What’s new in Hoursmith

The September 5–8 updates add Payouts: a private Agency, Owner/Admin-only workflow for compensation. Hoursmith records payments made elsewhere; it does not transfer funds or run payroll.

• Set dated hourly pay rates and a compensation start date. Estimates include billable Hourly and tracked Fixed fee work; individual reviews can deliberately include optional nonbillable/internal time.
• Prepare individual bills or bulk drafts for up to 20 members, review statement grouping, and approve immutable compensation snapshots. Approval locks sources independently of client invoices.
• Record external transfers and full/partial settlements, including different transfer and bill currencies. Reverse mistakes without erasing history; optional minimal payment confirmations default off.
• Forward a reviewed unpaid bill with one payee receiving method and an exact destination address. Review recipients, message, and PDF before sending; delivery retains the exact encrypted snapshot and never marks the bill paid.
• Team profitability separates work-period margin from cash dates, preserves native currencies, and makes missing attribution/FX visible. Reliable legacy hourly revenue can be recovered from frozen invoice evidence; other legacy revenue needs reviewed shares.
• Nine read-only REST endpoints and four explicitly subscribed webhook events support private integrations.

Managers and Members cannot access their own or others' payout records. Finalized bill/payment and sent delivery history remain readable by Owners/Admins after downgrade; new activity requires Agency.

Billing also enforces one no-card trial per workspace, provides paid Checkout recovery for canceled subscriptions, and keeps a workspace open if closure cannot safely complete billing cancellation.

The docs now include seven payout guides and a refreshed live OpenAPI reference. MCP publication is separate: npm latest still reports 0.9.0 as checked September 8. The source's 0.11.0 payout tools and unreleased 0.12.0 detail metadata are not assumed available in the published package.

The September 1–3 updates make existing workflows easier to review and recover:

• Active clients and New Invoice pickers show ready-to-invoice amounts from eligible hourly work, same-currency expenses, and available reconciled fixed-fee balances. These are advisory, not reservations or guaranteed invoice totals.
• Web offline recovery queues timer actions for the original user/workspace and click time, requiring a durable acknowledgement before removal. Rejections remain visible; legacy unscoped commands need review. Offline navigation no longer reopens cached private workspace pages.
• Unsaved-work warnings, stale-edit protection, and explicit per-tab invoice form recovery help preserve input. Recovery expires after 24 hours and never submits automatically.
• Task creation saves its initial checklist and time rows together; unchanged retries reuse the result. Starting a live timer remains a separately acknowledged action.
• Checking a verified Resend sender no longer resets its status to Pending. Recurring Resume respects occurrences already consumed by Generate now or Skip next, without backfilling.

Hoursmith for Chrome keeps frequent work actions beside the page you are working on. The extension is included on Free, Studio, and Agency and supports Google Chrome 120 or newer.

Add Hoursmith from the Chrome Web Store, then connect an Hoursmith team workspace from the toolbar popup.

A toolbar popup for the next action

Start, update, stop, trim, or discard the same server-side timer used by the web app. You can also log manual time, open assigned tasks, prepare an explicit page capture, and review recent entries.

A side panel for the workday

Keep My Day, Time, Tasks, Quick capture, or Workspace open beside the current tab. Search accessible records and open the exact project, task, time entry, expense, or invoice in the full Hoursmith web app.

Explicit capture and existing workspace rules

Page capture begins only after a toolbar or context-menu action and shows an editable preview before anything is saved. Hoursmith does not passively read full pages, form fields, passwords, screenshots, background tabs, or ongoing browsing history.

Your role, project access, billability, timer safeguards, invoice locks, and plan entitlements remain authoritative. Invoice construction and sending, payments, reports, imports, and administration stay in the full web app.

Read the Hoursmith for Chrome documentation.

Recurring invoices are now available to Managers, Admins, and Owners on Studio and Agency. A recurring series records what to bill and when, then materializes an ordinary Hoursmith invoice only when each occurrence is due.

Bill repeat fees, usage, or both

• Add repeatable manual lines for services, licences, and other predictable fees.
• Collect eligible, still-unbilled time from active Hourly projects and billable client expenses.
• Combine a manual base fee with variable usage in one hybrid invoice.
• Schedule every N days, weeks, months, or years, with weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly presets.
• Preview upcoming issue dates, due dates, and service periods in the series timezone.

