01
Make an activity per client or project
Colour-code them so a glance at the week shows who got your hours.
For freelancers
Time Tracking for Freelancers
Separate billable hours from the rest, and find out what your time is really worth.
The hours you can invoice are only part of a freelancer's week. Admin, pitching, revisions, and the jobs that overrun their quote all chip away at a rate that looked fine on paper. Track where the time goes and you find out what you really earn per hour — and stop under-charging for the work that takes the longest.
The friction
- —Billable hours and unpaid admin blur together, so invoices are reconstructed from memory.
- —A project that felt profitable turns out to have paid far less per hour once the revisions are counted.
- —No clean record to point to when a client questions an invoice.
What freelancers actually need to track
01
Billable vs non-billable, clearly split
Tag client work apart from admin, marketing, and learning so you can see what earns and what doesn't.
02
Your true effective rate
Total hours against a project fee tells you the real hourly rate — not the one you hoped for.
03
A record that backs the invoice
A clean per-activity breakdown you can reference if a client ever asks what they paid for.
In practice
A freelancer's week, in the ledger
The point isn't the timer. It's the statement at the end of the week, where every hour is accounted for and the totals point to something worth changing.
A freelancer's weekTracked
Client A — design14:20:00
Client B — revisions06:45:00
Pitching / proposals04:10:00
Admin & invoicing03:05:00
Week total28:20:00
How it fits your week
02
Start the timer when you start the work
Or log the block afterwards — either way the hours land against the right client.
03
Read the week as a statement
See billable share, effective rate, and where the unpaid time went.
Frequently asked questions
- How do freelancers track billable vs non-billable hours?
- Keep separate activities for client work and for admin, marketing, and learning. When you tag time as you go, the weekly breakdown shows your billable share without any manual sorting — InstaClock keeps the running totals for each.
- How do I work out my real hourly rate?
- Divide a project's fee by the hours you spent on it, revisions and admin included. The number often shows that a 'good' project paid less per hour than you thought — your cue to re-price the next one.
- Is InstaClock good for solo freelancers rather than agencies?
- Yes. InstaClock is built for individuals, so there are no seats, approvals, or team dashboards to wade through — just your own time, clearly tracked and visualised.
- Can I use the records for invoicing?
- You get a clean per-activity breakdown and can export your entries, so you have a record to base invoices on and to reference if a client ever questions one.
Time tracking that fits how freelancers work.
Start a timer, log a block, and let the weekly ledger show you where your hours really went.
Start tracking free→
Free to start · No card required