Ask HN: Freelancers / Hourly workers – how do you track your time and get paid? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Freelancers / Hourly workers – how do you track your time and get paid?

1 pointpbnjay3 comments

I've been freelancing for a few years now, and have always used a plain text file (or a spreadsheet if I'm feeling industrious). I've tried a few time trackers over the years but always end up forgetting to pause or start it back up, and end up having to do it all manually anyway.

So then there's the second part - how do you invoice clients? Personally I've just used excel templates and my clients have been happy paying with dwolla.com after the initial setup. How much in fees do you end up paying with other providers? Do any particular features make it worth it?

(full disclosure: I'm building a nearly fully automated time tracking and invoicing app which works great with my workflows, so I'm trying to get a sense of whether other freelancers have the same pain points I do and/or if it could work if I productized it...) Thanks!

I used harvest; along with good notes about what type of work each block was. Hit a button, instant invoice. Really great product.

The time tracking marked is already oversaturated with competitors - I can think of a half dozen from memory, I'm sure there's many more than that. Good luck to you sir - I hope you have a worth while differentiation strategy.

If I may be so bold as to suggest: build a product that's great, rather than cheap. Competing on price for a service like time tracking is silly - anyone who needs such a service won't care if its $6 a month or $25 a month, as long as it does what they want, and does it well.

I use wave accounting for expense tracking and invoicing. Most of my clients pay via check or ach.

For time tracking I create a spreadsheet per client job with the daily hours.

Time tracking and invoicing seems like a popular choice for consultants looking to white label something.

I use http://www.paymo.biz/ and a spreadsheet to invoice.

I also use a shared spreadsheet to track TO DO items and provide rough estimates.

My need is minor - almost anything would do.

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