A usage-only occurrence with no eligible work is skipped without consuming an invoice number or sending email. Future projections are not invoices, receivables, or revenue.

Review drafts or auto-send safely

Each occurrence can stop as a Draft or email automatically to versioned To/Cc recipients. Variable and hybrid auto-send requires a maximum grand total; an invoice above that ceiling stays Draft for review. Automatic delivery sends the normal invoice and payment link—it never charges a saved card or creates a payment mandate.

Ambiguous provider acceptance is held for explicit resolution instead of being retried blindly, protecting clients from duplicate email.

Change the future without rewriting history

Edit one scheduled invoice or that invoice and all future ones. You can also pause, resume without a backlog, skip or undo the next occurrence, generate the next eligible invoice as a Draft, end a series, or clone it for review. Past generated invoices never change.

Losing Studio/Agency access keeps all recurring history but system-pauses automation. Restoring access requires a Manager+ to review and resume each series; no backfill is sent automatically.

Read the recurring invoices overview, then create a recurring invoice.

Fixed-fee projects are now billed from their contract value, independently of tracked hours. The invoice builder has a dedicated project picker where you can invoice the full remaining fee or a partial installment.

A contract balance you can trust

• New fixed-fee projects start with Previously invoiced = 0.
• Older and imported contracts ask you to confirm how much was invoiced before this ledger began; entering 0 is valid and prevents old manual invoices from being counted twice.
• Project pages and reports separate the full fee, historical and posted invoices, value reserved in Drafts, remaining value, and any over-allocation.
• Draft invoices reserve their selected amount. Sending posts it; cancelling or deleting releases it. Concurrent drafts cannot allocate the same contract value twice.
• Fixed-fee lines keep their project identity and frozen text across invoice detail, public links, the client portal, print, PDF, and timesheets.

Clearer project policy

• Only Hourly projects ask for an hourly rate. Fixed fee projects ask for the contract value; Non-billable projects carry no user-entered rate.
• Fixed-fee projects can use an optional effort-hours budget, but not an amount budget — the fixed fee is the contract price, not a budget.
• Tasks, timers, and time entries on Fixed fee and Non-billable projects are always non-billable. Their hours remain useful for delivery and profitability reporting but never become invoice lines.
• Ready-to-invoice dashboards and reports now include remaining fixed-fee value and split unlike currencies instead of combining them.

Safer invoice payments

Hosted Checkout now resumes a matching open session instead of creating another full-balance charge. Cancellation, settlement, payment-option changes, and payment-account resets expire open sessions before the invoice state changes. Refunds stay tied to the merchant account that received the original payment, cumulative refund limits are enforced, and zero-decimal currencies such as JPY are converted exactly.

API and MCP 0.9

The REST/OpenAPI contract now exposes fixed-fee reconciliation fields and the updated project validation rules. @hoursmith/mcp-server 0.9.0 adds fixedFeePriorInvoicedAmount to update_project, documents the fixed-fee project inputs, and makes task/time reads and billability filters follow the effective project policy. Existing Hourly tool inputs remain compatible.

Read Invoice fixed-fee projects or see the MCP tool reference.

Creating a task for work that has already happened no longer means visiting the time tracker once for every day.

The new-task drawer now has an optional Time already spent section:

• Add Hours, a Date, and an optional note for the first entry.
• Choose Add another entry to add as many dated rows as you need. Each new row defaults to the day after the one before it and can be removed independently.
• The first untouched date follows the task's Start date, then Due date, then End date. When the task has no date, Hoursmith asks you to choose one instead of silently assuming today.
• Creating the task logs each filled row as a separate time entry on that task. Empty rows are ignored.

This works anywhere the create drawer opens — the project Tasks tab, global Tasks page, board, and mobile action — on every plan.

See Create a task for the full flow.

A time entry used to say how long you worked. Now it can also say when.

Start and end times on any entry

• Logging time by hand? There's an optional Start time and End time alongside Duration. Fill both in and the duration works itself out — 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM is 1h 30m, no arithmetic needed. Type it however you like: 9, 9am, 9:30, 930pm, 21:30.
• Already typed a duration and then a start time? The end fills itself in. Change the duration later and the end moves to match.
• It's both or neither — a start with no end is what a running timer looks like. If you've started work and haven't finished, use the live timer.
• Work that runs past midnight is handled: an end at or before the start reads as "Ends the next day", and the entry stays filed on the day it started.

