Billable hours
A billable hours tracker that finishes the job
Most trackers stop at a report. The report is not the point. The invoice is the point, and the gap between the two is where hours quietly stop being money.
In short
A billable hours tracker records time against clients and projects, separates billable from non-billable work, and produces an invoice from the result. Stunda records the hours automatically, keeps idle and internal time separate from client work, and builds a branded PDF invoice from selected entries without an export or a second tool.
- Tracked time to sent invoice
- 4 steps
- Rates and billable flags
- Per project
- How it goes out
- PDF or link
- If you bill elsewhere
- CSV
Hours go missing in three places
The first is the work you never recorded, because the timer was not running and by Friday the memory had gone soft. Automatic tracking is the answer to that one and it is the one most people think of.
The second is subtler: work you recorded but never classified. It sits in the tracker as an unassigned block, and because assigning it is a chore it stays unassigned until it is too old to bill without an awkward conversation.
The third is the export step. Time lives in one tool, invoices are made in another, and the handoff is a CSV somebody transforms by hand once a month. Every transformation is an opportunity to drop a row, and nobody reconciles the two totals because reconciling them is worse than losing the row.
From a tracked hour to a sent invoice
No export, no second tool, no spreadsheet in the middle.
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Time arrives already attributed
The tracker records which app and window the hour was spent in, so the evidence for which client it belongs to is attached to it rather than remembered.
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Billable is a property of the project, not a decision per entry
Set the rate and the billable flag once on the project. Internal work, admin and idle stretches stay on the other side of the line without anyone ticking a box each time.
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Select the period and the entries become lines
Pick the client and the date range. The tracked entries become invoice lines with hours and amounts already computed, in whole cents, per row.
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Brand it and send
Your logo and colours, then a PDF or a shareable link.
Billable against non-billable, and why the ratio matters
The number most people track is hours worked. The number that determines what the year looks like is the share of those hours somebody paid for.
Two people can both work forty-five hour weeks and have completely different years, because one of them spends nine of those hours on proposals, invoicing, admin and unpaid revisions and the other spends twenty-two. Neither of them knows which one they are unless the non-billable time is being recorded too.
This is the argument for tracking everything rather than only starting a timer for client work. The unbillable hours are not noise to be filtered out, they are the diagnostic.
- Utilisation is billable hours divided by hours worked. Work it out on your own numbers with the calculator below.
- Rounding rules matter more than they look: fifteen-minute increments across a year is not a rounding error, it is a pay rise or a pay cut depending on the direction.
- Money is summed in whole cents per row, never recomputed from rounded hours, because rounding each row and rounding the total give different answers.
Questions
What is a billable hours tracker?
Software that records time against clients and projects, marks which of it is chargeable, and produces the figures an invoice is built from. The useful ones also produce the invoice.
How do I track billable hours automatically?
Install a tracker that records application and window activity in the background, set a rate and a billable flag on each project, and let time be attributed from the evidence rather than from a timer you start. You review and correct the timeline, then invoice from it.
What counts as non-billable time?
Typically admin, invoicing, proposals, internal meetings, marketing, and unpaid revisions. Recording it is what lets you see your utilisation, which is the number that explains why a busy year and a profitable year are not the same year.
Can I invoice from tracked time without exporting to another tool?
In Stunda, yes. Selected time entries become invoice lines directly, with hours and amounts computed from the tracked minutes, and go out as a branded PDF or a shareable link. CSV export exists for anyone who bills in an accounting system instead.
How should I handle idle time on a billable project?
Keep it visible and decide deliberately. Stunda separates idle stretches from active ones rather than deleting or silently including them, so the choice is made with the timeline in front of you instead of being made for you.