Marketing agencies need client-level time records for campaigns and retainers. Everhour connects tracked hours to budgets and billing.
Enter your time in and out for each day. Overtime and gross pay are calculated automatically.
| Day | Time In | Break Start | Break End | Break | Time Out | Total |
|---|
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
A marketing agency billable-hours tracker helps you record the time spent on client accounts, campaigns, projects, and tasks. The useful output is more than a weekly total. Account managers, creatives, media buyers, finance staff, and leadership need the same time data organized in a way that matches the client relationship and the work sold.
A practical agency record shows the client, campaign or project, task type, person, date, time spent, billing status, and notes. A paid social campaign can include line items for strategy, creative review, media setup, reporting, and client calls. That structure gives billing a defensible invoice trail and gives managers a clearer view of scope.
Agency time tracking works best when every entry maps to the financial promise behind the work. Marketing and advertising work commonly involves contracts, budgets, media plans, cost estimates, and creative delivery, so time records need to support budget review as well as billing. A single client can have a retainer, a fixed-scope campaign, and separate ad hoc requests.
Use different tracking levels for different questions. Client-level time shows account profitability. Campaign-level time shows whether a launch is consuming more effort than planned. Task-level time shows whether strategy, design, copy, media buying, or reporting is driving the overrun. That detail turns timesheets into budget evidence instead of a loose list of hours.
The most common mistake is logging agency time with internal descriptions that do not explain client value. Entries such as "meeting," "design," or "updates" create friction during invoice review because the client cannot connect the time to a deliverable. Stronger entries name the campaign, the task, and the business reason, such as "Q3 email campaign, subject-line test review, client revision round."
Another mistake is mixing billable and nonbillable work inside the same entry. Sales follow-up, internal training, agency operations, and general account planning can be worth tracking, but they should not blur into client-billable production time. Separate categories make utilization, capacity, and profit-loss review more accurate without forcing managers to reconstruct the week later.
A free tracker is enough when you need a one-off weekly total, a short contractor invoice, or a quick check on hours for one campaign. It works when the agency has few people, few clients, and no recurring budget rules. The limits appear once tracked time must support retainers, client-level budgets, invoice review, approvals, and finance handoff.
A managed workflow becomes the better fit when time needs to feed project budgets in real time. Everhour Project Budgeting supports hour-based and money-based budgets, recurring budget periods, threshold email alerts, budget protection, expense inclusion controls, multiple billing methods, and client-level budgets. That helps agencies manage retainers, time-and-materials work, and fixed-fee projects from the same time data.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
High Performer
G2
Summer 2026
Best Ease Of Use
Capterra
Summer 2026
Rated in the top time trackers across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — with consistent praise for ease of use, integrations, and support.
Agency time should usually be tracked at all three levels. The client level supports account profitability, the campaign or project level supports budget review, and the task level explains where the effort went. A useful setup lets a designer, strategist, account manager, and finance reviewer read the same entry without asking for context.
Billable activities usually include client-approved strategy, creative production, campaign setup, media planning, reporting, client meetings, revisions, and project management tied to a contracted scope. Internal sales work, training, hiring, agency operations, and general administration should be tracked separately unless a contract specifically allows billing for that work.
Retainers need tracking against a recurring budget, not only a monthly invoice total. Each entry should identify the client, retainer period, project or campaign, task, person, and billable status. That structure shows whether the agency is within scope, approaching the agreed limit, or absorbing extra work that should become a change request.
U.S. agencies may choose any complete and accurate method for tracking covered nonexempt workers' time. For employees covered by the FLSA minimum wage or overtime provisions, the payroll record still has to show hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek, even when the agency uses project-based time entries for client billing.
The FLSA does not require overtime premium pay solely for Saturday, Sunday, holiday, or regular rest-day work. Covered nonexempt employees must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a fixed 168-hour workweek at not less than one and one-half times the regular rate, unless another law, policy, or agreement adds more.
Everhour Project Budgeting lets agencies track hour-based or money-based budgets as people log time to client work. Teams can use recurring budget periods for retainers, client-level budgets across multiple projects, and threshold alerts at 75%, 90%, 100%, or custom limits before scope problems reach the invoice stage.
Track approved agency hours against client budgets, retainers, and billing rules. Everhour connects project time to budget alerts and client-level budget visibility.
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