Time tracking for consultants

Several clients at once, each with its own rate, its own rhythm, and its own invoice. The work of tracking that isn't logging hours — it's keeping the boundaries straight. Schedules per client do most of it for you.

The consultant's actual problem

A single-client contractor can reconstruct a month from memory. A consultant running three or four engagements can't. Monday and Thursday belong to one client, Tuesday afternoons to another, and there's a retainer that assumes a steady eight hours a week whether or not anyone asked for them. Get it wrong and you either under-bill or have an awkward conversation.

So the useful question isn't "how do I time my work" but "how do I keep four parallel records straight without thinking about it." The answer is to describe each engagement once and let the days pre-fill.

One schedule per engagement

Each client carries its own recurring pattern — which days, what start time, how long — and its own default bill rate. New entries on the calendar pre-fill from whichever client is scheduled that day, and entries are color-coded per client, so a month's calendar reads as a picture of how your time is actually distributed.

Schedules can hold several blocks, which is what real engagements look like: a morning block and an afternoon block split by an unpaid lunch, or an overtime block at a higher rate. Blocks can carry a rate that differs from the client's default, and any single entry's rate can still be overridden — useful when one deliverable was agreed at a different number.

Rate changes and engagement dates

Schedule blocks take effective and expiration dates. A three-month engagement can be entered with its end date, so it stops appearing when it ends. A rate increase agreed in October for January can be entered in October and applies from January, with everything before it untouched. This matters more than it sounds: the alternative is remembering to change a rate on the right morning, and back-dating the entries you got wrong.

Billing several clients from one record

Every time and expense entry carries a billed or unbilled status, per client. When it's time to bill, each client's unbilled work becomes an invoice of its own — line items already priced, reimbursable expenses attached with their receipts. Invoices snapshot your branding at creation, so an old one stays accurate after you rebrand or move office.

Payments are recorded against invoices, in full or in part, and the app tracks balance due and reconciles unpaid, sent, paid, and voided status. Across four clients, that's the difference between knowing where you stand and guessing.

Irregular income, planned

Consulting income arrives unevenly, which makes set-asides harder and more necessary. Goals and obligations take a percentage of what you earn as you earn it — self-employment tax, retirement, a quarterly bill. Goals can be a straight percentage, or a target amount by a set date with the app working backward to the percentage required. Watching that accrue against live earnings is a better signal than a bank balance that hasn't caught up with the work.

Gaps between engagements

Unpaid time, a week off between contracts, or a client going quiet is recorded as a schedule exception, which carves those hours out of what you'd otherwise have been scheduled and earning. The projections stay honest instead of assuming a full week you didn't work.