You'll see it everywhere an entry appears

The start–end range now shows next to the duration on your timesheet, on project and client pages, and in the task time panel — with a small +1 when the work crossed midnight. Within a day, entries are ordered by when the work started, so the day reads in the order it happened.

Timers have always captured this and now finally show it. Entries logged as a plain duration keep working exactly as before and simply show no range — nothing to clean up.

Times are shown in the timezone of whoever tracked them, so a teammate's 9:00 AM start reads as 9:00 AM to everyone, while the 12-hour or 24-hour clock follows your own preference.

Exports, API, and MCP

• The time report CSV gains Start and End columns. If you read that export by column position, see Export the time report.
• The API accepts startTime and endTime on time entries, exposes an isRunning flag, and adds startedAtFrom / startedAtTo filtering plus startedAt sorting. See Common workflows and Filtering and sorting.
• @hoursmith/mcp-server 0.8 exposes the same thing to your AI assistant — "log 9am to 10:30 on the Acme redesign" and "what did I work on between 9 and noon yesterday?" both work now. See Available tools.

Also fixed

• A timer started late in the evening could be filed on tomorrow's timesheet. It now lands on your own local day.
• Imports from Paymo could leave behind a phantom "running" timer. They no longer can.

Read more in Manual time entry.

@hoursmith/mcp-server 0.7 now supports Streamable HTTP for MCP clients that ask for a URL instead of a command.

• Stdio remains the default for Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed, and other clients that spawn npx -y @hoursmith/mcp-server.
• HTTP clients can run the same package with HOURSMITH_MCP_TRANSPORT=http and connect to http://localhost:8000/mcp/.
• HTTP mode authenticates per request with Authorization: Bearer hsk_..., x-api-key, api-key, or x-hoursmith-api-key.
• New HTTP settings let you change the host, port, path, and JSON response behavior when a client needs it.

See Configure Odin and HTTP clients for the setup steps.

The optional processing fee is no longer card-only. You can now add a percentage or flat fee to any payment method — bank transfer, Wise, cheque, and other custom methods included.

• Card fees work exactly as before: collected at checkout, on top of the balance.
• Bank transfer and custom methods settle outside Hoursmith, so their fee is disclosure-only — the client sees a clear "amount due + fee = total to pay" breakdown on the invoice page, portal, PDF, print, and email. Nothing is auto-charged, and the invoice total never changes.
• Set a default fee per method in Settings → Payments, override or waive it per client, or adjust it per invoice on the Payment options card — the same three levels as the card fee.
• When you record a manual payment, the processing fee field now pre-fills from the chosen method's configured fee, so your books match what the client was shown.

Your existing invoices are untouched — no past invoice grows a surcharge.

You can now use Hoursmith in English, Spanish, French, or German.

• Set your App language under Account → Preferences. It's a personal choice — it follows you across every workspace and doesn't change what your teammates see.
• App language is separate from regional formatting (how dates, times, and numbers display), so you can read the app in one language while keeping your local date and number format.
• Your own content — invoice notes, client and project names, payment instructions, and email templates — is always shown exactly as you wrote it. Only Hoursmith's own labels are translated.

More languages may follow. (Marketing and long-form legal pages stay in English for now.)

Need a hand? You can now chat with us right inside the app. Look for the support launcher, plus a Support action in the account menu (and the More sheet on mobile).

• Available to everyone who's signed in — no need to switch to email for a quick question.
• Agency workspaces keep priority support routing.
• You can still email hi@hoursmith.app any time.

We split Hoursmith across two domains:

• hoursmith.app — the marketing site.
• my.hoursmith.app — the product: sign-in, your dashboard and settings, public invoice links (/i/…), the client portal, and the API.

Nothing you've shared breaks. Old hoursmith.app/i/… invoice links, portal magic links, and password-reset links automatically redirect to my. with their tokens intact.

