppImage | None (desktop deprecated) | Native, open source | | Wayland window titles | Yes (wlroots + KWin) | No (X11 only) | Not verified | No native desktop | Partial, compositor-dependent | | Automatic active-window capture | Yes | Yes | Limited on Linux | Windows and macOS only | Yes | | Invoicing | Yes, PDF | No (export or sync) | Yes, Standard tier | No | No | | Price | $9/mo Pro, $12/seat Team | $18/user/mo | Free; Basic $3.99/seat | Free; Starter $9/seat | Free, open source | | Screenshots | Never | No | Yes, Pro tier | No | No | Competitor package formats, platform support, features and prices are per each vendor’s own site and docs, checked Sep 5, 2026, on annual billing where a discount applies; these change often, so confirm before you commit. Per their sites, Clockify’s free plan covers up to five users and gates invoicing to its Standard tier, Toggl’s free plan also covers up to five with no native invoicing, and ActivityWatch is free and open source. Memtime is the closest rival on capture. It also records the foreground program passively and markets Linux hard, with a page of its own that runs past 1,700 words. Two things separate it. It is X11 only, with no Wayland claim anywhere on that page, and it does not invoice: it exports your time to a billing tool you run somewhere else. At $18 per user a month it is also the priciest passive tracker in this table. BillNotch reads Wayland titles across the whole wlroots family and raises the invoice itself. For seeing where your hours go without billing, ActivityWatch is free and open source, per its site. For the lowest price, Clockify and the open-source options cost less. On Linux, BillNotch pairs automatic capture with invoicing, which the rest of the field splits apart. The [full Linux roundup](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) works through the whole field, commercial and open source, including Kimai and Solidtime. ## What it will not do on Linux The honest list, because a page that only lists strengths is not much use when you are deciding. - No window titles on GNOME Wayland. App name only, until you switch to an Xorg session or GNOME ships title access. - No CLI or TUI. The tracker is a desktop app with a tray icon, not a command-line daemon. - No Snap package. Snap’s strict confinement breaks idle detection, so the shipped formats are .deb, .rpm and .AppImage. - No .deb or .rpm auto-update. Only the AppImage updates itself; packages update through your package manager. - No mobile app, and no per-terminal command tracking. It reads the focused window, not what runs inside your shell. And it is hosted software, not a self-hosted binary that emits PDFs on its own. The desktop app tracks; the invoicing lives in the BillNotch dashboard. For part of this audience that is the whole conversation, and if it is yours, Kimai in the roundup above is the self-hosted answer. The broader picture of how the [automatic capture behaves across platforms](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) holds for Linux too. ## Common questions Does BillNotch work on Wayland? Yes, on most Wayland compositors. It reads the active window through the wlr-foreign-toplevel protocol, which covers Sway, Hyprland, river, Wayfire, labwc and KDE Plasma’s KWin. The one exception is GNOME’s Mutter, which exposes no title protocol, so a GNOME Wayland session falls back to the bare app name. Does it work on Ubuntu 24.04 with GNOME? Window titles do not capture on Ubuntu’s default GNOME Wayland session, because Mutter hides them from other apps. On GNOME Wayland the app records app names only. Log into an X11 session from the login-screen gear menu, or use the browser extension for web work, which captures domains only. Is there an AppImage? Yes. BillNotch ships a .deb for Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, a .rpm for Fedora and openSUSE, and an .AppImage that runs on any distribution. The AppImage is also the only channel that updates itself; the .deb and .rpm update through your package manager on the next release. Does it take screenshots on Linux? No. There is no screen-capture code in the app and no permission for it on Linux. It reads the active window’s title and the application name, nothing that is on screen. The macOS Screen Recording prompt some people mention is Apple’s requirement for reading window titles, and it does not exist on Linux. Can I keep window titles off the server? Yes. Set the sync mode to LocalOnly and raw window titles never leave your machine. The default Smart mode redacts matched titles to the project keyword before upload; Full mode sends them unchanged. Keyword matching runs on the device and the similarity check runs on our own servers with a local embedder; only genuinely novel activity can reach a language model, and only when you ask for AI suggestions on the review screen, never in the upload path. Titles are never sold or used to train models, and the privacy policy has the full detail. Is BillNotch open source? No. The desktop tracker is a native Tauri app built in Rust, but the code is not published and BillNotch is hosted commercial software. If open source is a hard requirement on Linux, ActivityWatch and Kimai are the honest picks, and the roundup below weighs both against BillNotch in detail. Which Linux time tracker has invoicing? Very few. Memtime exports or syncs rather than invoicing, and ActivityWatch, per its site, reports without billing. Kimai, per its site, invoices but tracks time by hand. BillNotch is the one here that captures the active window automatically on Linux and turns the billable hours into a PDF invoice with an optional payment link, inside the same account. What is the best open-source software for time tracking? On Linux the honest open-source picks are ActivityWatch, which records activity automatically but reports rather than bills, and Kimai, which invoices but needs manual time entry. BillNotch is not open source, but it is the option here that captures the active window automatically and turns the hours into an invoice. Is Clockify really free? Clockify keeps a free plan, but since June 