Working on hourly projects

If you are interested in working on long-term tasks or full-time positions, hourly projects are perfect for you.

Tracking your work hours

You can track your work hours using the Freelancer Desktop App or by manually tracking time.

The Freelancer Desktop App is recommended so your activities are recorded via random screenshots on the Desktop App; these screenshots are reviewed by your clients. Your hourly project messages, files, and invoices are also listed on the Freelancer Desktop App.

To start tracking your work hours, your client has to enable the automatic billing on your hourly project. Offline tracking is also available on the Desktop App during lost or unstable Internet connection. Random screenshots are still taken and uploaded when you get back online.

You can also manually track hours, especially if completing the project requires being away from a computer. 

Monitoring your tracked time

You can monitor all your tracked time in the Time Tracking tab of the project page. The Time Tracking tab has two sections: Summary and Tracked Time.

The Summary section shows you the dates included in the current billing cycle, your tracked hours within the current billing cycle, and the maximum number of hours you are allowed to track for the week.

The Tracked Time section is where all the time you tracked for the duration of the whole project are listed. It is divided into Unbilled Time and Billed Time. Unbilled Time shows the time tracked in the current billing cycle. All the hours under Unbilled Time are billed and paid in the following week. You can delete mistakenly tracked hours before they are billed.

Billed Time, on the other hand, lists all the hours tracked from the previous billing cycles and their payment status.

To view the random screenshots taken by the Desktop App, click the drop-down arrow across each tracked time, then click the View Screenshots icon. Tracked hours that do not have the View Screenshots icon are manually tracked ones.

You can also toggle your Tracked Time view between List or Graph. The Graph view plots all your tracked hours. You can choose to view the graph by the current week, last 14 days, last 28 days, or year.

Billing Cycle

The billing cycle restarts every Monday and ends on Sunday. If time tracking is enabled, an Hourly Payment is created every Monday in the client's timezone to pay for the time tracked in the previous billing cycle. The Hourly Payment is transferred to you every Wednesday.

On the Payments tab of the project page, you can view the invoice for every created Hourly Payment. 

Note: The details in the invoice, such as the tracked hours and amount, cannot be edited. The Bill From and Bill To information are updated every time you edit your profile details.