FreelanceIQ Help Documentation

A complete guide to the freelance time tracker, from your first project to the rate you need.

Last Updated: November 9, 2026

1. Getting Started

At the top left the toolbar shows how many hours you logged this week and what is kept; while the timer runs, it shows the timer too. On the right are Hide amounts and Help. The five tabs choose the view: What an hour pays (the report), Clients, Time and money, What to charge and Settings. The first time, the report offers Add your first project, Import a time report or Try an example. While the example is open your own data is put aside, and Clear the example brings it back.

2. Clients and Projects

Under Clients, Add a project asks for the client (a new name makes a new client), the project's name, how you charge, the amount, the currency it is paid in, the hours planned, the fees taken, the day it started and whether it is running or finished. Add a client sets a client's name, how many days they have to pay and a note. Each client is a card with their projects: the hours so far (billed solid, not billed striped, the plan as a line), what the project has earned and what each hour paid. The arrow opens a project's details: billed and unbilled hours, earnings, fees, invoiced, paid, waiting and not yet invoiced, the latest entries, and buttons to log time, add an invoice, edit it or mark it finished. Finished projects are shown on request.

3. How Each Project Is Charged

• By the hour: your rate times the hours marked as billed, counted in the month they were worked.
• Fixed price: the price spread over every hour you put in, billed or not, so a job that runs over pays less per hour.
• Monthly retainer: the fee for each month it runs, from the month it started; the current month counts up to today.
• I enter what I earn: the invoices you add, on their dates.
• If you invoiced more than the rate or price says, the invoiced amount counts. Fees taken come off what each project earns.

4. Currencies and Exchange Rates

Your currency is set in Settings (19 currencies); every figure is shown in it. A project paid in another currency has its own exchange rate: how much of your currency one unit of the project's is worth. For 15 currencies the rate is filled in from the European Central Bank's reference rates of 6 November 2026 (the UAE dirham and Saudi riyal at their fixed rates to the dollar), only as a starting point: type today's rate whenever it has moved. Changing your own currency does not convert the amounts you have typed.

5. The Timer

1. Under Time and money, choose the project and what the time is, then Start the timer; or press the play button beside a project, or press T to start it on the project you used last.
2. While it runs, the toolbar shows the time and the project; you can change what the time is, whether it is billed and add a note.
3. Stop and save (or T, or the stop button in the toolbar) saves it as an entry on the day it started, rounded to the step in Settings. Discard throws it away, with Undo.

The timer keeps running when you close the page, because only its start time is kept. Less than half a minute is not saved. After 10 hours a bar asks whether you forgot to stop it; a timer of more than 12 hours opens the entry so you can check the time first. A timer left running for more than 30 days is dropped.

6. Typing Time

Add time you already worked takes the project, how long, what it was, the day, a note and whether it was billed. How long can be typed as 2h30, 2 h 30 min, 2:30, 2.5, 2,5, 150m, 90 mins, 1:30:00, or as from and to times: 9:00-11:30, 9am to 1pm, 9-5 (eight hours) or 22-2 (past midnight). A bare number is hours, and an entry can be up to 24 hours. The line under the box shows what it was read as.

7. Your Business Time

Admin and invoicing, finding work, and learning and practice are logged against Your business, from the timer, a quick entry or the Your business card under Clients. This time is not billed to anyone, but it is part of what an hour of your work really pays. Until you log any in a period, the report uses your estimate of hours a week and marks it as an estimate.

8. Importing a Time Report

1. Export the detailed report from your tracker: Toggl Track (Reports, Detailed, Export as CSV), Clockify (Reports, Detailed, Export as CSV or Excel) or Harvest (Reports, Time, Detailed time report, Export as CSV), or use your own sheet with a date and the hours.
2. Choose Import a time report (or press I) and drop the file in the window or choose it, or paste the rows with their heading row.
3. The window lists each project in the file with its entries and hours. Add it to one of your projects or make a new one, charged by the hour at the rate shown (worked out from the file's amounts where it has them).
4. If the amounts are in another currency, check the exchange rate shown. If the dates are numbers only, choose Day first or Month first. Columns used lets you change which column holds what.
5. Import adds the entries; the message offers Undo.

The file is read in this browser; nothing is uploaded. Entries imported before are left out. What the time was (calls, email, revisions, quotes, travel or project work) is read from the task, tags and description, and the file's billable column is kept where it has one. PDF and old .xls files, files over 50 MB and Excel files that unpack to more than 64 MB are refused.

9. Invoices and Payments

Under Time and money, Add an invoice takes the project, the amount (in the project's currency), the invoice date, whether it is paid and when, and a note. The window shows when it is due from the client's payment terms. Invoices and payments lists what is waiting (with the days late) and what was paid, month by month, with the totals waiting, overdue, not invoiced and paid this year. The tick marks an invoice paid today. For hourly projects, Invoice the unbilled hours fills in a new invoice for the billed hours not yet invoiced.

