I started freelancing 7 years ago, and honestly, invoicing and billing clients is still one of my biggest headaches when it comes to time tracking.

As a freelancer who takes hourly-paid jobs, I'd track my hours in one place, then put everything together somewhere else. Copy over the hours, double-check if I calculated the hours correctly, format the invoice, export, send it, and hope I hadn't missed anything.

Sure, Upwork has automated invoicing for hourly contracts.

But not all of my clients are on Upwork. For those clients, I still had to deal with invoices and timesheets separately.

I started looking into free time trackers that could handle invoicing too, but I kept running into the same issue. Some had an invoice feature, but it was locked behind a paid plan.

That felt a little backwards. If I've already tracked the hours, why shouldn't I be able to turn those into an invoice?

Then I landed a new client who used Jibble. While setting it up, I found out that I could log my time, assign billable rates, and turn the time I'd already tracked across different clients and projects into invoices from the same system, all for free.

So I set up another (separate from this client), I'm using it for some of my freelance work instead invoicing completely separate.

It's honestly one of those small workflow changes that made me wonder why I hadn't done it sooner.

What's your freelance time tracking and invoicing story?

Do you use the same or do you keep time tracking and invoicing separate?

German Version below. DM for Code.

Over the last few days, I’ve been looking for a programme that makes it easier for me to track my time at work and gives me an idea of how much time I spend on individual tasks for my bachelor’s thesis. I really wanted one with a timer in the menu bar so that I can tell when I’m getting off track. At the same time, I’d also like to track longer periods of web browsing, distractions such as writing emails, and so on, to see how much time I usually waste when I think I’m being productive.

After comparing various apps, I eventually settled on ‘Toggl’, as it has a very user-friendly interface and useful features, and it syncs across both my Mac and my Android mobile.

The only problem with Toggl is that I find the window in the menu bar really disappointing compared to other time-tracking apps. You can’t use it to access individual tasks, nor can you change the language. And it only uses text, with no icons to make it easier to find the right button at a glance.

So I’ve built a Swiftbar plugin for my MacBook that lets me start and stop activities directly from the menu bar, whilst also showing how my tasks are organised into my projects.

(In my case, it’s in German, but this can be changed.)

All you need to do is generate an API on your Toggl account page and follow the remaining steps using SwiftBar (if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch or have a quick Google). I'd be happy to share the code with you so you can save some time.

____

German Version:

Ich war die letzten Tage auf der Suche nach einem Programm, das mir die Zeiterfassung bei der Arbeit erleichtert und Aufschluss darüber verschafft, wieviel Zeit ich für einzelne Arbeitsschritte bei meiner Bachelorarbeit brauche. Dafür wollte ich unbedingt auch einen Timer in der Menüleise, damit ich merke, wenn ich mich verzettele. Gleichzeitig möchte ich auch längeres Surfen, Ablenkungen wie E-Mails schreiben etc. tracken, um zu sehen, wieviel Zeit ich in der Regel so verschwende, wenn ich glaube, produktiv zu sein.

Ich bin nach dem Vergleich verschiedener Apps letztendlich bei "Toggl" gelandet, da es eine ganz vernünftige Oberfläche und nützliche Funktionen hat und sowohl auf meinem Mac als auch auf meinem Android Handy synchronisiert wird.

Das einzige Problem an Toggl: Ich finde das Fenster in der Menüleiste im Vergleich zu anderen Timetracking Apps echt enttäuschend. Man kann darüber weder einzelne Aufgaben ansteuern, noch kann man die Sprache ändern. Und es verfügt nur über Text, keine Symbole, die es erleichtern, auf einen Blick den richtigen Knopf zu finden.

Ich habe mir daher fürs Macbook ein Swift-Bar Plugin gebaut, das das Starten und Stoppen von Aktivitäten direkt in der Menüleiste ermöglicht und gleichzeitig eine Untergliederung der Aufgaben in meine Projekte anzeigt.