2026 it caps at five users and moves invoicing, exports and billable rates to paid tiers. It ships a native Linux app. For automatic capture rather than a manual timer, and for built-in invoicing, it is no longer the free option it once was. What is the best free software for time tracking? For a free manual timer, Clockify’s free plan and ActivityWatch, which is open source and automatic but does not bill, are the common Linux picks. Neither invoices for free. BillNotch is paid but bundles automatic capture and invoicing from $9 a month, which the free tools leave you to stitch together. ## Linux was never the second-class platform here Install the .deb, .rpm or .AppImage, work a normal day, and you will see whether capture reads your session and the hours reach an invoice. A 14-day trial, no card. If you would rather read first, [the best time tracking software for Linux](https://billnotch.com/blog/best-time-tracking-software-for-linux) compares the whole field, and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists both plans. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/memtime-review [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Memtime review # Memtime review: automatic time tracking that stops before the invoice > Memtime review 2026: how its automatic tracker works, Linux and Wayland support, per-user pricing, what reviewers praise and complain about, who it fits. Memtime is a genuinely good automatic time tracker if passive, private capture is the whole job. It records what you work on in the background, and Memtime says that data stays on your device. It runs on Linux too. The catch is where it stops: no invoicing, no billing, annual-first pricing, and no free plan. One disclosure up front. We have not run Memtime ourselves, so this is not a hands-on test. This Memtime review is built from Memtime’s own documentation, pricing page and Linux page, plus public reviews, chiefly GetApp’s 4.4 out of 5 from 125 reviews. Every quote below carries its source. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## What this Memtime review covers Memtime, from memtime GmbH in Germany, is the tool formerly sold as timeBro. It is a fully automatic tracker for Windows, macOS and Linux that runs in the background and records the time you spend in every program, file, browser tab, email and calendar entry, down to the second. The captured day is shown as a minute-accurate timeline, a “Memory Aid” you use to reconstruct what you did and log hours against projects quickly, rather than a stopwatch you remember to start. The central promise is privacy through locality: Memtime says activity data is stored only on your machine, and that it _cannot be used for monitoring processes_. From there you export time entries, or on the Connect tier sync them two ways, into whatever project or billing software you already run. It is desktop only, with no mobile app. ## What Memtime costs Memtime sells three self-serve tiers plus Enterprise, priced per user per month but billed quarterly at the shortest, with annual (around 20% off) and two-year (around 33% off) terms. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and no free plan underneath it. Prices are quoted in ten currencies; the figures here are the US-dollar annual rates. | Plan | Per user, per month | What it adds | | --- | --- | --- | | Basic | $18 | Automatic offline capture, calendar links, unlimited reports, built-in project management | | Connect | $26 | Everything in Basic plus 100+ software integrations and two-way sync with project tools | | Premium | $35 | Everything in Connect plus call-system tracking and SSO, Entra ID, SAML and SCIM | | Enterprise | Custom | For 50+ seats: team trial and onboarding, custom integrations, SSO and SAML | Prices checked on memtime.com/pricing on September 5, 2026. Integrations gate at Connect; SSO, SAML, SCIM and call tracking gate at Premium. Two things about the shape of that bill are worth flagging, because they drive the harshest reviews. The quarterly-or-longer cycle means you commit money in blocks rather than paying month to month, and Memtime renews automatically. Reviewers report being charged on the renewal date without a heads-up and then refused a refund, which is the recurring theme in its one-star reviews. ## Platforms and Linux support Native desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux is a real advantage; most automatic trackers cover two of the three at best. Memtime markets Linux hard, with a dedicated page aimed at developers, administrators and IT service providers. The important caveat: Memtime’s Linux build **works on X11**. Its own page says the app has been tested on GNOME, Plasma/KDE and XFCE, and it ships as an AppImage you download and run. There is no Wayland claim anywhere on that page, and “Do you support ARM for Linux?” is still a live FAQ, so x86 is the assumed target. Memtime does not support Wayland; it is X11 only, per its Linux page. BillNotch reads titles under Wayland on KDE and the wlroots compositors as well as X11, which is a narrower gap for the same kind of Linux user. Our [Linux time tracker page](https://billnotch.com/linux) spells out which compositors work and which do not. ## What reviewers like about Memtime On GetApp Memtime holds 4.4 out of 5 across 125 reviews, 82% of them positive. The praise is consistent, and it is about the tracking rather than the marketing. ### The capture is genuinely hands-off “It tracks your computer activity and makes generating a timesheet much easier.” Linnea D., COO, on GetApp ### It recovers time people forget to bill “We recover 5 billable hours every week.” Andreas Z., G2, on the memtime.com home page ## What reviewers complain about The one-star reviews on GetApp cluster on one theme, and it is not the tracking. It is billing: auto-renewal, refunds and how support handles both. Value for Money is also the joint-lowest sub-score on GetApp at 4.2, and there is no free plan to soften the entry price. ### Auto-renewal catches people out “Get people to forget about the subscription and just charge them, or send debt collectors after them.” Petra