Time Tracking Software for Small Business: Billable Hours to Invoice

For an agency, consultant or studio, tracked time is not an HR record. It is the raw material for the invoice. The useful questions are whether a tool can attach every hour to a client and a project, put a billable rate on it, and turn the result into an invoice or send it to your accounting software without retyping. This guide compares five tools on exactly that, with the price of each plan that does it. Every price is in US dollars from the vendor's own pricing page.

It covers office and remote teams who bill clients. Clocking hourly staff in and out at a job site is a different problem with different tools.

The tools at a glance

From timer to invoice: what to check

Billable time takes three steps, and tools differ at each one:

1. Rates. Can you set an hourly rate per project, per person, or per person on a project? A designer and a developer on the same job rarely bill at the same rate.
2. Reports. Can you filter time by client, project and date, mark it billable or not, and export it as CSV or Excel?
3. Billing. Does the tool create the invoice itself, or send the hours to QuickBooks or Xero, or do you copy totals by hand?

The free plans usually stop at step 1: they track time but leave out billable rates. Expect to pay for the plan that adds rates, and check whether that plan also covers step 3.

The free plans, side by side

Free plans are a fair way to test whether your team will actually track time, but each stops short of billing in a different place.

Harvest's is the only free plan that can produce a client invoice, but it is for one person. Clockify's is the roomiest for a small team that wants to see where its hours go before it starts billing from them.

Harvest: best for tracking time and invoicing in one app

Harvest is built around the path from hours to invoice. Its Free plan is free forever for 1 seat and 2 projects, and even that plan includes time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking, project estimates, basic reporting and up to 4 custom reports. A freelancer with two clients can run their billing on it.

Teams costs $9 a seat a month billed yearly ($108 a seat a year), or $11 monthly, with unlimited seats. It adds billable and cost rates per person, team reports on capacity and utilization, and the accounting and payment integrations: QuickBooks Online, Xero, Stripe and Deel. Enterprise costs $14 a seat billed yearly ($17.50 monthly) and adds profitability reporting, timesheet approval, unlimited custom reports, custom CSV exports and required notes on time entries. Annual billing saves 20%.

What to watch:

• Approvals cost Enterprise. If a manager must sign off on hours before they are billed, you pay $14 a seat, not $9.
• Profitability is Enterprise too. Teams shows what you billed; Enterprise shows what each project earned after cost rates.
• Stripe is the payment processor Harvest names. It does not list PayPal on its pricing page.

Choose it if you want one app from the timer to a paid invoice, and you would rather not maintain a separate invoicing tool.

Toggl Track: best timer, with invoices made from reports

Toggl Track is known for the timer itself: manual and real-time timers, a focus mode and calendar integrations. Its Free plan covers up to 3 users.

Starter costs $9 a user a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly, and adds billable rates at the workspace, member and project level, project estimates, timeline views and team-level reports. Premium costs $16 a user billed yearly ($24 monthly) and adds rates per project member, timesheet approvals and profitability reports. Reports export as CSV or Excel (XLSX) files.

Invoicing works from reports. Toggl's help center explains that you filter a Summary or Detailed report to the entries you want, choose Export, then Create Invoice, edit the pre-filled details (billing address, purchase order, tax, a memo) and download a PDF. A Summary report gives one line per project; a Detailed report lists every time entry. Invoices made on the Free plan carry the Toggl logo, and sending invoices to QuickBooks is a Starter feature.

What to watch:

• No "paid" status. Toggl has no built-in way to mark billed entries as paid. Its suggested workaround is tagging them "paid" and filtering them out of the next invoice.
• The old accounting integrations are gone. Toggl's integrations page marks QuickBooks Online and Xero as legacy integrations it does not currently support; the QuickBooks invoice push above is the current route.
• The invoice layout is fixed. You can edit the fields, not the template or font.

Choose it if your team will only track time when the timer is effortless, and a PDF invoice or a push to QuickBooks covers your billing.

Clockify: best price per seat for billable time

Clockify is the cheapest way to put a team on billable time. Its Free plan covers up to 5 users (you plus 4 invitees) with unlimited tracking, a timer, timesheet, calendar, mobile and desktop apps and reports. It has no billable rates, report exports are PDF only, and reports cover one month at a time.

