Everhour gives creative teams project budgeting and time tracking for client work, retainers, invoices, and delivery reviews.
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.
Use this page to plan time tracking for a studio, agency, freelancer network, or small creative team that works across clients and deliverables. Creative work often moves through briefs, concepts, revisions, production, client meetings, and reporting, so each time entry needs enough context to support invoicing and project review.
A useful setup records the client, project, task, billable status, and invoice-ready notes. A designer's entry can read: client Smith Co., project summer campaign, task concept revisions, billable, 2.5 hours. That level of detail helps a manager review scope, explain the invoice, and compare actual effort with the estimate.
Creative-industry work is often project- or task-based, especially for freelancers and small studios. Federal arts statistics report that more than one-third of all artists in the United States are self-employed, and the National Endowment for the Arts notes that virtually all design firms in the United States have fewer than 20 workers. Time tracking has to fit lean teams that switch quickly between clients.
Billable creative hours usually include chargeable client work under a contract, retainer, project agreement, or scope of work. Deliverable creation, approved research, client meetings, implementation, reporting, and in-scope revisions can be billable when the agreement allows them. Internal meetings, sales calls, proposals, onboarding, training, administration, and internal documentation usually belong in non-billable categories.
Creative teams lose margin when every active hour looks equally billable. A clear setup separates in-scope client work from internal effort, sales effort, and over-service. That split gives project leads a cleaner view of retainer burn, staffing pressure, and whether a client job is priced correctly.
Billable utilization uses the formula billable hours ÷ available hours × 100. Project profitability uses revenue − total costs. Time records do not calculate the full business answer alone, but they connect labor effort to budgets, retainers, invoice review, and project performance. For employers in the United States, covered FLSA records for nonexempt workers must still show hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek.
A free one-off tracker is enough when you need a weekly total, a simple invoice backup, or a short freelance project with one client and a narrow scope. It works when the person entering time also reviews the invoice, and there is no need for approval, budget alerts, team capacity, or a shared reporting record.
A managed workflow becomes necessary when tracked time feeds client invoices, retainer control, budget reviews, or payroll review. Everhour Project Budgeting supports hour-based and money-based budgets, recurring budget periods, email alerts, budget protection, expense inclusion controls, multiple billing methods, and client-level budgets, so creative teams can manage client work as it happens instead of reconstructing it later.
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.
Creative teams should record the client, project, task, billable status, time amount, date, and a short note that explains the work. Invoice-ready notes matter because creative work often includes revisions, research, meetings, and production details that need context during client review.
Agencies should define billable time from the client agreement, contract, retainer, or scope of work. Deliverable creation, approved research, client meetings, implementation, reporting, and in-scope revisions often qualify. Internal meetings, proposals, sales calls, onboarding, training, administration, and internal documentation should be marked non-billable.
Retainer work needs project-based tracking because one monthly fee can cover several deliverables, meetings, and rounds of revision. Entries by client, project, and task show where the retainer is going, which work is consuming the budget, and whether the team is over-servicing the account.
Creative freelancers can use the same basic structure: client, project, task, billable status, and notes. A solo writer, designer, or illustrator still needs records that connect time to deliverables, support invoices, and show when revisions or meetings fall outside the agreed scope.
The most common mistake is tracking only a total number of hours without project, task, and billable context. A total says the work happened, but it does not show whether the time belongs on an invoice, a retainer report, a profitability review, or an internal capacity discussion.
Everhour Project Budgeting lets creative teams set hour-based or money-based budgets for client work, including recurring budgets for retainers. Budget alerts can notify selected admins at defined thresholds, and client-level budgets can cover multiple projects under the same client relationship.
Track client work against budgets, retainers, and billable rules before invoice review. Everhour connects creative time tracking with project budgeting, giving teams a clearer path from logged work to profitable delivery.
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