V., Producer, on GetApp ### Support communication is one-directional “They can communicate with you when they can earn money, but they cannot communicate like a professional company to provide their customers a heads up.” Gittan d., Freelance Event Manager, on GetApp ## What Memtime does not do This is the part reviews gloss over, because most Memtime reviewers only wanted the tracking. Memtime has **no invoicing**. It captures time and hands it off, so billing a client always happens in a second tool. There is no payment collection either. That gap is the throughline of this Memtime review: the capture is excellent, and there is no way to bill from it. The offline model shapes how team data works. Memtime says activity data is kept on each device, while its plans list team management and billability reporting. And the billing model itself, quarterly or longer with no month-to-month seat, is a cash-flow commitment rather than a subscription you can switch off in a slow month. ## Memtime vs BillNotch We build BillNotch, so read this section knowing that. It is still an honest split, because the two tools share a core (automatic desktop capture with a privacy stance) and then diverge on what happens after the capture. ### Where Memtime wins - Offline by design. Memtime says activity data stays on the device and is never uploaded, which is a real privacy position rather than a setting you have to find. - Integration breadth. Connect advertises 100+ two-way integrations with project and billing tools, deeper than BillNotch on that one axis. - Mature on Windows and macOS. Memtime has shipped since the timeBro days, and its desktop apps are longer in the field than ours. ### Where BillNotch wins - It invoices. Tracked billable hours become a PDF invoice with a Stripe payment link, and push to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Memtime exports and stops. - Flat, cheaper pricing. Pro is $9 a month for one seat and Team is $12 per seat, month to month, with a 14-day trial and no card. Memtime starts at $18 per user and bills quarterly at the shortest. - Wayland capture on more of Linux. Titles are read on X11 and on Wayland under KDE and the wlroots compositors (Sway, Hyprland, river, Wayfire, labwc). Memtime is X11 only. - It catches unbilled work. The Revenue Leak Finder lists billable time that was tracked but never invoiced, and privacy is per device: Smart, Full or LocalOnly. The clean way to decide: if the tracking data must never leave the machine, which Memtime says it does not, stay on Memtime, because BillNotch syncs to a server even though window titles can stay on-device. BillNotch is built for the step after capture, where the hours you nearly forgot to bill turn into an invoice. The [automatic tracker page](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) covers how the capture-to-invoice loop actually runs, and [the no-screenshots page](https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots) sets out where our window titles go, which is a different promise from Memtime’s offline-only one. ## Memtime alternatives worth comparing If the tracking is fine and the gap is invoicing, price or the annual commitment, the field sorts quickly. For automatic capture that also invoices on flat pricing, BillNotch is the closest like-for-like. For a free, local-only route, ActivityWatch and ManicTime capture activity on your own machine. Timely drafts entries with AI and invoices, but skips a native Linux app. Clockify is the cheapest way to add invoicing and keeps a native Linux build. The full breakdown, with a comparison table, is in [the best Memtime alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives), and if you are switching from a manual timer rather than an automatic one, [the Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers that move instead. ## Common questions Is Memtime free? No. Memtime has no free plan, only a 14-day free trial with no credit card. After that its cheapest tier, Basic, is $18 per user per month on annual billing, checked September 5, 2026. The trial gives full access, but there is no permanent zero-cost option the way Clockify and Toggl keep one. Does Memtime work on Linux? Yes, but on X11 only. Memtime ships a native Linux desktop app as an AppImage and says it has been tested on GNOME, Plasma/KDE and XFCE. Its Linux page makes no Wayland claim, so Memtime does not support Wayland, and ARM support is still an open question in its own FAQ. Does Memtime take screenshots? Memtime does not advertise a screenshot feature. Its own site says the tool cannot be used for monitoring processes and that all activity data is stored on the user device, visible only to you. What it records is which programs, files and tabs you used, not pictures of your screen. Does Memtime do invoicing? No. Memtime captures time and exports or syncs it to project and billing software, but it does not create invoices or collect payment. If billing clients from your tracked hours matters, you need a second tool for that step, or a tracker like BillNotch that includes it. How much is Memtime per user? On annual billing the headline rates are Basic $18, Connect $26 and Premium $35 per user per month, with Enterprise custom for 50-plus seats, checked September 5, 2026. Billing runs quarterly, annually or two-yearly, so there is no month-to-month option and no free tier underneath it. Memtime or BillNotch? Pick Memtime if offline, on-device capture is the whole requirement and you already invoice elsewhere. Pick BillNotch if you want automatic capture that also categorizes the work, catches unbilled hours and produces the invoice, on flat pricing from $9 a month. Both run on Windows, macOS and Linux. ## Keep the automatic capture, add the invoice Memtime hands your tracked time to another tool to bill. BillNotch keeps capture and invoicing in one account, so a PDF invoice with a Stripe payment link comes straight from the hours you logged. 14 days, no card, then $9 a month for Pro. If you want to read first, [the alternatives guide](https://billnotch.com/blog/memtime-alternatives) surveys the whole field, and [pricing](https://billnotch.com/pricing) lists both plans. