Design agencies sell expert time across client scopes. Everhour adds structured tracking, approvals, and reporting around that work.
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.
Design agencies need timesheets that show where expert time went: client, project, task, phase, person, date, hours, and billable status. That structure fits how design work is sold, because proposals commonly define objectives, process, milestones, fees, expenses, work schedule, and billing schedule before production begins.
Use the timesheet to support the job you actually manage. A brand identity project can separate discovery, logo exploration, design system work, revisions, presentation, and production management. Those labels help a studio compare scoped work against actual effort, explain invoice lines, and identify where review cycles changed the plan.
A design proposal often sets scope, process, schedule, and total price, usually as a fixed fee. That makes tracked time useful even when the client does not pay by the hour. The agency still needs to know whether the fixed fee covers the work, whether a phase is burning more time than planned, and whether a change request belongs outside the original scope.
Expense records matter for the same reason. Design-project expenses can include shipping, presentation materials, service bureaus, parking, tolls, taxis, approved travel, meals, and lodging. Some clients ask for receipt copies or the right to review project records, so a timesheet workflow should keep time, expense notes, and client approval context close together.
Generic labels like design, admin, and meetings make agency reports weak. They hide the difference between billable concept development, internal critique, client presentation, production revisions, and non-billable account coordination. A better setup mirrors the agency's process, with phases and milestones that a project manager can match to the signed proposal.
The main mistake is tracking only at the person-week level. For U.S. covered nonexempt employees, records must include hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek, and FLSA overtime is based on hours worked over 40 in a fixed 168-hour workweek. Client billing needs more detail than that federal baseline, because invoice support depends on project-level context.
A free, one-off timesheet is enough for a solo designer who needs to total one week's client hours or rebuild a simple invoice from notes. It becomes thin when a studio has multiple designers, overlapping projects, fixed-fee scopes, reimbursable expenses, approvals, and clients who ask for records behind a billing line.
A managed workflow gives the agency a record of who tracked time, who approved it, which project or phase received the hours, and whether the work is ready for billing or payroll review. Everhour supports that longer workflow with team controls such as approval rules, locked periods, admin corrections, weekly capacity, project assignments, roles, and team groups.
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.
A design agency timesheet should include the client, project, task or phase, date, team member, hours, billable status, rate or budget context, and notes when the entry supports a client invoice. For agency work, phases and milestones matter because they connect tracked time to the proposal, schedule, and scope the client approved.
Fixed-fee projects still need timesheets because the agency must compare planned effort with actual effort. A fixed price does not remove the need to understand margin, capacity, change requests, and phase-level overages. Tracked time shows whether discovery, concepts, revisions, or production consumed more hours than the proposal assumed.
Clear reports separate client billable work from internal, non-billable, and administrative time. For design work, useful categories include discovery, concept development, design production, revisions, client presentations, production management, and account coordination. The exact labels should match the agency's proposal structure, not a generic department list.
Covered employers under the FLSA must keep accurate records for nonexempt workers covered by minimum wage or overtime provisions, including hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek. The FLSA does not require a specific timekeeping system, but the method must produce complete and accurate records.
The biggest mistake is using broad weekly totals that cannot support a client question later. If an invoice says 18 hours of brand system work, the agency should be able to show the dates, people, phases, and notes behind that total. Weak time records also make scope creep harder to prove.
Everhour Team Management gives design agencies controls for approvals, locked periods, admin time correction, weekly capacity, roles, project assignments, and team groups. A studio can review submitted time before payroll or billing, protect approved entries from casual edits, and keep agency departments or project teams organized.
Everhour can track time inside supported project tools such as Asana, ClickUp, GitHub, Linear, Jira, Monday, Notion, Trello, and Basecamp. Designers can log hours against the task where the work happens, while the agency keeps project time available for reports, budgets, and billing review.
Move from scattered weekly totals to approved project timesheets. Everhour gives design agencies team controls for review, locked time, capacity, assignments, and cleaner billing handoff.
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