Billable hours tracking, built around client rates
Tickario turns the time you track into money you can bill: a rate per entry, project or client, each in its own currency, with totals per currency and a guard against billing the same time twice.
What billable hours tracking means in Tickario
Billable hours are the hours of work a client pays for. Tracking them well means three things: recording time against the right client, attaching the right rate to that time, and being able to show the result without rebuilding it by hand at the end of the month. Tickario handles all three in one place, in the browser, with no setup beyond adding your clients and projects.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where do rates live? | On an entry (for work without a project), on a project, or on a client, each with its own currency. |
| What do I see? | Cost next to every entry, a total per day or week, and totals per currency in reports and on the dashboard. |
| Can I bill two clients at once? | Yes: two timers can run together, but never for the same client. |
| Does it create invoices? | No. Tickario tracks and reports; it does not generate invoices or calculate taxes. |
| What does it cost? | Nothing. It is free, with no credit card and no trial countdown. |
Rates: per entry, per project or per client
A rate answers the question “how much is an hour of this work worth?” Tickario lets you answer it at the level that matches how you actually bill.
Set a rate on the client
If a client pays one rate for everything, put it on the client. Every project that belongs to that client inherits the rate and the currency, so you set it once.
Override it on a project
When one project is billed differently (a fixed-scope redesign at a higher rate, a retainer at a lower one), give that project its own rate and currency. The project rate wins over the client rate for every entry in that project.
Use an entry rate for work without a project
Not everything belongs to a project. For a quick one-off job you can start a timer with no project, type a rate and pick a currency right in the timer row, and that entry carries its own rate.
Each rate has its own currency
Clients in different countries pay in different currencies, so the currency is stored together with the rate, not as a single account-wide setting. Tickario supports USD, EUR, GBP, CNY, JPY, KZT and more. Your default currency only decides which one is shown first in currency pickers.
How the rate is chosen
Two timers without double billing
Freelancers often work on two things at once: a call with one client while a build runs for another. Tickario allows up to two running timers so you can bill both honestly. What it does not allow is two timers for the same client, because that would bill that client twice for the same minutes.
- The client is marked busy. While a timer is running for a client, that client’s projects appear greyed out in the project picker, so a second timer cannot be started for the same client.
- Overlaps are flagged. If entries overlap in time (for example after a manual edit), the journal shows a marker with the tooltip “Overlaps in time with another entry”.
- Nothing is blocked silently. The goal is visibility: you decide what to do with an overlap, the journal just makes sure you see it.
More on this in the guide how to track freelance hours.
Keeping the hours honest
Billable time is only worth billing if it is accurate. Tickario gives you tools for the three usual ways hours go wrong.
You walked away
Idle detection is opt-in. While a timer is running it watches for mouse and keyboard activity in the browser tab, and if you come back after the threshold you chose (5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes) it offers to subtract the time you were away. It only sees activity in that tab, so it cannot know whether you left the computer entirely; it is a prompt, not a spy.
You forgot to stop
Auto-stop stops a running timer by itself after 4, 8, 12 or 24 hours (or never) and emails you that it did, so a timer left on overnight does not quietly turn into a 14-hour entry.
You need to fix an entry
Every entry can be edited, duplicated, split in two at a point you choose, or resumed as a new running timer. You can also add a past entry by hand. Nothing is locked, so corrections are cheap.
Seeing what you earn
Cost appears next to every entry in the journal, and each day or week header shows the day’s time and money. Reports add totals per currency, the top project and the top client for the period. The dashboard goes further with widgets for total cost (today, week, month, quarter, half-year, year or all time), average rate, an earnings chart for the last 30 days and a weekly goal in hours.
What it deliberately does not do
- It does not generate invoices or send payment requests.
- It does not calculate taxes, VAT or exchange-rate conversions between currencies; totals are per currency.
- It is a single-user tool today. Shared workspaces and teams are in development, not available yet.
Being clear about the limits matters: if you need an invoicing system, use one and feed it from a Tickario report.