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/privacy # Privacy Policy > How BillNotch collects, uses, and protects your data: what we store, our EU sub-processors, window-title controls, retention, and your deletion rights. Last updated July 2026 BillNotch is a time-tracking tool for freelancers and small teams. This policy explains what we collect, why, where it is processed, and the choices you have. We keep it short and concrete. If something here is unclear, email us at [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). **The short version:** we collect the data needed to track your time and bill from it, we process it on servers in the EU, we never sell it, and you can have it deleted on request. ## What we collect - **Account data.** Your email address, password (stored only as an Argon2id hash, we never see the plaintext), and the optional name and organization name you provide at sign-up. - **Tracked activity.** From the desktop app: the active application and window title, the time spent, and timestamps. This is grouped into the projects you configure and marked billable based on your project settings. How much of this leaves your machine depends on your sync mode (see below). - **Browser activity (optional extension).** If you install the BillNotch browser extension, it records the **domain** of the active tab (for example `github.com`) and timestamps, and sends them to your own account over an API key you issue and can revoke. Full page URLs and tab titles are **not** captured unless you explicitly turn each of them on in the extension’s settings. The data is used only to improve how your tracked time is categorized into projects; it is never used for advertising and never shared. - **Billing data.** If you subscribe to a paid plan, your payment is handled by Stripe. We store your subscription status, plan, and a Stripe customer reference, we never see or store your full card number. Card details go directly to Stripe. - **Usage and technical data.** Standard server logs (IP address, user-agent, request metadata) and session metadata (the IP and user-agent attached to an active login) used to operate the service and detect abuse. ## Window titles and sync modes Window titles can contain sensitive details (document names, email subjects, client names). You control how they are handled, per device: - **Sync titles.** Full window titles are sent to your account so categorization and reports can use them. - **Keep titles local.** Titles stay on your machine; only durations and the minimal metadata needed for billing are synced. The text of what you were doing never leaves your device. BillNotch is built for you, not your boss. Your activity is yours. ## How we use your data - To run the product: record time, categorize it, and produce reports and invoices. - To send transactional email (email verification, password resets, email changes). - To secure your account: rate limiting, lockouts, and reuse detection on sessions. - To fix bugs and keep the service running. We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not build profiles to sell or share with third parties. ## Who processes it (sub-processors) We keep the list of third parties short and disclose them here: - **Hetzner** (EU, Germany): hosting, database, and our self-hosted error monitoring. Your data is stored and processed on servers in the European Union; our error tracking runs on this same infrastructure and is not a separate third party. - **Stripe**: payment processing for paid plans. Stripe receives your billing details and card information to process subscriptions; we receive only your subscription status and a customer reference. See Stripe’s own privacy policy for how it handles payment data. - **Resend**: delivery of transactional email. Receives the recipient address and message content for those emails only. - **DeepSeek**: AI categorization, **only when you enable it**. If AI categorization is on, the activity text being categorized (such as window titles, app names, and, if you use the browser extension, visited domains) is sent to DeepSeek to classify. With AI categorization off (the default) a deterministic rule-based matcher is used instead and none of your activity is sent to any third-party AI provider. ## Cookies We use a single, essential cookie: an httpOnly session cookie that holds your refresh token so you stay signed in. There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies. ## Retention We keep your account and tracked data for as long as your account is active so the product works. You can delete individual time entries and projects at any time. When you close your account or ask us to delete it, we remove your personal data, except where we must retain limited records to meet a legal obligation. ## Your rights and deletion You can access, correct, export, or delete your data. To request deletion or exercise any other right, email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com) from your account address and we will action it. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR. ## Security Passwords are hashed with Argon2id. Desktop devices authenticate with API keys you issue and can revoke at any time, and the key is stored in your operating system’s keychain, not in plaintext. Traffic is encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your data. ## Children BillNotch is not intended for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. ## Changes We may update this policy as the product changes. Material changes will be reflected by the “last updated” date above, and significant ones may also be announced by email. ## Contact Questions about privacy? Email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). ## Source: https://billnotch.com/terms # Terms of Service > The agreement for using BillNotch: subscription and billing terms, cancellation and refunds, acceptable use, ownership of your data, and liability. Last updated June 2026 These terms are the agreement between you and BillNotch for use of the desktop app, the web dashboard, and