Hoursmith for freelancers
A solo setup for freelancers — track your time, turn it into an invoice, and get paid. The Free plan covers most of it.
You're a team of one. You bill for your hours, you'd like to stop wrestling a spreadsheet, and you want invoices that look professional and actually get paid. This page is the short path to exactly that.
Who this is for
Solo freelancers — designers, writers, developers, photographers, consultants of one — who track billable time and send their own invoices. If that's you, the Free plan likely covers your day-to-day, and you can move up only when you outgrow it.
The Free plan includes time tracking, clients and projects, online payments, and a monthly invoice allowance. See Plans & limits for the current numbers.
Set it up in a few minutes
The whole loop is Clients → Projects → Time → Invoices → Payment. Here's the freelancer-sized version.
Create your account
Sign up and name your workspace. See Create your account.
Add a client and a project
Add the client you're billing, then a project for the work. Set a default rate on the client so it flows into every project automatically. See Clients and Projects.
Track your time
Start the live timer when you begin work and stop it when you're done — or log time by hand later. Each entry is priced at the project's rate and marked billable.
Build and send the invoice
When it's time to bill, create an invoice and Hoursmith pulls in your billable, un-invoiced time. Review it, then send it.
Get paid
Connect Stripe so clients can pay by card straight into your own account, or record bank transfers by hand. See Payments.
The features that matter most
- A one-click timer. Start and stop from the top bar; no fiddly forms. See The live timer.
- Invoices built from your time. No re-keying hours — billable time becomes invoice lines. See Create an invoice.
- Card payments into your own account. Online payments run through your own Stripe account, so the money is yours from the moment it lands. See Connect Stripe.
- Flat-fee pricing. No per-seat math — a simple plan you can stay on as a solo for as long as you like. See Plans & limits.
When you grow
A few things arrive on Studio that solo freelancers tend to want next:
- A higher invoice allowance, for when one a week isn't enough.
- Your own email domain, so invoices send from your address instead of Hoursmith's default sender. See Email settings.
- Reports, to see your hours and revenue over time. See Reports.
You can compare what each plan includes in Plans & limits or on the pricing page.
Ready to start?
The fastest way to see the whole thing is the Quickstart — it walks sign-up to first paid invoice in about ten minutes. Or create your free account and follow along.
Webhooks troubleshooting
Fix common Hoursmith webhook problems — failing endpoints, signature mismatches, timeouts, duplicate events, and secret rotation issues.
Hoursmith for consultants
Itemized invoices, PO numbers, detailed time notes, your own email domain, and CSV export — a setup for consultants billing corporate clients.