How to Track Billable Hours: From Time Entries to an Invoice

Decide which work is chargeable, capture hours against the right project, convert durations correctly, and reconcile your invoice with the time behind it.

To track billable hours, record the project, task, date and duration of each piece of work. Review those entries against the client agreement before applying a rate. Keep non-billable work in your records, but outside the amount you charge.

The useful result is a trail you can check: work recorded → hours selected for billing → hourly rate → invoice amount. A timer helps capture the first step; it does not decide what a client agreed to pay for.

For the product workflow, see time tracking and invoicing in Corcava. It explains project setup, rates and the steps from time selection to invoice lines. This guide covers the decisions and calculations behind that workflow.

1. Agree what counts as billable work

Billable hours are hours you are entitled to charge under the client agreement. A task is not automatically billable just because it helped a client project. Discovery, meetings, revisions and support can be included, excluded or separately priced.

Write down the rate, currency, billing period and any rounding rule before work starts. If different people or phases have different rates, record those distinctions too. When a rate changes, retain the date from which the new rate applies.

For a fixed-fee project, tracked hours measure effort and help evaluate the price. They do not change the invoice automatically: bill the agreed fee or milestone unless the client accepts a change.

2. Capture enough detail to explain the hours

Each entry should answer four questions: which project, what work, when, and how long?

“Website — 3 hours” is difficult to review. “Website — implement mobile navigation and test menu states — 3 hours” connects the time to a deliverable. Task references help when several people work on the same project.

Use a timer while working where practical. If you enter time manually, reconstruct it from actual work records while the day is still fresh. Check for overlaps, a timer left running, a wrong project, and missing work before using the totals for billing.

In Corcava, the browser timer records time against a project and task. Manual time entry is another capture method where your permissions allow it. See the time tracking feature page for the available methods.

Keep internal work identifiable. For example, log invoicing administration to an internal project rather than mixing it into the client project you will select for billing. Recording that time preserves the cost of doing the work without charging it to the client.

3. Separate recorded time from time you will invoice

Here is an illustrative day, not a customer time record. Assume the client agreed to pay for the three delivery activities at $80 per hour, with exact time and no tax, expenses or discount in this example.

The invoice calculation is 6.50 × $80 = $520. Billing all eight recorded hours would produce $640, including $120 of work excluded by this agreement.

If the call were included in a separate fixed fee instead, remove its 0.75 hours from this hourly bill: 5.75 × $80 = $460. Keep the call in the time record so the work remains visible.

That distinction also matters for write-offs. If you decide not to charge an otherwise billable hour, record the reason in your billing review. Do not erase the work simply to make the time total match a smaller invoice.

4. Convert minutes before applying a rate

Hours and minutes are not decimal notation. 2 h 30 min is 2.5 hours, not 2.30 hours. At $80 per hour, those two inputs produce $200 and $184 respectively.

Use this calculation:

Decimal hours = hours + minutes ÷ 60

Hourly invoice amount = billable decimal hours × hourly rate

For more conversions, use the billable hours calculator and billing increment chart. It can compare exact duration with an agreed increment and rounding policy.

Rounding is a separate billing decision. A seven-minute call is 7 ÷ 60 hours. Under an agreed six-minute round-up policy, it becomes twelve billed minutes, or 0.2 hours. Do not silently apply a new rounding policy to a client’s work.

Also decide whether your agreement rounds individual entries or a combined total. Two seven-minute entries become 24 minutes when each is rounded up to six-minute blocks, but their fourteen-minute combined duration becomes 18 minutes when rounded once. The same recorded work can produce a different bill.

The public calculator models those rules; it does not configure them in Corcava. Corcava’s time-to-invoice workflow does not automatically apply a six- or fifteen-minute billing increment. Review any agreed adjustment separately from recorded duration.

5. Review the time and generate invoice lines

Choose a billing period, then review the client, project, people, durations and rates together. An accurate duration with the wrong rate still produces an incorrect invoice.

In Corcava, Generate line items lets you select a client, projects, team members, a date range and a grouping. Review the resulting hours, amounts and previously invoiced time before adding the lines. Bill rates are configured for a project and team member, with an effective date; check an unexpected $0 amount for a missing bill rate.

Saving generated invoice lines associates their underlying time intervals with the invoice. Saving as a draft already marks that time as invoiced for subsequent generation; it is not necessary to send the invoice first. Check existing drafts if hours seem to be missing from the next selection.

Generate the time lines before making manual adjustments: generating again replaces the current lines. Manually typing an hours line is a different workflow; a matching number alone does not establish a link to recorded time. A saved invoice also does not make the source time immutable, so recheck the quantities if those records change.

The time-to-invoice walkthrough explains the sequence in detail. For broader invoice capabilities, see Corcava invoicing.

Before sending, check:

1. Scope: every included activity is chargeable under the agreement.
2. Period: the selected dates match the period described on the invoice.
3. Hours: the included time adds up to the invoice quantity, with any adjustment explained.
4. Rate: each person’s bill rate and currency are correct for the project and work date.
5. Prior billing: the same work is not being charged again.
6. Total: hours × rates reconcile with the subtotal; any tax, expenses or discount explain the difference from the final amount.

6. Use non-billable time to improve the next project

Non-billable work still consumes capacity. Keep enough detail to distinguish necessary administration, business development, training and rework. Those categories answer different questions: whether a process needs simplifying, whether a project was underscoped, or whether you are investing time in future work.

Do not confuse the share of logged time that is billable with billable utilization against available capacity. In the example, 6.5 ÷ 8 = 81.25% of recorded time is billable. For a week with 26 billable hours and 40 available hours, utilization is 26 ÷ 40 = 65%. If only 30 hours were logged, dividing by 30 would answer a different question.

Define the capacity denominator consistently when comparing weeks or people. See utilization rate explained and the billable utilization calculator for that separate calculation.

Frequently asked questions

What are billable hours?

Billable hours are time you can charge under the client agreement. Meetings, research and revisions may be billable, included in a fixed fee, or excluded; the agreement determines the treatment.

How do you track billable and non-billable hours?

Record the project, task, date and duration of all work. Keep internal work identifiable, then review client work against the agreement before selecting hours for an invoice. Preserve excluded time for effort and cost analysis.

How do you calculate an hourly invoice?

Convert minutes to decimal hours, apply any agreed rounding separately, and multiply the billable hours by the applicable rate. For example, 6 hours 30 minutes at $80 per hour is 6.5 × $80 = $520 before tax, expenses or discounts.

Does tracking time make it billable?

No. A time record shows that work happened. Scope, the client agreement and your billing review determine whether you charge for it. Fixed-fee work can be tracked without turning each hour into an invoice line.

Does Corcava automatically round time to billing increments?

No. The time-to-invoice workflow does not automatically apply a six- or fifteen-minute increment. The public billable-hours calculator can model a rounding policy; check any agreed billing adjustment separately.

Continue with the time-to-invoice walkthrough, or explore time tracking and invoicing for service teams.