Time tracking
for consultants
Capture billable hours with the detail your clients actually want to see, manage retainers and fixed-price work in one place, then push invoices straight to Xero as drafts. No spreadsheets. No rewriting line items.
Free plan for solo consultants. No credit card needed.
Consultant time tracking is its own thing
Most time trackers were built for agencies, employees, or productivity nerds. As a consultant, your problems are different:
- Clients want to see what they're paying for, not a single line of "Consulting".
- Rates often vary by client, and sometimes by project within the same client.
- One client might be on a retainer, another on a fixed-price scope, another purely hourly.
- You're doing your own bookkeeping or working with an accountant who doesn't want to retype line items into Xero.
- You're billing yourself, so anything that takes more than five minutes a week is friction.
You don't need a Gantt chart or a productivity dashboard. You need to capture hours accurately and turn them into invoices without losing the detail along the way. The rest of this page covers how to do that, and where Hour Cap fits.
How to track billable hours without it taking over your day
Four habits that take the friction out of consultant time tracking. None of them are software-specific, but they're easier when your tool supports them.
Capture time while context is fresh
Stop trying to reconstruct your week from calendar invites on a Friday afternoon. Either start the timer when you start work, or log a manual entry the moment you stop. Five minutes of accurate detail beats an hour of guessing.
Write descriptions for the invoice, not for yourself
Your future client is going to read this. Skip the cryptic abbreviations. Note the outcome, not just the activity: "Fixed checkout error caused by stale session token" reads better than "Bug fix".
Separate billable from non-billable
Admin, sales calls, and proposal writing are real work but they're not billable. Track them so you know where your week went, but tag them clearly so they don't end up on an invoice by accident.
Set your rate at the right level
A single global rate works for solo consultants with one engagement. Most people need rate overrides per client and per project. Set the default, then override only where it differs.
How to bill clients for hourly work
Getting paid promptly comes down to three things: clients understanding what they're paying for, the invoice being easy to approve, and you not losing track of which hours have already been billed.
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Decide your grouping
One line per time entry shows full detail. One line per project keeps the invoice tidy. One line per date suits clients who want a daily breakdown. Pick the format that matches what each client expects.
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Push the invoice to your accounting tool
Manual line-item entry is where most billing time goes. If you use Xero, push the invoice as a draft. Review it, then send. Don't retype anything.
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Mark entries as invoiced
The fastest way to double-bill a client is to forget which hours have already gone on an invoice. Whatever tool you use, make sure it marks time entries as billed and excludes them from the next invoice automatically.
Invoice preview in Hour Cap. Descriptions are passed straight through to the Xero invoice line.
Where Hour Cap fits
Hour Cap is time and billing software built for consultants and small teams who invoice through Xero. Here's what that means in practice.
Multi-line descriptions become invoice lines
Most trackers give you one short field for a description. Hour Cap lets you write proper multi-line descriptions while the work is fresh. When you push the invoice to Xero, those descriptions are the line items, hours, and amounts already filled in.
- Rich descriptions on every time entry, kept verbatim on the invoice
- Group line items per entry, per project, per date, or per person
- Invoices arrive in Xero as drafts so you review before sending
- Entries are marked invoiced so they're not billed twice
Redesigned the header navigation to support mobile breakpoints.
Tested on iOS Safari and Chrome Android. Fixed z-index layering issue with the dropdown menu.
Redesigned the header navigation to support mobile breakpoints.
Tested on iOS Safari and Chrome Android. Fixed z-index layering issue with the dropdown menu.
Retainers and fixed-price work in one place
Most consultant engagements aren't pure hourly. You've got retainer clients with a monthly cap, fixed-price scopes that need a clear budget, and ad-hoc hourly work in between. Hour Cap handles all three without forcing every project into the same model.
- Retainer budgets that auto-reset weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly
- Fixed-price project budgets that warn you before you overrun
- Rates set at organisation, member, or project level so they cascade sensibly
- Invoice the current retainer period directly from the invoice screen
Try the free plan, no credit card
Hour Cap's free plan is built for solo consultants: unlimited time entries, one active project, billable rates, and reports. Add Xero invoicing on any paid plan when you're ready.
One click from timer to Xero invoice
The slowest part of consulting billing is usually the part between "I tracked the hours" and "the client has the invoice." Hour Cap shortens that to a draft invoice in Xero with full line item detail, ready for you to review and send.
Your Xero time tracking setup runs in the background. Contacts sync on connect, tax rates and revenue accounts come from your Xero settings, and you can use your existing branding themes so invoices match the brand clients already know.
Common questions
How do I track billable hours as a consultant?
Set up a client and a project, then capture time against them as you work. Use a timer for focused sessions and manual entry to backfill anything you forgot. Write the description while the work is fresh, not at the end of the week. The detail you record now becomes the line items on the invoice later.
What is the best billing software for freelance consultants?
For consultants who use Xero, the best setup is time and billing software that pushes tracked time straight to Xero as draft invoices. That keeps Xero as the system of record for finance and avoids rewriting line items by hand. Hour Cap is built around that flow.
How do I bill clients for hourly work?
Decide your rate per client or project, track hours with descriptions of the work, choose how line items should group on the invoice (per entry, per project, per date, or per person), and push the invoice to your accounting tool as a draft. Review it, send it, and mark the entries as invoiced so you do not double-bill them next month.
How is consultant time tracking different from agency time tracking?
Consultants usually bill in their own name with simpler rate structures, mix retainer, hourly, and fixed-price work in one engagement, and care less about utilisation reporting than about clean invoices clients accept first time. Agencies typically need approvals, multi-member tracking, and team-level utilisation; for that, see time tracking for agencies.
Do I still need accounting software if I use a time tracker?
Yes. A time tracker captures hours and produces invoices; accounting software like Xero records the invoice as revenue, tracks payment status, and handles tax. Hour Cap pushes draft invoices to Xero so you keep Xero as the source of truth without retyping anything. See how the Xero integration works.
How do I track time for a monthly retainer?
Set a retainer with an hours budget and a billing period (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or custom). Track time against the retainer client as usual. Hour Cap resets the budget at the end of each period and shows usage in real time so you know when you are close to the cap.
Related reading
Xero time tracking
The full overview of how Hour Cap turns tracked time into Xero invoices.
All features
Every feature in Hour Cap, including what's in the free plan vs paid plans.
For agencies
If you have a team, approvals, and multiple retainers, this is the same content scoped to agencies.
Track hours. Bill through Xero. Move on.
Hour Cap is the time and billing software for consultants who use Xero. Free to start, no credit card.