Time and billing software for service businesses

In a service business, hours are both your cost and most of what you sell. Time and billing software connects the two: the hour someone records on Tuesday ends up, checked and priced, on the client’s invoice at month end, without anyone copying it across from a spreadsheet. The job has five parts.

Hours recorded against the work

Every entry needs a person, a date, a duration and a place to belong: a task, a project, a client. An hour with no project can be neither billed nor costed. If you still track time on paper or in a spreadsheet, the timesheet template shows the minimum fields.

Approved hours, not just logged hours

Logged hours are what people entered. Approved hours are what a manager has checked: right project, right client, a plausible total. Billing from logged hours means sending the client your team’s typos. Approval adds one step, and it pays for itself the first time it catches a mistake.

Billable and non-billable time

Not every hour spent on a client goes on the invoice. Internal reviews, rework after your own mistake, travel you agreed not to charge: these are non-billable. They still cost you money, so the software should keep them in the record and simply leave them off the invoice.

Expenses: re-billed or absorbed

A stock-photo licence or a freelancer’s fee is usually passed on to the client. A courier, or a software seat bought for the project, may be absorbed. Either way it is a cost of the project and belongs in the margin, which is why time and expense tracking software keeps both against the same project.

Receivables

An invoice is not income until it is paid. The last part of the job is knowing which invoices are open, which are late and how much each client owes you today.

PLYNTUM is business management software for service companies. Time and billing is one part of it, next to projects and tasks, people and capacity, and client records, all in one workspace.

Time tracking

Time tracking is manual and on every plan. People enter hours against a task; the task belongs to a project and the project to a client. There is no background timer and no automatic or AI time capture today. Private desktop time capture is in development, with no release date. It is designed to exclude screenshots, keystrokes, page contents and document titles, and managers will not get a raw browsing feed.

Approval and cost

From Core, a manager approves timesheets. Approved hours become project cost at each person’s loaded hourly cost: the full cost of an hour, including overhead. Salary figures are visible to leadership only. The hourly rate calculator works out a loaded cost and a billable rate from pay and overhead.

Invoices, expenses and receivables

Basic invoices and receivables are on every plan, and an invoice can be shared with the client by link. Recurring invoices, for retainer clients billed the same amount each month, start on Core. Expenses are recorded per project on every plan.

Because hours, expenses and invoices sit on the same client and project, you bill from the approved record rather than from a spreadsheet. Project profitability sets approved hours plus direct expenses against the project value while the work is still running, not weeks after it closes.

Say a design studio works for one client through September. Three people record time on the client’s project. The rates and costs below are an example, not a benchmark.

Hours and fees

The manager sent 3 of the designer’s hours back: they belonged to another client’s project. Billed here, they would have put $240 on the wrong invoice. The 20 non-billable hours, internal reviews and one round of rework, stay in the record but not on the invoice.

Expenses

• Stock-photo licence, $240: re-billed at cost.
• Freelance copywriter, $600: re-billed at cost.
• Courier, $35: absorbed by the studio.

The invoice and what came in

Invoice total: $7,820 in fees plus $840 of re-billed expenses, $8,660 before any tax. The client pays $5,000 by the due date. Receivables show $3,660 still outstanding, and that is the number to chase.

Cost and margin

Margin: $8,660 − $5,299 = $3,361, about 39% of the invoice. Now look at the non-billable hours: 4 × $52 + 6 × $35 + 10 × $38 = $798 of cost that appears on no invoice. Without approved, costed hours you would never see it. The profit margin calculator runs the same sum on your own numbers.

Dedicated time trackers charge per person; PLYNTUM charges per workspace with members included. Prices for 10 people on annual billing, before tax, from each vendor’s own pricing page:

For time and invoices alone, PLYNTUM Core costs more than all three: $1,440 a year against $658.80 to $1,080. The difference buys projects, tasks, capacity, client records and receivables in the same workspace. If your projects already live in a tool your team likes, a dedicated tracker is the cheaper route.

On monthly billing Core is $150. A team of five or fewer can use Launch at $55 a month ($44 billed annually): manual time and basic invoices, but no approval and no recurring invoices. Only Launch has a free trial, for 7 days. Details are on the pricing page and in the PLYNTUM and Harvest comparison.

• Automatic time capture. No background timer, no activity tracking, no screenshots. Private desktop capture is planned, not available.
• Accounting. No ledger, bank feeds, tax filing or payroll. Your accountant still keeps the books; invoices from PLYNTUM are one of their inputs.
• Payment processing. Do not choose PLYNTUM to collect card payments. Money arrives through your bank or payment provider, and you record the payment against the invoice.
• Approval and recurring invoices on Launch. Both start on Core.
• Proposals and a sales pipeline. Both are planned as part of a sales CRM and are not available today.

When a dedicated time tracker is the better fit

• You want timesheets filled in for you now. Timely’s pricing page lists automatic tracking on all plans, and Clockify lists an auto tracker from its free plan (both read 22 September 2026).
• You only need hours and invoices. Clockify Standard or Harvest Teams costs less for 10 people, as the table shows.
• You want to start free. Clockify is free for up to 5 users and Toggl Track for up to 3 (read 22 September 2026). PLYNTUM has no free plan.
• You depend on integrations. Harvest has a long track record and many integrations; PLYNTUM does not match that.

The guide to the best time tracking software compares the options in more detail.

When accounting software is the better fit

If you work alone or with one partner, mostly send invoices and match them to the bank, the invoicing in your accounting software may be all you need. A fixed monthly fee needs no time system to bill. For an occasional invoice, an invoice template is enough.

1. Costs and rates. Enter each person’s loaded hourly cost and agree billable rates with the client before the work starts.
2. One client, one project. Add a client you are working for now and one live project with its tasks.
3. Hours every day. Ask the team to record time each evening, not on Friday from memory. Here is where unlogged hours go.
4. Expenses. Record what the project paid for and decide which items you re-bill.
5. Month end. Approve the hours (Core), send the invoice, and record the payment when it arrives. Then compare the project’s cost with what you billed.