Time tracking 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: by month end, the hour someone recorded on Tuesday has been checked and priced, so you know what belongs on the client’s invoice without rebuilding the month 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. Invoicing unchecked 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 client records, all in one workspace.

Time tracking

Time tracking is on every plan. People start and stop a timer on a task or enter the hours by hand; the task belongs to a project and the project to a client. Time is kept to the minute, with no rounding rules, and non-billable time can be marked as such. There is no background or automatic 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, rates and cost

From Core, people submit their week and a manager approves or rejects it; submitted and approved weeks lock. Billable rates also start on Core. Logged 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

Invoices and receivables are on every plan. On every plan you can write an invoice with free-form lines, in GEL, USD or EUR. You can share it with the client by link, email it from PLYNTUM once the workspace’s email sending is set up, or print it or save it as a PDF from the print view. Recurring invoices (weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly), for retainer clients billed the same amount each period, start on Core. Expenses are recorded per project on every plan.

From Core, PLYNTUM drafts an invoice from approved time. A person with access to finance picks a client, optionally one project, and a period. The approved, billable hours from approved timesheet weeks are priced at the billable rates set in PLYNTUM, one line per project and rate, with hours rounded to two decimals. The draft opens in the invoice editor: the lines stay editable, the draft can be saved, and nothing is issued or sent until you issue it. Hours already in a draft or an invoice are shown and are not billed twice; removing a time line, deleting the draft or voiding the invoice frees them again. Time without a rate is shown separately and not drafted, time logged to a retainer instead of a project is not billed hourly, and each draft has one currency. Because hours, expenses and invoices sit on the same client and project, project profitability sets logged hours plus direct expenses against the project value while the work is still running, not weeks after it closes. Payments are recorded by hand against the invoice: there is no card or online payment collection. For the accountant, invoices and payments, expenses and payroll export as CSV files.

Every service firm sells time, but not every firm bills by the hour. What a firm bills by decides what its time billing software has to do. The table sets out the common patterns and what PLYNTUM covers today.

Where PLYNTUM is not the right fit. Law firms often bill in 6-minute increments and must hold client money in trust accounts. PLYNTUM keeps time to the minute with no rounding rules and has no legal or trust-accounting features, so a legal billing tool is the better choice. The same goes for a firm whose clients pay by card from an invoice link: PLYNTUM records payments by hand and collects none online. And if you want invoice lines from tracked hours that nobody approves, dedicated tools such as Harvest or Clockify do that today (see the guide to time tracking and invoicing software), while PLYNTUM drafts invoices only from approved time, from Core.

For agencies, see the agency billing software guide. Time tracking in PLYNTUM describes the timer, timesheets and approval.

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, so the designer moved them there and 52 stay on this one. 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.

Most time and billing tools 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, read on 24 October 2026:

For time and invoices alone, PLYNTUM Core costs more than the four time trackers: $1,440 a year against $358.80 to $1,080. Per their pricing pages, three of them create invoices from tracked time, and Toggl Track exports billable data instead; PLYNTUM Core drafts an invoice from approved time, which you check, edit and issue yourself. The difference buys projects, tasks, client records and receivables in the same workspace. Teamwork.com, a project tool that builds invoices from logged time, costs more than Core on its Accelerate plan. If your projects already live in a tool your team likes, a dedicated tracker is the cheaper route.

On monthly billing the same 10 people cost $39.90 a month on TimeCamp Starter, $69.90 on Clockify Standard, from $110 on Harvest Teams, $120 on Toggl Track Starter and $299.90 on Teamwork.com Accelerate; PLYNTUM Core is $150. A team of five or fewer can use Launch at $55 a month ($44 billed annually): the timer, manual time entry and invoices with free-form lines, but no approval, no billable rates, no drafts from approved time and no recurring invoices. Only Launch has a free trial, for 7 days. TimeCamp’s page shows a second, higher price next to each plan, so its current prices may be promotional. Details are on the pricing page and in the PLYNTUM and Harvest comparison; the cheapest time tracking software study compares prices across more tools.

• Automatic time capture. No background capture, no activity tracking, no screenshots. Private desktop capture is planned, not available.
• Invoices without your review. From Core, PLYNTUM drafts an invoice from approved, billable time, but nothing is issued or sent until you issue it. Unapproved or non-billable time, time without a rate and time logged to a retainer instead of a project are not priced. On Launch, invoices are written with free-form lines.
• Time rounding and legal billing. Time is kept to the minute with no rounding rules, such as 6-minute increments, and there are no legal or trust-accounting features.
• Accounting. No ledger, bank feeds or tax filing, and no QuickBooks or Xero integration. Your accountant still keeps the books; PLYNTUM exports invoices and payments, expenses and payroll for them as CSV files.
• 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, billable rates, drafts from approved time and recurring invoices on Launch. All four start on Core.
• Sending proposals to clients. CRM core, with a sales pipeline, works from Launch for eligible roles and internal proposal drafts start on Core, but proposals are not emailed to clients.

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 checked 25 September 2026).
• You want invoices from tracked hours for less. TimeCamp Starter, Clockify Standard and Harvest Teams create them from tracked time and cost less for 10 people, as the table shows; PLYNTUM drafts them from approved time on Core.
• You want to start free. Clockify is free for up to 5 users, TimeCamp for unlimited users (without invoicing), and Toggl Track for up to 3 according to its pricing page (checked 24 October 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 and invoicing software compares eight options in more detail, and the timesheet software guide covers weekly timesheets and their approval.

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), draft the invoice from approved time, check and edit its lines, then issue and send it and record the payment when it arrives. Compare the project’s cost with what you billed.

The rest of this cluster, one line each:

• Best time tracking and invoicing software: eight tools compared on price, approval and invoicing.
• Cheapest time tracking software: which tools cost least for a small team, from vendors’ own pricing pages.
• Timesheet software: weekly timesheets, approval and locked weeks.
• Agency billing software: retainers, extra work and invoices for agencies.
• Harvest alternatives: what to consider if Harvest no longer fits.
• Timesheet approval software: how a manager checks hours before they are billed.
• Billable hours: what counts as billable and how to calculate it.
• Unbilled work: work done but not yet invoiced.
• Accounts receivable: invoices sent but not yet paid.
• Hourly rate calculator: a loaded cost and a billable rate from pay and overhead.
• How to fill in the Georgian timesheet form: the working time record, field by field.
• Professional services automation (PSA): when time and billing is part of running the whole firm.

Every price was checked on the vendor’s own pricing page on 24 October 2026. If something has changed, tell us at info@plyntum.com and we will correct it.

• Clockify pricing
• Harvest pricing
• Toggl Track pricing
• TimeCamp pricing
• Teamwork.com pricing

• Timesheet approval software for small service teams
• Retainer management software for agencies
• Approved time
• Unbilled work
• Invoice software for service businesses: invoices that agree with the work