Chapter 18: Projects & Time Tracking

Tax year notice: This guide uses 2025/26 tax year figures (6 April 2025 -- 5 April 2026). Check gov.uk for the latest rates.

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Why track time

If you charge by the hour, you already know why. But even if you quote fixed prices, tracking time answers the question every business owner needs to ask: how much am I actually earning per hour?

You quote a client 800 for a job. It takes 20 hours. That's 40/hour -- decent. But the next similar job takes 35 hours because the client kept changing their mind. Now you're at 22.86/hour. Without time tracking, you'd never know. You'd keep quoting 800 and wondering why you feel overworked and underpaid.

Time tracking turns guesswork into data. It tells you which clients are profitable, which projects are running over, and where your hours actually go.

Setting up projects

A project is the container for all the time, costs, and billing associated with a piece of work.

Each project has:

• A client -- who you're doing the work for
• An hourly rate -- what you charge (or an internal rate for cost tracking on fixed-price work)
• A budget -- optional, but useful. Set it in hours, money, or both
• A date range -- when the project starts and when it's expected to finish

You can have multiple projects per client and multiple projects running at the same time. Each one tracks its own time, budget, and billing independently.

Key point: Even fixed-price projects benefit from time tracking. You won't bill the client per hour, but you'll know your effective hourly rate -- the actual money earned divided by the actual hours worked. This is the number that tells you whether a job was worth doing.

Three ways to log time

Different situations call for different methods. Use whichever fits the moment:

The timer

Start it when you begin working, stop it when you finish. The timer runs in the background -- you can switch between projects if you're juggling tasks. It captures the exact duration down to the minute.

Best for: focused work sessions, client calls, on-site visits.

The weekly grid

A spreadsheet-style view of your week. Days across the top, projects down the side. Type in hours for each day. This is fast if you're catching up on a week's worth of time in one sitting.

Best for: people who prefer to log time at the end of each day or week rather than in real time.

Manual entry

Pick a date, pick a project, enter the hours and a description. Full control, no timer needed.

Best for: logging time after the fact, recording a meeting that happened earlier, or adjusting entries.

All three methods produce the same result: a timesheet entry with a date, project, duration, and description.

The approval workflow

Time entries go through a workflow before they become billable:

Draft -- You've logged the time but haven't submitted it yet. You can edit freely. Think of this as your personal scratchpad.

Submitted -- You've reviewed and submitted the time for approval. This signals that the entries are complete and accurate. You can still recall submitted time if you spot an error.

Approved -- A manager, project lead, or the business owner has reviewed and approved the time. Approved time is locked -- it can't be edited without reversing the approval first.

Invoiced -- The approved time has been added to an invoice. This is the final state. The circle is complete: work done, time recorded, client billed.

If you're a sole trader working alone, the approval step might feel unnecessary. But it's a useful checkpoint even for one person -- it forces you to review your time before billing a client.

Billing time to invoices

Approved time is ready to invoice. Select the time entries you want to bill, and Blankitt generates an invoice with line items showing dates, hours, rates, and descriptions.

You can bill in bulk (all approved time for a client in one invoice) or selectively (specific date ranges or projects). The invoice pulls the hourly rate from the project, multiplies by the hours, and shows the total.

Once invoiced, the time entries are marked as billed and won't appear in future billing runs. No double-billing, no missed hours.

Budget tracking and utilisation

If you set a budget on a project, the budget tracker shows you how it's being consumed:

• Hours used vs hours budgeted -- are you on track?
• Percentage utilised -- a 40-hour project with 30 hours logged is at 75% utilisation
• Remaining budget -- how many hours (or how much money) is left
• Burn rate -- at the current pace, when will the budget run out?

Budget alerts warn you before you exceed the limit. Better to have an awkward conversation with a client at 80% than to discover you've worked 20 hours for free.

Effective hourly rate

This is the number that matters most for profitability.

Effective hourly rate = Total revenue from project / Total hours worked on project

For hourly projects, this equals your hourly rate (assuming the client pays). For fixed-price projects, it tells you what you actually earned per hour of work.

A 2,000 fixed-price project that takes 25 hours gives an effective rate of 80/hour. The same project taking 50 hours drops to 40/hour. Track this across all your projects and you'll quickly learn which types of work (and which clients) are worth your time.

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Real Scenario: Sam's freelance design work

Sam starts doing freelance graphic design alongside the vintage clothes business. First client: Acme Marketing, 65/hour, 20-hour budget for a brand refresh.

Sam creates a project: "Acme Marketing -- Brand Refresh", sets the rate to 65/hour and the budget to 20 hours (1,300).

Week 1: Sam uses the timer during design sessions. 8 hours logged across Monday to Thursday. Budget: 40% used, 780 remaining.

Week 2: Another 7 hours. Budget: 75% used, 325 remaining. Sam submits the first two weeks for approval.

Week 3: The client requests extra revisions. Sam logs 4.5 hours. Budget: 97.5% used. The alert fires -- only 0.5 hours left. Sam emails the client: "We've used almost all of the budgeted hours. The remaining revisions will take approximately 3 more hours at 65/hour. Shall I proceed?"

The client agrees. Sam finishes the work (3 hours over budget), submits and approves the time. Total: 22.5 hours. Sam creates an invoice from the approved timesheet: 22.5 x 65 = 1,462.50. The effective rate is 65/hour because it's an hourly project -- but Sam now knows that brand refresh projects should be quoted at 25 hours minimum.

Real Scenario: Steve's landscaping project

Steve quotes a landscaping job at 2,400 -- based on his estimate of 40 hours at 60/hour (his internal rate). He creates a project with a 40-hour budget.

Steve logs time daily using manual entry at the end of each workday:

Week	Hours	Cumulative	Budget used
1	12	12	30%
2	11	23	57.5%
3	12	35	87.5%

At 87.5%, Steve checks the remaining work. The patio edging and planting are left -- about 6 hours. That would put him at 41 hours, just over budget. He adjusts his approach: prepares materials the night before to save setup time, and finishes in 5 hours.

Final: 40 hours, on budget. Steve invoices the client 2,400 from the approved timesheet. Effective hourly rate: 60/hour -- exactly what he estimated. Next time he quotes a similar job, he knows 40 hours is realistic.

If Steve had taken 50 hours, the effective rate would drop to 48/hour. Time tracking would have told him to quote higher next time.

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Checklist: Getting started with time tracking

• Create a project for each active client or job
• Set hourly rates (billable rate for client work, internal rate for fixed-price work)
• Set budgets where applicable (hours, money, or both)
• Choose your preferred logging method (timer, weekly grid, or manual)
• Log time daily -- don't let it pile up
• Submit time weekly for review
• Approve submitted time before invoicing
• Review effective hourly rates monthly -- are your quotes accurate?
• Check budget utilisation on active projects weekly

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Jargon Buster

Term	Plain English
Timesheet	A record of hours worked, broken down by date, project, and description
Billable	Time that you can charge a client for. Non-billable time (admin, internal meetings) is tracked but not invoiced
Utilisation	The percentage of budgeted time that's been used. 30 hours used out of 40 budgeted = 75% utilisation
Approval workflow	The process time entries go through: draft (logged), submitted (reviewed by you), approved (confirmed), invoiced (billed to client)
Effective rate	The actual money earned per hour on a project. Total revenue divided by total hours. The truest measure of whether a job was profitable