10. What an Hour Pays

The report starts with what an hour of your work paid in the chosen period and a sentence that adds it up. The staircase shows each step per hour: the billed rate, then counting unbilled client time, after fees (the effective rate), counting time on your business, after your business costs, and after tax: what an hour pays you. Your target and the rate you need are drawn as lines across it. Under it you can change your target rate, hours a week on your business, costs a month and tax share. The four figures below it are what you earned, the hours you worked, what you kept and what is waiting to be paid (or your effective rate when you track no invoices).

11. The Checks

What stands out lists, most urgent first:

• your effective rate against your target (under 75% of it is marked "Act on this");
• your billed rate against the rate your plan needs, after two billed hours;
• unbilled client time of 15% or more (25% or more is "Act on this"), or 10% or less as going well, once you have 10 hours of client time;
• a fixed-price job more than 10% over its plan (30% is "Act on this");
• the client who pays least for your time, under 75% of your target (under half is "Act on this");
• one client paying half or more of your income (70% is "Act on this"; a common rule of thumb is to keep any one client under half);
• money overdue, and work not invoiced yet;
• fees of 6% or more of what you earned (12% is "Worth a look");
• weeks of 45 hours or more (50 is "Act on this"); client rates 2.5 times apart; income that swings by 30% or more over four months or more; and your business time being an estimate.

Where it can, each check says what it is worth a month and offers a button to act on it.

12. Clients, Hours and Month by Month

Which clients are worth the time places each client by hours (across) and effective rate (up), with the circle's size for what they paid; hover, tap or tab to a circle for its figures. Clients lists each client's hours (billed and not), earnings, effective rate, share of income and of client time, and how long they take to pay; the headings sort the table. Where your hours went splits your hours into billed, unbilled and your business, and by kind of time. Month by month charts earnings by client, hours and your effective rate for up to 12 months; click a month (or press Enter on it) to open it.

13. What to Charge

• The rate you need: type what you want to take home a month; tax, costs and fees are added and the total is divided by your billed hours in a year (52 weeks less your weeks off, times your hours a week, times your share of billed hours, your own over the last 12 months unless you type one). It also shows a full day's rate and compares the result with what clients paid you.
• Quote a fixed price: type the hours you expect; it adds how far your past fixed jobs ran over and your usual unbilled time, prices the hours at your target, the rate you need or another rate, adds the fees and rounds up to a figure that reads well.
• Raise your rates: what a rise adds a month for the same work, how many billed hours you could lose and still earn the same, and the raise each client under your target would need.
• What if you drop a client: what they pay after fees against what refilling part of their hours at your target would bring, and the hours a week you would get back.

These are sums with your own numbers, to plan with, not advice.

14. Settings

Money: your currency, the number style (1,00,000 or 100,000) and whether summaries show short amounts. Your business: your target rate, hours a week on your business, costs a month, tax share, hours you work a week and weeks off a year. Timer and log: the rounding step and the first day of the week. Privacy on screen: hide amounts when the page opens. The site's sun and moon button sets the light or dark theme.

15. Your Data, Files and Printing

Everything is kept in this browser's storage on this device; nothing is written until you add something. Under Settings, Your data: Export backup saves everything to a file, Restore a backup replaces what is here with a backup (files over 10 MB are refused, and every value in a backup is checked), Time entries as CSV and Invoices as CSV open in a spreadsheet, and Delete everything removes all of this tool's data from the browser, leaving the rest of the site alone. On the report, Copy the summary, Download CSV and Print the report (the browser's own Print prints the same report). Hide amounts blurs every amount on screen.

16. Keyboard Shortcuts

Outside a text box: 1 to 5 open the five views, ← and → move between the tabs, T starts or stops the timer, L logs time, N adds a project, I imports a time report, [ and ] show the period (or, under Time and money, the week) before and after, and H hides or shows amounts. Esc closes a window. On a chart, the arrow keys move between months or days.

17. How It Was Checked

Before it was published, the tool's sums were compared with a separate reference written from the rules on this page: thousands of typed amounts and durations, 700 made-up freelancers over every kind of period (earnings by each way of charging, in other currencies, fees, business time, costs, tax, every step of the staircase, each client's rate and payment days, what is owed), every check's threshold, the rate you need and the quotes, Toggl Track, Clockify, Harvest and own-sheet files as CSV and Excel, a damaged file and an Excel file built to unpack to 128 MB. The page was then checked in the browser on phones and computers, in both themes, with an accessibility scan of every view and window.

18. Troubleshooting

• The import says no date and hours columns were found. The file needs a heading row with a date and the hours, a duration, or start and end times. Include the heading row when pasting.
• Imported dates are wrong (March instead of the 3rd). Choose Day first or Month first in the import window.
• A project earns nothing. Give it its rate, price or retainer under Clients, or add invoices for "I enter what I earn".
• The effective rate looks too low. Check which entries are marked billed, and whether calls and revisions were logged on that project.
• The timer shows a very long time. It was left running; Stop and check the time, then correct the entry.
• My data is gone. It is kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts empty. Restore your latest backup.
• The amounts are blurred. Hide amounts is on; press it or H.

19. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form. Please describe what you did without sending your time reports or figures.