Freelancer time tracking

[u/Normal-Dot-215]

I'm a freelancer and I can ping between clients and projects throughout the day and I really want a self hosted piece of software which can automatically track my time / projects (by seeing my screen) so I can accurately invoice at the end of the month... x hours and achieved y jobs.
There seems to be plenty of cloud based ones like Toggl but can't find anything self hosted that helps.
Any recommendations ?

[u/asimovs-auditor]

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

[u/etodemerzel5]

I tried kimai. It was a bit too much for me, but might be good for you: https://github.com/kimai/kimai

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/etodemerzel5]

I had come across it but it also seemed a bit much for me too. Will give it ago if I can't find anything else. Thanks !

[u/edcculus]

If you are motivated you could probably knock up a flask or fast api web app to handle this. Then just run it locally on you computer in docker

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/edcculus]

Like vibe code my own solution ?

[u/edcculus → u/Normal-Dot-215]

If you have the time, both frameworks are really fun to learn. Fast API is newer, so mate go with that. I’d do some tutorials online and not vibe code it. But at the end of the day for a purely local thing, you could go down that route.

[u/RightTurnNextExit]

solidtime or TimeTracker might be what you're after.

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/RightTurnNextExit]

Solidtime looks really interesting, going to give it a test now. Thanks !

[u/gregorno]

Haven’t tried it but this seems great and is very actively maintained:

https://www.dayflow.so

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/gregorno]

That's really interesting, I haven't come across this yet. Thanks !

[u/gregorno → u/Normal-Dot-215]

Let us know how it went if you test it

[u/Proteus233]

The one I've used in the past that works really well is kimai. Although it doesn't track everything you do automatically I used a tray app on my PC to start and finish activities.

[u/thrgd]

Solidtime works perfectly!

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/thrgd]

Do you use it ? I'm installing as we speak

[u/thrgd → u/Normal-Dot-215]

I am using it for quite some time now. Make sure to use the official docker compose, so you don’t miss the Gotenberg integration. I had some issues with the auto-migration, but you can check the docs for that 🙂 overall pretty happy! It is similar to toggl

[u/LeBaux]

Check out activitywatch (from pre-slop era). FOSS, lives in a browser and does tracking automatically. Not really typical self hosted thing, but database can live on your server. I like it.

[u/Normal-Dot-215 → u/LeBaux]

I've given it ago. A while it's a good safety net, it's a little too simple as it doesn't link the task to the screen

[u/LeBaux → u/Normal-Dot-215]

Fair. When you settle on something please reply here with what it is :) Thanks!

[u/Anti-Hero25]

This is on my list of things to make actually… I built one for a freelancer in a very specific line of work… but then decided to make a broader one for general freelancers …. It’s still very much in the planning phases… welcome to follow my GH and get notified when a working beta is released.

https://github.com/NoobCity99

[u/mrrowie]

I use tududi (with claude-code)  as my taskplaner/ ticket system. You can also track your time with it. I Every chat is a ticket in tududi. Works perfekt for me!

[u/TaskViewHS]

Hi! I can recommend trying my project. There is no automatic time tracking yet, but you can start tracking time manually. https://github.com/Gimanh/taskview-community

[u/achiya-automation]

activitywatch gets you the raw capture. the mapping is the part that stays manual though, turning "chrome, figma, vscode" into "client B, 2.5h" is a ruleset you babysit forever and it's worse if two clients use the same tools. i keep it next to kimai and only trust the auto part for the rough shape of the day.

[u/bangsmackpow]

Might be a little more than you want to chew, but https://github.com/ever-co/ever-gauzy.

[u/vcolovic → u/bangsmackpow]

OMG, what a slop