the API (together, the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. ## The Service is provided “as is” BillNotch is a paid product that is still actively improving. We ship changes often, and some features are newer than others. The Service is offered on an “as is” and “as available” basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy of billing totals, or uninterrupted availability. Features may change as the product evolves. Do not rely on it as your only record of billable time. Keep your own backups of anything you invoice from. ## Your account - You are responsible for keeping your password and API keys secure. - You are responsible for activity that happens under your account or API keys. - Provide accurate sign-up information and keep it current. - Notify us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access. ## Acceptable use You agree not to: - Use the Service for anything unlawful, or to infringe anyone’s rights. - Track other people’s activity without their knowledge and consent. Track your own work, or work you are authorized to monitor. - Probe, attack, overload, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or its infrastructure. - Reverse engineer or scrape the Service except where that restriction is prohibited by law. - Resell or sublicense the Service without our written permission. ## Plans, billing, and renewal BillNotch offers paid subscription plans (currently **Pro** and **Team**), billed monthly or annually. Team is billed per active member seat. New organizations start with a **14-day free trial**, no card required, after which a paid plan is required to keep using the write features; your data stays readable and exportable either way. Current prices are shown on our [pricing page](https://billnotch.com/pricing) and at checkout. - Paid plans are **recurring**. By subscribing, you authorize us to charge your payment method automatically at the start of each billing period, each month or year, until you cancel. - Payments are processed by **Stripe**; we do not store your full card details. Charges are in the currency shown at checkout and exclusive of any taxes that may apply. - On the Team plan, your seat count, and therefore your charge, changes as you add or remove members, and adjustments are prorated. - We may change prices or plans. We will give reasonable notice before a change affects a renewal, and the new price applies from your next billing period. ## Cancellation and refunds You can cancel anytime from your billing settings. When you cancel, your plan stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it does not renew after that. Payments are **non-refundable** except where a refund is required by law. We do not provide prorated refunds for partial periods or for time you did not use. If you believe you were charged in error, email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com) and we will make it right. ## Your content Your tracked time, projects, and other data are yours. You grant us only the limited permission needed to host and process that data to run the Service for you, as described in our [Privacy Policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy). We claim no ownership of it. ## Intellectual property The Service itself (its software, design, and brand) belongs to BillNotch. These terms do not grant you any rights in it beyond the right to use it as intended. ## Termination You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these terms or use the Service in a way that risks harm to others or to the Service. On termination, your right to use the Service ends; deletion of your data follows the Privacy Policy. ## Limitation of liability To the fullest extent permitted by law, BillNotch is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, or lost or inaccurate data, arising from your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. ## Changes to these terms We may update these terms as the product evolves. We will update the “last updated” date above and, for material changes, give reasonable notice. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated terms. ## Governing law These terms are governed by the laws of the **State of Wyoming, USA**, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the state and federal courts located in Wyoming have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, unless mandatory local law provides otherwise. ## Contact Questions about these terms? Email [support@billnotch.com](mailto:support@billnotch.com). ## Source: https://billnotch.com/time-tracker-without-screenshots [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Time tracker without screenshots # A time tracker that takes no screenshots > A time tracker that takes no screenshots and logs no keystrokes. It records the active window, and you choose whether the title ever leaves your machine. The trackers that record your hours without a timer mostly pay for it in surveillance: screens grabbed on an interval, keystrokes counted, a productivity score attached to your name. BillNotch records the same hours from a much smaller observation: which window is in front of you, and for how long. It is not a screenshot feature left switched off. The capability is absent from the app. no screenshots · no keystrokes · no webcam [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Is there really no screenshot anywhere? There is nothing to disable. The desktop app has no screen-capture path, no image encoder and nowhere to put an image if it had one: no bucket, no viewer, no “screenshots” tab in anyone’s dashboard. An account owner cannot enable it for the team, and support cannot enable it for an account, because the feature was never built. One honest wrinkle, because you will see it and deserve the explanation: on macOS the app asks for the **Screen Recording** permission. That is Apple’s doing. Since macOS 10.15 the titles of other applications’ windows sit behind that one permission, and titles are exactly what the tracker reads. Without it every entry collapses to a bare app name. BillNotch asks for it once, at the moment tracking actually