For developers:

• The API's canonical base URL is now https://my.hoursmith.app/api/v1 (the old host still answers for existing integrations, but update your config when you can). See Authentication.
• The MCP server 0.6 now defaults HOURSMITH_API_URL to https://my.hoursmith.app.
• Bookmark my.hoursmith.app for day-to-day work.

API

• Tighter Member-token scoping. Member tokens now get 403 on clients (they previously returned client billing data), project money fields are stripped for Members, the members and organization endpoints no longer over-share, and tokens for closed workspaces are rejected. See Permissions & plans.
• Request ids. Every /api/v1 response carries an X-Request-Id header, and error bodies include a matching requestId — quote it when contacting support. See Errors.
• Fixes: DELETE /clients/{id} now correctly returns 409 when the client has children; project rate inheritance works over the API; and an idempotency replay race was closed.

MCP

• MCP server 0.5 — the five destructive tools now require confirm: true, and every tool advertises read-only/destructive/idempotent hints so clients can warn you. See Available tools and Security.

Sending from your own domain just got a lot more trustworthy — see Email settings.

• Live domain verification for Resend and Amazon SES: Hoursmith queries the provider for real SPF/DKIM/DMARC status, lists the records to publish, and gives you a Re-check button with a recorded "verified" time. (SMTP still shows the records for you to publish.)
• The test email now routes through your saved provider (it used to quietly use the platform sender), and names the provider used — so you get real proof your sender works.
• A Current sending setup card shows exactly how your mail will be sent.
• Re-saving SMTP/SES/Resend keeps your stored secrets — no more re-typing passwords/keys.

A batch of practical, frequently-requested improvements:

• Export the time report to PDF — a clean landscape table next to Export CSV, on Studio and up. See Export the time report.
• Unbilled expenses now count in the dashboard's Ready to invoice card and the Uninvoiced report — combined time + expenses, per client, with a deep link to the filtered expenses list.
• Duplicate an expense from any row (great for recurring costs) — Duplicate an expense.
• Email a receipt when recording a manual payment (off by default) — Record manual payments.
• A timesheet CSV twin of the timesheet PDF, and a Download all as zip of an invoice's documents.
• A workspace storage cap (default 10 GiB) as a fair-use valve for uploads.

Two related additions for backing up what you bill.

Expense receipts

• Attach up to 10 receipt files (PDF, PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, HEIC) to any expense — see Receipts.
• A paperclip count on each expense row opens a quick download popover (no need to open the expense).
• The receipt set freezes once the expense is on an invoice. Expense receipts are manage-tier only.

Invoice supporting documents

• A builder Supporting documents panel lets you attach a client-safe timesheet PDF (quarter-hour-rounded, reconciles with invoiced hours, no rates) and share expense receipts with the client — all of them or a chosen few. See Supporting documents.
• They appear on the public invoice page, the client portal, and the invoice email (the timesheet PDF is attached). Download all as zip bundles everything on the invoice detail page.

A batch of payment-method refinements:

• Card processing fee percentage cap raised to 50%, and the flat-amount cap was removed (a fee still can never exceed the amount being paid).
• Preferred currency per method now shows to clients — a badge and a "This account receives payments in EUR" line on the invoice page, PDF, and email.
• Internal notes disambiguate same-named methods on every internal picker (shown as Name — note, never client-facing) — two "Bank transfer" accounts are finally easy to tell apart.
• The invoice drawer's Record payment gained the "Received via" picker for parity with the detail page.

Payments

• Named payment methods. Settings → Payments is now a single list — a Stripe card row plus as many named manual methods ("Main bank account", "Wise", "Cheque"…) as you need, each with its own bank fields, instructions, enabled/default flags, and ordering. Pick which appear on each invoice. See Payment methods.
• Card fees can be flat or a percentage. Choose "% of balance" or a flat amount.
• Record-payment gains a "Received via" picker so payment history shows which account the money arrived through.
• API v1 invoice responses and webhook payloads now include a paymentMethods array.
• Fixed: multiple partial refunds no longer double-count.

Billing

• Change your plan in the app. The Billing page shows all three plan cards in every state, with upgrade/downgrade actions, a downgrade impact dialog, and a Resume subscription action to undo a scheduled cancellation. See Billing & plans.

A big day for getting paid and for integrations.

