A time tracker for consultants that ends in an invoice.
Clockify is free, and it is a good tracker. At the end of the month it hands you a CSV. That CSV is the second hour of work you did not want.
HourToBill attaches a client to the timer and an invoice to the month. That is the entire difference, and it is the only one that changes what you get paid.
A working example timer, currently running, billing Northgate Retail at $95.00 an hour.
Go on, press stop. It is the real thing.
Where the hour actually goes missing
The usual month looks like this. You log hours reasonably well for three weeks. On the last day you export a CSV, open a spreadsheet, group the rows by day, decide what to call each line in front of the client, retype it into an invoice template, and check the arithmetic twice. Somewhere in there you round down, because reconstructing a Tuesday from four weeks ago is not worth the twelve minutes it would recover.
That last hour is the product. The client, the rate, the currency, the tax rate and the rounding rule are attached to the client record once. Every entry inherits them. When you bill, the invoice is assembled from the unbilled entries in the period you chose, already grouped by day and already priced.
Three actions. The third one happens without you.
- 01
Set the client’s terms once
Hourly rate, currency, tax rate, payment terms and the billing increment you agreed. You will not enter any of it again.
- 02
Start and stop the timer
One click, with a description. Miss one and you add it by hand in the same place, typing 1:30 or 90m.
- 03
Bill the period
Pick the client and the dates. Every unbilled entry becomes a line, the invoice takes the next number in your sequence, and you download the PDF.
Written plainly, because you will compare anyway.
- Clockify, Toggl
- Genuinely good trackers with generous free tiers. Both are built to report on where time went, and both hand you off at the invoice.
- Harvest, Productive.io, Rocketlane
- These do close the loop, and they do it well, but they are built and priced for agencies with several people and utilisation targets.
- Deltek, Sage
- Enterprise professional-services suites that arrive with an implementation.
- A spreadsheet and a template
- Free, flexible, and the reason most hours get billed as round numbers.
Due 30 September 2026 · Net 30
Before you buy.
What makes time tracking software for consultants different?
A consultant tracks time in order to bill it. Every entry needs a client, an hourly rate and a billing increment attached to it, and the month has to end in an invoice. A general time tracker optimises for reporting on where hours went, which is a different job with a different ending.
Is there a free time tracker that also invoices?
Free trackers exist and several are good at tracking. The invoice is where they stop, because invoicing carries tax rates, sequential numbering and record retention that free tiers rarely take on.
Can I bill in six minute increments?
Yes. Set 6, 15, 30 or 60 minutes per client, or bill to the exact minute. Rounding applies to the merged daily total for a task rather than to each entry, so four short calls in one day do not inflate into four full blocks.
What if I forget to start the timer?
Add the entry by hand on the same screen. Type 1:30, 90m, 1h 30m or 1.5 and all four are read the same way.
Can I track more than one client?
Any number, each with its own rate, currency, tax rate and rounding rule. One timer runs at a time, because you are one person and can only be doing one thing.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The timer, the entry list and the client list all work on a phone, which is where most timers get started and stopped.