Bill the hours you spend
answering clients
Support is work. It is also the work least likely to reach a timesheet, because stopping to record four minutes costs more than the four minutes did. Track it where it happens and it reaches the invoice like everything else.
Customer Support Inbox is an add-on at $12 per seat per month. Included in your trial.
Morning. Two customers rang this week to say their Amex card bounced at checkout. Visa goes through fine. Can someone take a look before the weekend sale?
Hi Priya, found it. Amex was failing the address check on the new gateway rules. Fixed and tested both cards this morning, so you are clear for the sale.
A day a month, four minutes at a time
Nobody loses a day of billable time in one go. They lose it in four-minute pieces: a question answered between two other jobs, a change confirmed, a screenshot explained. Each one is too small to be worth stopping for, and together they add up to real money.
That is not a discipline problem. Recording the work has always cost more than doing it.
- The request arrives in a mailbox, which is not where your timesheet lives.
- Logging it means opening another application and finding the right client.
- By the time you have done that, the answer would already have been sent.
- So it goes unrecorded, and at month end there is nothing to decide about.
Make recording it cheaper than skipping it
The mailbox moves inside the tracker, so the client, the project and the rate are already filled in by the time you decide to log anything.
The timer is already in front of you
Forward your support address into Hour Cap and client mail arrives in a shared inbox. Start a timer while you write the reply, or log the duration after you send it. There is no second application and no detour.
- Senders matched to the clients synced from your Xero contacts
- Client, project and rate prefilled from the conversation
- Timer or manual duration, whichever fits the request
- The entry lands on the same timesheet as project work
A line the client will accept
Support lines get queried when they say "Support". They get paid when they say what was asked and what was done, and because the time was logged against the conversation, that detail is right there when you write it.
- Multi-line descriptions that reach Xero verbatim
- Group support onto its own invoice line, or fold it in with the rest
- The client's own wording is on the thread when you write the entry
Investigated reported Amex failures at checkout. Traced to an address-check rule introduced by the new gateway.
Corrected the rule and tested both Amex and Visa end to end ahead of the weekend sale.
Recording it and charging for it are different decisions
Plenty of support should stay free. That should be a decision you made, not a consequence of nobody writing it down.
All three are fine. The fourth option is the one that hurts, and it is what happens now: the hours vanish, nobody chooses anything, and at renewal you have no idea what that client costs you.
One forwarding rule
Your mail keeps arriving where it does now, and there is no mailbox password to hand over.
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Forward
Point your support address at Hour Cap
One forwarding rule at your existing provider. Everything sent to your support address from that moment appears in the shared inbox.
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Answer
Reply as your agency, and log the time
Start a timer while you write or record the duration afterwards. The client and rate are already attached, so this is one action instead of several.
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Bill
It reaches the same invoice
Support hours appear in the unbilled-work rollup alongside project work and push to Xero as part of the same draft, with the descriptions already written.
Common questions
Should you charge clients for support time?
If it is work, it is billable, and whether you invoice it is a commercial decision rather than a technical one. The problem in most agencies is that the decision never gets made: the hours are not recorded, so nobody can choose to bill them, absorb them deliberately, or use them to argue for a larger retainer at renewal. Recording the time is what makes it a choice.
Why does support time go unrecorded?
Because the cost of recording it is higher than the work itself. Answering a client question takes four minutes. Opening a second application, finding the client, starting a timer and writing a description takes about as long again. Nobody keeps that up all day, so the hours quietly disappear.
How do I track time spent on customer support?
Put the mailbox and the timer in the same place. With the Customer Support Inbox add-on, client mail is forwarded into Hour Cap, matched to the client from your synced Xero contacts, and you start a timer or log a duration from the conversation itself. The entry lands on the same timesheet as project work, at the same rate.
How do I put support hours on an invoice without annoying the client?
Detail is what makes it land. Because the time is logged against a conversation, the description can say what was asked and what was done, and it goes onto the Xero invoice as a line item verbatim. A line that says "Investigated Amex checkout failures, fixed address-check rule, tested both cards" is easier to accept than one that says "Support".
What if support is included in the retainer?
Then tracking it matters more, not less. A retainer with unmeasured support in it is a retainer you cannot price. Hour Cap counts those hours against the cap as they happen, so you can see whether the support you promised is the support you are giving, and size the next agreement on evidence.
What does this cost?
The Customer Support Inbox is an add-on at $12 per seat per month on top of a Team or Business plan, and you choose who gets a seat. You pay per person who answers client mail, and a Business plan includes the first seat. It is included in your trial, so you can work real client mail through it before deciding.
Why I built Hour Cap
I'm Jonathan, a freelance web developer in Brisbane, Australia. After 15 years, I wanted my client work to run on one system instead of separate tools that didn't handle retainers or Xero, copy/paste errors, and time that never got invoiced. I needed one tool that handled retainers, fixed-price, and hourly projects, let me write proper multi-line descriptions, showed me what was actually profitable, and pushed straight to Xero as invoices. Nothing did all of it, so I built one. Today it is pivotal to my business: all my time tracking, invoice drafting, and profitability runs through Hour Cap, and it scales the same way for agencies and teams.
Independent and self-funded. When you email support, you reach the person who built it.
Stop giving away a day a month
Forward one address and see a fortnight of client email land where it can be tracked, capped and invoiced.