Every client request,
from email to invoice
A request arrives, somebody answers it, and the record of it lives in one person's mailbox. Track requests in one shared place instead, with the client, the hours and the invoice attached to each one.
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 request that only one person can see
Most agencies track client requests in the only place they arrive: somebody's inbox. It works while that person is at their desk and remembers everything. It stops working the first time they take a week off.
The failure is rarely dramatic. A request just sits, unanswered, until the client asks a second time in a shorter email.
- Requests stall in one person's mailbox while they are away.
- Nobody can answer "what is outstanding for this client?" without asking around.
- Two people reply to the same request, differently.
- A request became a piece of development work and nobody linked the two.
- The hours spent on the whole exchange appear on no invoice.
What happens to a request after it arrives
It arrives, somebody owns it, it sometimes becomes engineering work, and it always costs something. All of that is worth recording.
Arrives already filed
Forward your support address and requests land in a shared inbox. Known senders can be matched using synced contacts and saved client associations, with assignment based on your client settings. Link unmatched mail to the right client and project.
- Senders matched against Xero contacts and the domains you set
- Shared providers like gmail.com matched on the exact address only
- Forwarded mail attributed to the client inside it, not the colleague who sent it on
- Anything unmatched still opens a conversation, which you file in one click
Who is still waiting on us, without asking anybody.
Owned by somebody, visible to everybody
Everyone with a seat sees the whole inbox and can reply. Assign a conversation, snooze it until Thursday, leave an internal note that never reaches the client, and see at a glance which requests have gone quiet on our side.
- Assignment, snoozing, internal notes and unread badges
- A needs-response view that says who is still waiting
- Open, snoozed, completed and spam states per conversation
- An append-only event feed, so the history of a request survives
- Priya at Northwind wrote in Fri 09:12
- Assigned to Sarah Kim Fri 09:14
- Raised NWS-214 in Linear Fri 09:40
- Internal note: gateway changed their AVS rules Fri 09:41
- Sarah replied, 25m logged Fri 11:02
When it becomes engineering work
Some requests are questions and some are work. Connect a Linear workspace and any conversation becomes an issue in one click, routed to the right team, with a link card pointing back at the client who asked. Agencies running a Linear team per client can route each client's requests to their own.
When the issue is completed the conversation reopens in your queue with a reply already written. You read it, change what you want, and send.
Amex declined by address-check rule
Hi Priya, this one is fixed and tested. Amex was failing the address check on the new gateway rules, so you are clear for the sale.
Nothing is sent without somebody reading it first.
Where the hours go
A help desk tracks the conversation but does not know your rates or your retainers, so agencies end up running a help desk and a time tracker side by side and reconciling them by hand at month end.
Here the request carries its own hours. Start a timer from the thread, watch the retainer cap beside it, and the time reaches the invoice with the rest of the month.
- Time logged from the conversation, against the client and project already attached
- The retainer cap visible while you decide how much effort to give
- Hours appear in the unbilled-work rollup with project work
- They push to Xero as part of the same draft invoice
What changes once requests live somewhere
Common questions
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.
More about JonathanKeep the queue organised and the next reply ready
Receive requests or start a conversation with a client yourself. Business includes one inbox seat; choose additional seats for the people who need them.
- Save drafts, schedule messages and insert reusable replies with macros
- Give conversations ticket references, organise tags into groups and share saved views with your team
- Set response targets and review support reports to see where replies need attention
- Link an unmatched sender to a client; known associations help file future mail
Give client requests somewhere to live
Forward one address and watch a fortnight of requests land where the whole team can see them, and where the hours reach an invoice.