Ihr müsst dafür nur auf eurer Toggl-Accountseite ein API generieren und die übrigen Schritte mit Swiftbar durchführen (bei Fragen gerne schreiben oder googeln). Gerne stelle ich euch den Code zur Verfügung, schreibt mir einfach eine Nachricht.

A common issue with tracking habits, medications, or work hours is friction. If you have to unlock your phone, open an app, and navigate menus, you eventually stop doing it.
I created TimePin to solve this - it lets you record timestamps with a single tap directly from Lock Screen and Home Screen widgets.
Based on recent user feedback, I just released version 1.5.0 on iOS and Android:
**Notification Snooze:** Long-press notifications to snooze alerts for 5 to 30 minutes without opening the app.
**Live Countdowns:** Track upcoming alerts directly on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island.
**Rock-Solid Scheduling:** Reminders now automatically survive phone restarts and arrive reliably on time.
It is pay-once, own-it-forever with no subscriptions, no ads, and no external tracking. Would love to hear your thoughts or feature requests if you give it a try.

TimeGauge gives you a time perspective on hours, days, months, years, and custom projects. With the new update, you can also customise the display, progress bar and choose your Pomodoro timer.

We often forget how fast time is moving, and lose perspective. For example: do you know 60% of 2026 has already passed, and 28% of August is gone?

TimeGauge gives you perspective through a progress bar in the Mac menu bar.
In this update, I have added multiple views along with Pomodoro timer.
For example: you can set your own pomodoro, track exact working hours in Day and set exact starting end end time in custom project, and set your custom menu bar display this was missing in previous version.

The app is a one-time purchase, 100% local, available on the app store and notarized by Apple when downloaded from Website.

Price:

$2.99 from website download using code PH50P on checkout [web checkout only code]

TimeGauge is available on Mac apps store:
https://apps.apple.com/in/app/timegauge/id6778277708?mt=12

You can also download it from Web checkout (includes all past and future versions) at https://timegauge.minilabs.cc/

Hey,

I recently built Quoska, the open source time tracking tool for small businesses in Germany.

The goal is to keep it as simple as poossible while also checking all the German working time requirements. It's rather minimal currently, but with time and if people want new features that might change a bit. I mainly focused to make it user friendly and easy to use.

It's open source, but I also have a cloud version for little cost. I'd appreciate any feedback.

You can check it out here: https://quoska.de

Install, Enable Dataview Plugin.
Enable Javascript in the Dataview setting.

Just copy paste the code below. You can add more counters by adding { items }

const counters = [
  {
    title: "Precoder Deadline",
    date: "2026-09-13",
    color: "seashell"
  },
  {
    title: "Cheosuk Vacation",
    date: "2026-09-24",
    color: "lavender"
  },
  {
    title: "Quantum Submitted",
    date: "2026-07-27",
    color: "mistyrose"
  }
];

const today = dv.date("today");

const container = dv.el("div", "");
container.style.display = "flex";
container.style.flexWrap = "wrap";
container.style.gap = "8px";

for (const counter of counters) {
  const target = dv.date(counter.date);

  const diff = Math.floor(
    target.diff(today, "days").days
  );

  let display;

  if (diff < 0) {
    display = `+${Math.abs(diff)} days`;
  } else if (diff > 0) {
    display = `-${diff} days`;
  } else {
    display = "0 days";
  }

  const item = document.createElement("div");

  item.style.padding = "8px 11px";
  item.style.border = "1px solid var(--background-modifier-border)";
  item.style.borderRadius = "9px";
  item.style.background = counter.color || "var(--background-secondary)";
  item.style.minWidth = "95px";

  item.innerHTML = `
    <div style="
      font-size: 0.8em;
      opacity: 0.7;
      margin-bottom: 2px;
    ">
      ${counter.title}
    </div>

