Billing hours across several clients

What your rate is actually worth

The number that matters is not what you charge, it is what lands. Self-employment tax is 15.3% on net earnings, covering both halves of Social Security and Medicare, because you are both employer and employee. Income tax comes on top.

That is a sketch, not your return. Self-employment tax is calculated on net earnings after deductible expenses, and half of it is itself deductible, so the real figure is usually a little kinder. Your bracket, state tax and deductions all move it. Use it to set aside sensibly, not to file.

The practical rule most self-employed people land on: put aside 25% to 30% of every payment the day it arrives, in a separate account. The people who get caught out in April are the ones who treated the whole invoice as income.

Working backwards is more useful than working forwards. If you want $60,000 to live on, you need to bill closer to $85,000, and at 20 genuinely billable hours a week that is about $82 an hour. Unbilled time is real: quoting, invoicing, chasing, travel between jobs.

Quarterly estimates and the 1099

Two things that surprise people in their first self-employed year.

You pay tax four times a year, not once. If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, the IRS wants estimated payments on Form 1040-ES, generally due in April, June, September and January. Missing them can mean a penalty even if you pay in full later. There is a safe harbour: pay 100% of last year's tax liability, or 110% if you earned above a threshold, and you are generally protected from the underpayment penalty regardless of what this year turns out to be.

Clients who paid you $600 or more send a 1099-NEC, and a copy goes to the IRS. Two things follow. Individuals and households usually do not send one, so a house cleaner working for families may get none at all and still owes the tax. And when a 1099 arrives showing a figure that does not match your own records, you need your own records to work out who is right. That is the moment a per-client log pays for itself.

Are you a contractor or an employee

This decides who issues the paperwork, and it is not decided by what either of you calls it. The IRS looks at three areas:

• Behavioural control. Who decides when, where and how the work is done. Being told the method, not just the result, points to employment.
• Financial control. Who supplies tools and materials, whether you can make a loss, whether you offer your services to others.
• Relationship. Whether it is open-ended, whether there are benefits, whether the work is central to the client's business.

Some states are stricter. California and several others apply an ABC test, where a worker is presumed an employee unless the hiring party proves all three prongs, including that the work is outside the usual course of the hirer's business. That reclassifies a lot of people who consider themselves freelance.

If the answer matters and is genuinely unclear, either party can ask the IRS to decide by filing Form SS-8. It takes months, so it is a last resort rather than a first move.

Why it matters here: if you are an employee, the person paying you owes you a pay statement and overtime. If you are a contractor, nobody hands you anything and the record has to come from you. That is why payroll software is sold to households and why none of it has a login for the worker.

How to bill hours so they do not get argued about

• Pick an increment and say what it is. Six minutes (0.1 hour) or fifteen minutes are the common ones. Whichever you choose, put it in writing once so it is never a surprise.
• Decide about travel before it comes up. Between two clients on the same day, most people bill neither or split it. Deciding mid-invoice is how disputes start.
• Log the day it happens. A record written on Tuesday reads differently from one assembled on the 30th, and the difference shows.
• Say what the hours were for. A line reading "8 hours" invites a question. "8 hours, bathroom retile, Tuesday and Wednesday" does not.
• Invoice on a fixed day. Clients pay predictable invoices faster than sporadic ones.
• Put payment terms on the invoice. "Net 14" is a term. "Thanks!" is not.

When an invoice goes unpaid

1. Day 1 after the due date. A short note assuming an oversight. Most late payments are exactly that.
2. Day 14. Resend the invoice with the original date visible and ask for a payment date, not a status.
3. Day 30. State what happens next: work pauses, or late fees begin if your terms say so. Only say it if you will do it.
4. Day 45 and beyond. Small claims court is realistic for most contractor invoices, costs little to file, and does not need a lawyer. Your dated log and the invoice are the evidence.

Several states now have freelance payment laws, New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act being the best known, which require a written contract above a dollar threshold and give penalties for late payment. If yours has one, a written contract is worth more than the effort it takes.

Which tool, and where the free tier stops

Free tiers here are segmentation devices. The cap tells you who the vendor wants to convert, so read it before you build a year of history behind it.

Which one to pick

Zoho Invoice if invoicing is the whole job. Free forever, 500 invoices a year, with a client portal and Spanish. It is better at invoicing than TrackWork.

Toggl Track if you want mature general time tracking and will invoice elsewhere. It also refuses to ship GPS or screenshots at any tier, which matters if you dislike being monitored.

TrackWork if you want hours and a simple invoice in one place across an unlimited number of clients, and want the client to be able to see the same record. Free, and it bills time only.

Harvest if you bill by project and stay under two. Worth knowing that paid plans meter invoices, projects, clients and tasks on top of the per-seat price, with no thresholds published.

Wave or Invoice Simple for straightforward invoicing at small volume, noting Wave earns on card payments rather than subscription.

ZenMaid, Jobber or Housecall Pro once you are scheduling other people. They are built for dispatch, not for one person.

Clockify only after checking what the free plan still includes. It was cut in 2026, and long-time users found reporting capped and exports paywalled: I was essentially locked out of 4 years of project tracking data without warning.

The timer that runs all night

Across several clients, a forgotten timer is worse than it is for anyone else, because it corrupts two invoices rather than one. The timer is still running for Tuesday's client while you are at Wednesday's, and you find out at month end when neither number looks right.

On an iPhone running iOS 16.2 or later, a running TrackWork session sits on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island showing the client's name and the time counting up. Seeing the wrong client's name on your phone at 9pm is the correction, and it happens the same evening instead of at invoicing.

There is no automatic stop, so you tap both ends, and manual entries go back 30 days. For anything older, the printable hours log has no such limit.

What TrackWork does not do

• No expenses, materials or mileage. It bills time. If your invoices are half parts and half labour, put the materials on a separate invoice from Zoho or Wave, or add them by hand. This is the most common reason it will not suit a trade.
• No logo on the invoice.
• It does not take payment. No card processing, no payment link. You record that a payment happened.
• No accounting, tax filing or bookkeeping sync.
• No client approval. An invited client sees the same sessions; there is no sign-off step.
• No offline mode, and no Android app yet, though the browser version works anywhere.

Common questions

Related

• Free invoice generator, no signup, 78 currencies.
• Printable hours worked log, no 30-day limit.
• Nanny hours and overtime, if the work is household employment rather than contracting.