Payments

• Per-invoice payment methods. Choose, per invoice, whether clients can pay by bank transfer, card, or both — with defaults that cascade from your workspace to each client to each invoice. You can also add an optional percentage card processing fee that the client pays on top at checkout. The fee is recorded on the payment and never changes the invoice total. See Per-invoice payment methods.
• QR codes now appear on the public invoice page and the PDF, so clients can pay from their phone. Paid invoices render as a clean receipt.

Webhooks & API

• Delivery history, replay, and test events for webhooks. Inspect each attempt, re-fire a delivery (it reuses the same event id), or send a synthetic test event to a new endpoint.
• CSV export for projects and time entries joins clients in Settings → Imports — round-trips cleanly with import.

Improved

• Stripe Connect via OAuth. If your business already has a Stripe account, you can now pick which account to connect instead of creating a new one. See Connect Stripe.

• Filtering & sorting on every list endpoint — search, field filters, date and number ranges, and sort.
• MCP server 0.4 adds matching search/filter parameters and reconciles its contract with the API so the two never drift.

Hoursmith opens up to developers and AI assistants.

• A typed, versioned REST API (/api/v1) with Bearer-token auth, idempotent writes, cursor pagination, and a hosted OpenAPI reference.
• The MCP server (@hoursmith/mcp-server) wraps the API so AI tools can log time, create clients and tasks, and read invoices in natural language.
• Both require Studio or Agency.

Webhooks let you react to events in real time.

• Subscribe to events like invoice.paid, time_entry.created, and task.completed.
• Payloads are signed with Hoursmith-Signature (verify them).
• Failed deliveries retry with backoff over ~32 hours.
• Available on Agency.

Two additions land together:

• Expenses — track client costs, mark them billable, and add them to an invoice. Filter by client, project, category, and billed status.
• Telegram notifications — get mentions, task assignments, and "client paid" alerts in Telegram. Available on Studio and Agency.

A thank-you to early adopters: the first 100 workspaces on an annual plan get 50% off, forever. See Plans & limits and the pricing page.

Hoursmith is now safe to use with contractors and larger teams.

• Four roles — Owner, Admin, Manager, Member.
• Members are money-blind: they never see rates, amounts, invoices, expenses, or clients, and only see projects they're added to. See Money-blindness.
• Role-aware dashboards for admins and members.

Migrating in is now a guided wizard.

• Import from Paymo via API — clients, projects, tasks, time, and invoices, with a required team-mapping step.
• Import from CSV/Excel for clients, projects, and time entries, with column mapping and downloadable templates.
• Undo a successful import within 24 hours.

Task descriptions and comments now support a rich editor.

• Bold, lists, headings, links, and code.
• @mentions that notify teammates in-app and by email.
• File and image attachments via paste, drag-and-drop, or the attach button.

Give clients a tidy home for their invoices.

• Magic-link login — no passwords for your clients.
• They can view and pay invoices and download PDFs.
• Branded with your logo. Available on Studio and Agency. Single-invoice public links work on every plan.

Add a second factor in Account → Security.

• Passkeys (WebAuthn) for passwordless sign-in.
• Authenticator apps (TOTP) with one-time backup codes.

Subscriptions arrive with a deliberately simple, flat-fee model.

• Free (3 members), Studio (10 members), Agency (25 members) — one price each, no per-seat charges. See Plans & limits.
• A 14-day trial with no card required.
• Manage everything through the Stripe billing portal in Settings → Billing.

Invoices now send from your email, not a generic platform address.

• Configure a custom sender in Email settings — SMTP, Amazon SES, or Resend.
• A delivery log shows every send with its status.
• Available on Studio and Agency.

Clients can now pay invoices by card, and the money goes straight to your Stripe account.

• Connect Stripe from Settings → Payments (Owner/Admin).
• A Pay button appears on the public invoice page and the client portal.
• Paid invoices flip to Paid automatically. Manual/offline payments remain available on every plan. Requires Studio or Agency.

The first release brings the whole core loop online: Clients → Projects → Tasks → Time → Invoices.

• Clients & projects with per-client billing defaults and hourly / fixed-fee / non-billable project rate types.
• Tasks on a three-column board (To Do / In Progress / Done).
• Time tracking with a live timer in the top bar and manual entry.
• Invoices generated from billable time, with PDF export and a full lifecycle (Draft → Sent → Paid).