The core workflow
How Clients, Projects, Tasks, Time, Invoices, and Payments connect in Hoursmith — the one line everything follows.
Almost everything in Hoursmith is one connected line. Understanding it once makes the rest of the app obvious.
Clients → Projects → Tasks → Time → Invoices → Payment.
The six steps
Clients
A client is who you bill. You add their billing details once — name, address, currency, default rate, payment terms, tax — and Hoursmith reuses them everywhere. Add a client →
Projects
A project is a piece of work for a client. The project decides how time is priced: an hourly rate, a fixed fee, or non-billable. Projects can also have a budget. Create a project →
Tasks
Tasks break a project into work items on a board or list. They're optional for billing, but handy for organizing time, assigning teammates, and adding comments. Work with tasks →
Time
You log time against a project (and optionally a task) — with the live timer or by typing it in. Each entry is billable or non-billable and priced at the project's rate.
Invoices
When it's time to bill, Hoursmith pulls your billable, un-invoiced time (and any expenses) into an invoice, grouped how you like. You review, adjust, and send it from your own email. Create an invoice →
Payment
Your client pays by card (via your own Stripe account) or bank transfer, and you can record offline payments too. The invoice flips to Paid automatically. Get paid →
How the pieces lock together
A few rules follow from this chain — they're worth knowing up front:
- Rates cascade. A client's default rate flows into new projects; a project's rate prices its time entries. You can override at each level.
- Billable time is the raw material for invoices. Only billable entries that aren't already on an invoice can be billed. Once an entry is on an invoice, it's locked so your numbers can't drift.
- Invoices are snapshots. When you generate an invoice, the bill-to details and line prices are frozen. Editing a client later never changes a past invoice. See Immutable snapshots.
Ready to try it?
Walk the whole chain end-to-end in the Quickstart, or read up on each piece in Core concepts.