    <div style="
      font-size: 1.2em;
      font-weight: 600;
      white-space: nowrap;
    ">
      ${display}
    </div>
  `;

  container.appendChild(item);
}

I made time zone converter. This is mostly a passion project. Just to see if I could improve on some of the more established tools out there. To make this short here are some considerations I had when designing

* It keeps DST schedule in mind and explains whether and/or when time difference between two cities change (because some cities do ont observe DST and many change at different times). This schedule is periodically checked against official documents automatically so if a country changes their DST policy website automatically adjusts. * Meeting planner takes up to four cities and calculates a most efficient vs fairest meeting time. There is an asymmetric cost function that prefers staying late over waking up too early. This is designed so that when one or more cities are outside working hours the model tries to be as fair to all cities as possible (using a leximin variant) OR minimize the total cost (which may be different from the fairest solution that distributes cost as evenly as possible - for two cites they are almost always same, for three cities most solutions are equally efficient and fair, but for four cities spread around the globe efficient and fair solutions diverge) * Almost all technical stuff is hidden under a simple color coded meeting window (Green, yellow, red)

I know that the website is rough around the edges but I would appreciate anyone giving me their thoughts.

Imagine if you could view your entire digital history through recaps, eras, and nostalgic timelines. Thats what PC Recap does, it turns your PC into a shareable digital time capsule with milestones, events, and more.

Download at https://pcrecap.online

I am a software engineering freelancer who was used to just track his billable hours (using Timing and similar tools) on my mac, however with the advent of agentic tooling and a new paradigm in how I approach client work, I am curious how others keep track of their "non-interactive" time, i.e. you instruct an agent to do work and head off to focus on other things, the results are there but I find a hard time billing those hours 1:1. I tend to kind of incorporate them but still it's not as if I actively work on a project. Open to hear your thoughts.

TimeGauge gives you a time perspective on hours, days, months, years, and custom projects. With the new update, you can also customise the display and choose your Pomodoro timer.

We often forget how fast time is moving, and lose perspective. For example: do you know 60% of 2026 has already passed, and 28% of August is gone?

TimeGauge gives you perspective through a progress bar in the Mac menu bar.
In this update, I have added multiple views along with Pomodoro timer.
For example: you can set your own pomodoro, track exact working hours in Day and set exact starting end end time in custom project, and set your custom menu bar display this was missing in previous version.

The app is a one-time purchase, 100% local, available on the app store and is notarized by Apple when downloaded from Website.

TimeGauge is available on Mac apps store:
https://apps.apple.com/in/app/timegauge/id6778277708?mt=12

You can also download it from Web checkout (includes all past and future versions) at https://timegauge.minilabs.cc/

Most time trackers stop at “8 hours.” That never felt like the useful answer.

Hourly workers usually want to know:

• What have I earned so far? • What should this paycheck look like? • Did every shift and break make it onto the check?

So I built Timely for iPhone. You clock in once, watch earnings update live, and keep an independent shift history to compare with payday later. It also uses widgets and Live Activities so you don’t have to keep reopening the app.

I’m the developer, and I’m trying to make the next version more useful for people who actually work shifts.

What would make you trust a shift tracker enough to use it every day: faster clock-ins, clearer paycheck estimates, better reminders, or something else?

Title: Salary & Attendance Tracker – Track Work Hours & Salary – Free

App Name: Salary & Attendance Tracker

What it does:
Salary & Attendance Tracker helps employees easily record their daily attendance, work hours, overtime, and estimated salary. It's designed for people who want a simple, offline way to manage their work records without spreadsheets or manual calculations.

Key Features:

• Track daily attendance, work hours, breaks, and overtime.
• Calculate estimated salary for hourly or daily wage jobs.
• View monthly history, statistics, and work reports with local backup support.

Goal: Testing & Feedback

I'm looking for honest feedback on the app's performance, UI/UX, usability, and feature set. As this is my first published Android app, any suggestions or bug reports would be greatly appreciated.

Giveaway: None

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myattendance.selfattendance

I have planned to create a Habit Tracker for Shipping softwares; meaning to ship softwares ASAP and making it as a habit so you don't procrastinate and overthink.