starts, reads a string, and never takes a frame. On Windows and Linux no such permission is involved. The [Linux tracker](https://billnotch.com/linux) reads titles on X11 and Wayland with no screen access at all. ## What it records instead ### The application in front of you The name of the app and the title of its window, sampled while you work. That is the whole observation. There is no frame, no thumbnail, no recording of the screen it was drawn on. ### How long the stretch lasted Start, end, and the seconds between them. When you stop touching the machine the interval closes, so lunch and a phone call do not accumulate against whatever window happened to be open. ### Nothing you type No keystrokes, no keystroke counts, no mouse-movement score. It never reads what you type: the only thing it asks the system about input is how many seconds have passed since the last one, which is how idle time stays off the bill. ### Optionally, a domain If you install the browser extension it adds github.com, not the page. It holds the tabs permission, which Chrome shows you as “read your browsing history”, and nothing more: no content scripts, and no host permission on a single site you visit, so reading a page is a capability it does not have. That is a smaller record than a screenshot by an enormous margin, and it is enough to bill from. [How the automatic capture works](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) follows one afternoon from the window title to the PDF invoice. ## Where the window titles go A window title is not nothing. “Q3 layoffs - Google Docs” tells a story, and a tracker that shipped every title upstream by default would have replaced one surveillance problem with a quieter one. So the sync mode is a per-device setting, and a fresh install starts on the careful option rather than the convenient one. The default is **smart**: a matcher runs on your own machine against your own project list, and anything it can place is redacted before upload to whichever of your own words it matched: the keyword that hit, or the project name when the name itself is what matched. The bulk of a normal day is known work, so the bulk of a normal day never leaves as raw text. Only the windows it could not place still carry their title, so the server has something to sort them by. **Full** sends every title, which you choose deliberately if you want the categorization to be as sharp as possible. **Local only** is the strict version of smart: a matched stretch still uploads the matched label and its project, and an unmatched stretch uploads only the application’s name: “Chrome”, “Slack”, or “Unknown app” when even that is unavailable. No raw window title ever crosses the wire in that mode. The same instinct governs the [browser extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension): it reports `github.com` and the seconds you spent there, with the path and query string discarded on your machine before the segment is even written down. Full URLs and tab titles each have their own switch, both off until you turn them on. With them off those fields are not blanked. They are absent from the request. ## Does an AI model read all this? This is where most privacy pages get vague, so here is the mechanism, including the part that involves a model. Sorting activity into projects runs in stages, and the early stages make no external call at all. The on-device keyword matcher stamps a project before upload when it is confident. A learned rule (your own past correction, replayed) settles anything you have decided before. What is left goes to a similarity check against the entries you already confirmed, using a local embedder that turns a string into a vector by hashing its features: deterministic, no credentials, no network. Your titles are matched against your own history, on the server that already holds them. Only genuinely novel activity (work none of that recognises) can reach a large language model, and only in the suggestion pass you trigger from the Review screen, never in the upload path the desktop app uses. The model is an adapter: on billnotch.com one is configured, and self-hosted with no API key it is absent from the chain entirely and a deterministic keyword matcher takes its place, which is the path the test suite exercises on every commit. If you want the question settled rather than trusted, local-only mode means the strings that would reach it are the ones you named yourself. Be equally clear about what is a draft and what is not. The on-device matcher and a learned rule both write a project straight onto the entry. That is the point of them, and both are your own words applied to your own work. The similarity stage and the model do not: their guesses land as drafts on the Review screen, and stay drafts until you confirm them. ## What a manager can and cannot see In a team workspace this is the question that actually matters, and the answer starts with a deliberate gap in the permission model: the plain **member** role does not carry the permission to view anyone else’s time. A member sees their own entries, reviews their own drafts, and reports on their own hours. Seeing the whole workspace is a separate permission an owner has to grant. And when it is granted, what it opens is a timesheet: hours by project, by client, by day, with utilization on top. There is no screenshot gallery to scroll, no video to scrub, no activity percentage next to a person’s name. Management here means reading a total, which is the thing a manager needed in the first place. ## The tools that do take screenshots Worth naming plainly, because they are honest about it and you should be able to compare. [Hubstaff](https://hubstaff.com/time-tracker-with-screenshots) sells a time tracker with screenshots taken on an interval, with blurring and frequency controls for the administrator. [Time Doctor](https://support.timedoctor.com/knowledge/the-screencasts-screenshots-feature) documents a screencasts feature that captures screens or short videos at random intervals, and shows keyboard and mouse activity counts beside them. Both can be configured down, and