Each paid tier adds one piece of the billing chain:

• Basic, $3.99 a seat a month billed yearly ($4.99 monthly): billable rates for users and projects, so reports show what you earned.
• Standard, $5.49 billed yearly ($6.99 monthly): invoicing from tracked time (download as PDF and track each invoice's status), recurring invoices, timesheet approval, task rates, rounding and the QuickBooks integration, which syncs users and projects and sends time to QuickBooks for payroll and billing.
• Pro, $7.99 billed yearly ($9.99 monthly): project budgets and estimates, labor cost and profit, expenses and scheduling.

Clockify bills every active or invited user on the team page as a seat, including the owner and admins.

What to watch:

• Basic shows money but cannot bill it. For invoices or QuickBooks you need Standard.
• Budgets are on Pro. If you sell fixed-fee projects and need to see when hours eat the margin, budget for $7.99 a seat.

Choose it if you want rates, invoices and a QuickBooks link for the lowest cost: five people on Standard cost $329.40 a year.

ClickUp: time tracking inside your project tool

If your team already plans work in ClickUp, its built-in timer means hours are logged against the same tasks you manage. The limits are set out in ClickUp's help center, and they matter for billing:

Billable flags are part of ClickUp's "advanced time tracking" group, which also covers logging time for other users and tracking time not tied to a task. Timesheet approvals start on Enterprise for new plans. The help center puts unlimited billable entries on Business Plus and above; ClickUp's current pricing page no longer lists Business Plus, so for a new customer that means Enterprise or Max.

ClickUp also has no invoicing, so billable hours have to be exported and invoiced elsewhere.

What to watch:

• "Uses" run out. Once the 100 billable flags on Business are spent, that feature is gone until you move up a plan.

Choose it if you mainly need to see how long tasks take inside the tool you plan in, and you invoice from separate software. Our guide to free project management software covers ClickUp's free plan in more detail.

QuickBooks Time: best if hours feed QuickBooks payroll

QuickBooks Time comes at the problem from the payroll side. It tracks employee hours and syncs time data to QuickBooks for accounting and payroll. If you haven't picked a payroll service yet, our best payroll for small business guide compares QuickBooks Payroll with Gusto, OnPay, Square and Patriot.

Time Premium lists a $20 monthly base fee plus $10 per user a month; the base fee includes one admin. Time Elite lists $40 a month plus $12 per user, and adds project tracking, project estimates against actual hours, a project activity feed, mileage tracking and timesheet signatures. At the time of writing, Intuit is offering 50% off the base fee for the first 3 months; the promotion applies to the base fee, and the page lists the per-user fees at full price. Five users on Time Premium come to $70 a month at list price.

What to watch:

• Project tracking is on Elite. Premium tracks hours, not budgets against projects.
• Its page does not describe client billing. It covers syncing time to accounting and payroll, not turning billable hours into client invoices, so confirm that workflow with Intuit before you buy.

Choose it if your hourly staff are paid through QuickBooks Payroll and the main goal is accurate payroll. See QuickBooks Payroll pricing for that side of the bill.

Project management tools with timesheets

Some project tools now include timesheets, which can save a second subscription if your billing is simple:

• Zoho Projects Premium, at $4 a user a month billed yearly ($5 monthly), includes time logs and timesheets with multi-level approvals.
• Asana includes its own time tracking, comparing estimated and actual time, from Advanced at $24.99 a user a month billed annually. Its free and Starter plans rely on time tracking integrations.

Neither creates client invoices from those hours, so they suit teams that bill fixed fees and track time to check estimates. For a full comparison of project tools, see the best project management software.

What five people pay in a year

Where the invoice gets made

If your time tracker does not create invoices, or you already invoice from accounting software, the hours need a clean path there. Harvest, Toggl Track and Clockify all reach QuickBooks in some form. Our guide to invoicing software for small business compares the invoicing side, including payment fees, and bookkeeping software for freelancers covers the one-person case. Law firms, which need trust accounting alongside billable hours, should start with legal billing software instead.

How to choose

1. Freelancer with one or two clients? Harvest Free, which includes invoicing.
2. Small team, lowest cost for rates and invoices? Clockify Standard.
3. Team that needs the timer to be painless? Toggl Track Starter; add Premium for approvals.
4. Want time, invoices and QuickBooks or Xero in one place? Harvest Teams; Enterprise for approvals and profitability.
5. Already planning work in ClickUp? Use its timer for effort, but check the billable limits before relying on it for invoices.
6. Hourly employees on QuickBooks Payroll? QuickBooks Time.