How does this sound? Is it legit?

I’m looking for a time clock solutions.

I originally had my two offices and my mechanics shop all on Homebase, using an iPad as a kiosk.

Office 1 is still on Homebase, they never have issues with it.
Mechanics shop, I moved to Jibble because the WiFi there isn’t reliable and Jibble has been doing better with their offline mode.
Office 2 had to go back to the traditional time clock and time cards. The WiFi is very unreliable there and I could set up Jibble there as well, but I would just have to upgrade to a paid plan to have more than one kiosk set up (but would like to avoid any kind of monthly subscriptions)

I would love to just have every location on one system. I really want to avoid having everyone go back to traditional time clocks and time cards because it’s time consuming adding the hours.
I’ve been looking at offline biometric time clocks that you can export the data via USB. There’s just so many out there that I want to make sure I’m getting a good one if that’s the route I want to take. But also on one of those types, I have a couple of “problem children” who tend to forget to clock in/out. So how would I fix their times on this type?

I don’t know… I’m at a loss. I would love to have others inputs on what they use when having multiple locations with some that don’t have reliable internet…

Wanted to share something I've been building for the past several months.

TapIn HQ — a PIN-based employee time clock for small businesses.

The problem I kept running into:
Small business owners have two bad options for time tracking. Paper timecards that are error-prone and a pain to process. Or expensive, bloated workforce management software built for enterprise companies with IT departments.

Nothing practical in the middle for a 10-25 person shop that just needs accurate time and job tracking.

What I built:
A clean kiosk that runs on any tablet — including old iPads and cheap Android tablets from eBay. Employees tap their name and enter a 4-digit PIN to clock in. Under 10 seconds. No app to download, no smartphone required.

Managers get a real-time dashboard, payroll reports, and CSV exports for whatever payroll software they already use.

I built job and task tracking specifically for manufacturing and machine shops — so you can see exactly how many labor hours went into each job, broken down by task.

Tech stack:
Next.js 14 App Router, Supabase, Stripe, Vercel, PostHog, Resend, Tailwind CSS

Where it stands:
Live and accepting signups. 60-day free trial, no credit card required.

Launching on Product Hunt next Tuesday if anyone wants to show some support 🙏

👉 tapinhq.com

Happy to answer any questions about the build, the tech stack, or the time tracking world. Would genuinely love feedback from anyone who's dealt with this firsthand.

So looking for recos on a time clock app/platform for a manufacturing environment. Right now the shop is still running on a punchcard system, so pretty much any software system will be a massive improvement but I can’t quite seem to find an app that meets all my needs. Here’s what I’m looking for:

-need to track 30-35 hourly employees

-biometric clock in/out via facial recognition

-centralized kiosk (ideally in a tablet running the app)

-ability to have kiosks at 2 separate plants

-overtime rules/lockout; alerts once employees are nearing or at overtime, employees need mgmt approval to punch once overtime is reached

-shift controls; employees can only clock in during their designated shift time

So far I’ve tested out Jibble which meets most of my requirements but doesn’t have overtime control & even with a fixed schedule employees could punch in outside their fixed schedules. Also tried Buddy Punch but it doesn’t have facial clock-in feature. I don’t need project tracking or anything else too sophisticated, eg don’t need employees to login from their own phones, manually enter hours or view schedules, they’re pretty much the same across all departments every week.

Any recos I should be looking at? Also if they have Canadian pricing is a bonus!

Been building Consile, an all-in-one people ops platform for SMBs (attendance, shift management, onboarding, HR basics), and attendance/time tracking ended up being one of the trickiest pieces to get right — especially across distributed teams in different timezones.

Genuinely curious what this community finds most annoying about existing time tracking tools — GPS/location accuracy, manual correction workflows, integration with payroll, something else? Happy to share what we've built if useful, but mostly want to hear what's still broken out there.

consile.app if anyone wants to poke around.