both are configured by whoever runs the account rather than by the person being recorded. That is a real product, sold to a real buyer: an employer who needs an evidentiary record of a workforce. BillNotch is built for the other buyer: the freelancer or small studio where the person tracked and the person billing are the same person, or trust each other enough that a picture of the screen would be an insult rather than a control. The same logic covers lawyers and client confidentiality: a tracker that takes no screenshots and keeps titles on the machine is one an attorney can adopt, which is why [time tracking software for lawyers](https://billnotch.com/for/lawyers) builds on this privacy model. There is a stricter privacy model than ours worth naming: Memtime keeps all activity data offline on the device and never uploads it, and it takes no screenshots either. That is a genuinely different promise from BillNotch, which syncs to a server even though window titles can stay on the machine that recorded them. The tradeoff is that Memtime’s offline model rules out shared team reporting and any invoicing, which [the Memtime review](https://billnotch.com/memtime-review) works through in full. ## What it will not do for you Be clear about what “no screenshots” is not. It is not “no capture”. On the machine you install it on, BillNotch records the foreground application and its window title, continuously, for as long as tracking is on. That is how passive tracking works, and any tool claiming to fill a timesheet by itself without observing something is claiming something else. The promise here is narrower and checkable: no images of your screen, no keystrokes, no webcam or microphone, and a per-device choice about whether the title text ever leaves you. Nor is it an anti-surveillance guarantee for employees of someone else. If you are a member of a workspace whose owner grants the workspace-wide view permission and whose devices sync titles, an admin can read your entries and the titles attached to them. That is a smaller exposure than a screenshot reel, and the permission is visible in the role editor rather than buried, but it is real, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of claim this page exists to avoid. The rest of the list: it is hosted software, not something you run on your own server; the tracker only ever sees the machine it is installed on; there is no mobile app; and there is no free tier: 14 days, then $9 a month. ## Common questions Does BillNotch take screenshots? No, and not as a setting that is switched off. The desktop app contains no screen-capture code and asks for no screen-recording capability on Windows or Linux. There is no admin panel where someone can turn screenshots on, because there is nothing to turn on. Why does it ask for Screen Recording permission on macOS? Because macOS 10.15 and later put other applications’ window titles behind that permission, and window titles are what the tracker reads. Without it every entry degrades to a bare app name like “Safari”. BillNotch asks once, uses it to read the title string, and never captures a frame. Do my window titles leave my machine? That is your choice, per device, and the privacy-preserving option is the default. In the default mode, activity the tracker already matched to one of your projects is redacted before upload to the keyword or project name it matched; only windows it could not place still carry their title, so the server can sort them. Full mode sends every title. Local-only mode never ships a raw title at all. An unmatched stretch uploads only the application name. Does an AI model read my window titles? Work it already recognises never leaves the server: the on-device keyword matcher, your learned rules, and a similarity check run by a deterministic local embedder (plain feature hashing, no credentials, no external service) handle it. Genuinely novel activity can reach a large language model, but only in the suggestion pass you trigger from the Review screen, never in the upload path. On billnotch.com a model is configured; self-hosted without an API key it is absent from the chain and a keyword matcher takes its place. Can my manager see what I was working on? Only if the workspace gave them that permission, and there is no screenshot or video for them to look at either way. A plain member does not hold the permission to view anyone else’s time, so on the default role you see your own entries and nobody else’s. Which time trackers do take screenshots? The monitoring-first ones, and they document it openly. Hubstaff markets a time tracker with screenshots taken on an interval, and Time Doctor offers a screencasts feature that captures screens or short videos at random intervals, alongside keyboard and mouse activity counts. Both are configurable by whoever administers the account. If that is the model you want, those tools do it properly. BillNotch is the other answer. ## Work a normal day and read what it kept A 14-day trial, no card, and by the evening you can look at the entire record the tracker made of you. [The automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) explains the capture end to end, [the browser extension](https://billnotch.com/integrations/chrome-extension) covers the domains-only companion, and [the privacy policy](https://billnotch.com/privacy) sets out what is collected, where it is processed and how long it is kept. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) ## Source: https://billnotch.com/toggl-alternative [Home](https://billnotch.com/) / Toggl alternative # A Toggl alternative that tracks itself > A Toggl Track alternative for hourly billers: passive capture instead of a manual timer, projects sorted for you, invoicing you can follow to paid, Linux. Toggl Track is not a bad product, which is why nobody leaves it in a temper. People leave for one reason: the tool records the hours you remembered to record, and the money depends on the ones you didn’t. This page is about what replaces each Toggl habit, what the move costs, and when the honest answer is to stay. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register) 14 days, no card. Pro is $9/mo, less than one billable hour. ## Why do people leave Toggl Track? Three complaints, in roughly this order. The timer is the first: Toggl asks for a discipline that survives a good day and collapses on a fragmented one, and the Timeline it offers as a safety net is a log you still have to convert into entries by hand. Passive recording that needs clerical work afterwards is a different product from passive recording that arrives sorted. The second is billing. Billable rates sit on the paid Starter plan at $9 per license per month billed annually, with Premium above that, per [Toggl’s own pricing page](https://toggl.com/track/pricing/) as of September 5, 2026. Toggl does invoice: Reports, then Export, then Create Invoice, with CSV and PDF out and a hand-off to QuickBooks or Xero, but it is a flat rate per project rather than a billing pipeline, so sending, chasing and marking paid still happen somewhere else. The third is Linux: there is no current Toggl desktop app for it, which decides the question outright for part of this audience. ## What replaces each Toggl habit ### Nothing to start, so nothing to forget The whole discipline Toggl asks of you (start, switch, stop, remember) goes away. The desktop app records the focused window while you work and closes the interval when you stop touching the machine. ### The timeline arrives already sorted Toggl’s activity log hands you raw blocks to convert into entries. BillNotch matches captured activity against your own project list, stamps what it is sure of, and queues the rest for one pass on the Review screen. ### Billable is a property of the project Rather than a rate you enable on a paid tier and then apply per entry, billable status is inherited from the project, so the billable total is correct without you maintaining it. ### Invoicing is a pipeline, not an export step Toggl Track does produce an invoice: a flat rate per project, exported as CSV or PDF, handed off to QuickBooks or Xero. BillNotch keeps the whole run in one place instead: draft from the billable total, send it, attach a payment link, and let the invoice mark itself paid. For what the capture actually records and what it never touches, [the automatic time tracker](https://billnotch.com/automatic-time-tracker) goes through it end to end. ## What does switching actually involve? Recreate your clients and projects. There is no Toggl importer, and for most people this is one sitting of typing, then install the desktop app and connect it with a key you issue and can revoke. Capture begins immediately; there is no learning period, only a few days of correcting the odd misfiled block until the keyword rules match how you name things. Export your Toggl history and keep it in your records. The useful test is forward-looking anyway: keep Toggl open for a fortnight and compare the week you assembled against the week that was recorded. If the two numbers match, your timer discipline is better than most people’s and you should stay where you are. ## When to stay with Toggl Track If you like starting the clock, stay. Some people work in clean blocks and find a stopwatch clarifying rather than annoying, and for them always-on capture is a heavier tool solving a problem they do not have. Toggl’s reporting is also deeper than ours and its integration list far longer; if a particular connection carries your workflow, check ours first. And stay if free matters more than complete. Toggl’s free plan covers a small team at $0 with no time limit; BillNotch has no free tier: 14 days, then $9 a month for Pro or $12 per seat for Team. If you are tracking to understand your time rather than to bill it, you should not be paying us for the privilege. [The wider Toggl alternatives roundup](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives) covers the options that are not ours, including the free ones. If TimeCamp is on your shortlist, [the best TimeCamp alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/timecamp-alternatives) weighs that swap too. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Toggl Track have a Linux desktop app? No. Toggl Track ships desktop apps for Windows and macOS; the Linux build was discontinued, so Linux users are left with the browser. BillNotch’s tracker is compiled for Windows, macOS and Linux in the same release, and ships as a .deb, an .rpm and an .AppImage. ### Is Toggl Track’s automatic tracking the same thing as BillNotch’s? No, and the difference is who does the work afterwards. Toggl’s Timeline records what you had open and leaves you to turn those blocks into time entries. BillNotch records the active window and sorts it into client projects itself; you confirm a short list of uncertain cases rather than building the day from scratch. ### Do I need a paid Toggl plan to bill clients? For billable rates, yes: they sit on Toggl’s paid Starter plan at $9 per license per month billed annually, with Premium above it. Figures from Toggl’s own pricing page, checked September 5, 2026. The free plan tracks and reports; it does not price the work. Toggl keeping a free plan at all is a genuine win over BillNotch, which has none. Annual against annual, the paid comparison is $9 a seat for Starter against $7.50 a month for BillNotch Pro ($90 a year), or $9 a month if you pay us monthly. ### What do I lose by leaving Toggl Track? Reporting depth and an integrations ecosystem built over more than a decade. If a specific integration is load-bearing for you, check ours first. You also lose a free tier, since BillNotch runs a 14-day trial and then $9 a month. ## Keep Toggl open and compare the two weeks 14 days, no card, and nothing to cancel first. If you would rather read: [the best Toggl alternatives](https://billnotch.com/blog/toggl-alternatives) surveys the whole field, and [Harvest vs Toggl](https://billnotch.com/blog/harvest-vs-toggl) settles the usual shortlist, and if Harvest is the tool you are actually leaving, [the Harvest alternative guide](https://billnotch.com/harvest-alternative) covers that switch. [Start tracking free](https://app.billnotch.com/register)