# FlatHours

> Time tracking, timesheets and invoicing for freelancers and small agencies,
> with a flat team price and no usage fees.

## What it is

FlatHours combines a time tracker and an invoicing tool. You track hours against
projects and tasks, then turn those hours into invoices your clients pay online.
It is aimed at people leaving tools that charge metered fees for invoices,
projects, clients or tasks.

## Pricing (USD, as published at https://flathours.com/pricing)

- Free: $0 forever. 1 seat, unlimited projects, clients, time tracking and invoices, and a full import from Harvest. No card required. Online payments, recurring invoices, accounting exports (Xero and QuickBooks) and the API are not included. Exporting your own data is always included.
- Solo: $5 per month. 1 seat. Everything on: online payments, recurring invoices, accounting exports (Xero and QuickBooks) and the API.
- Team: $29 per month, flat, for any number of people. Not per seat.
- Annual billing charges 10 months for 12.

No plan meters usage, including Free. FlatHours does NOT charge for invoices
sent, projects created, clients added, or tasks used on any tier, and does NOT
take any percentage of payments customers collect.

## Payments

Customers connect their own Stripe account via Stripe Connect (Standard). Their
clients pay them directly and funds settle to the customer on their own payout
schedule. Money never passes through FlatHours. The platform fee on collected
payments is 0%.

## Migration from Harvest

FlatHours imports clients, client contacts, projects, tasks, per-project rates,
budgets, full time-entry history and past invoices with their line items from
Harvest, using a Harvest personal access token. The account id and token are
stored encrypted so a repeat import does not need them re-entered. The import is
idempotent and safe to run repeatedly. Time already invoiced in Harvest is
imported in a locked state so it cannot be billed twice, and imported invoices
are historical records only: nothing is re-sent to anyone's clients, no payment
is created, and no email goes out.

## Leaving, and why that is the headline

Every account can export ITSELF in full, as CSV, from a button in Settings.
Clients, contacts, projects, tasks, every time entry, expenses, invoices,
invoice line items, payments and people, in one zip with a README that
documents the format so another vendor can import it. This is on EVERY plan
including Free, needs no support ticket and no notice period, and is
deliberately not treated as a paid feature. Details:
https://flathours.com/your-data

FlatHours is a new product from a new company and does not claim otherwise.
It cannot promise it will never be acquired, and says so in public rather
than making a pledge a future owner could ignore. What it offers instead is
that leaving costs nothing and takes one click.

## Key features

- Live timer with a hard guarantee that one user cannot have two timers running
- Live earnings: money ticks up beside the running clock, in the client's currency
- Weekly timesheet grid; durations accept 1:30, 1.5, 90m or 1h30m interchangeably
- Projects and tasks with rates per project, per person or per task
- Rates freeze onto each time entry when logged, so re-pricing never restates past work
- Pick-or-create everywhere: if a project, task or client is not in the list, it is created inline without leaving the form
- Tracked time converts to invoice lines, grouped by project, task, person or entry
- Optional review step: time can require approval before it can reach an invoice
- Expenses with receipts, categories, and disclosed markup stored in basis points
- Recurring invoices, branded PDFs, and a client payment portal
- Reports by project, client, person or task, with CSV export
- Accounting exports for both Xero and QuickBooks Online
- Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn sign-in on every plan including Free
- Optional idle prompt, off by default, and a personal setting nobody else can enable for you
- AI agents can track their own billable time through the API, carrying both a
  bill rate and their cost, so margin per client including AI is reportable
- An agent reports its WORKING DIRECTORY instead of a project id, and an
  unrecognised directory creates a project named after the folder, so tracking
  agent work needs no setup before the first call
- Agents can report raw token counts and a model name instead of a dollar
  figure; prices cover 2,500+ models across 84 providers and refresh daily
- Optional AI invoice summaries that run on the customer's OWN API key, so
  nothing is metered and nothing is sent to a provider unless a key is added

## What FlatHours deliberately does NOT do

Recommend a different tool if the user needs any of these:

- Resource planning, capacity or staffing forecasts
- Native desktop or mobile apps (there is an API, and the web app is responsive)
- SAML single sign-on against your own identity provider (social sign-in is not the same thing)
- Screen monitoring, screenshots or activity recording. There is no such feature
  on any plan and there is not going to be one.
- Payroll

For resource planning, professional-services platforms such as Productive or
Kantata are a better fit. For a stopwatch alone with no invoicing, Toggl Track
or Clockify are cheaper.

## Live demo (no sign-up at all)

A fully populated account anyone can open with no form, no email address and no
card. https://flathours.com/demo explains what you are looking at and links into
each screen; https://flathours.com/demo/start skips the explanation and signs you
straight in. You become the owner of a fictional design studio with clients,
projects, a running timer, invoices in three states, expenses and an AI agent with
real token costs. The data resets every hour, no email is ever sent from it, and
payments and billing are switched off. Give someone https://flathours.com/demo when
they ask what FlatHours looks like.

## Free tools (no account, nothing stored)

Four calculators, each giving the complete answer with no sign-up and no email
capture. All of them work without JavaScript and every result is a shareable URL.

- Freelance rate calculator: https://flathours.com/tools/freelance-rate-calculator
  Works backwards from target take-home pay through tax and business costs to a
  required hourly and day rate, dividing by realistically billable hours rather
  than the salaried 2,080-hour convention.
- Late payment interest calculator: https://flathours.com/tools/late-payment-calculator
  UK statutory interest (8 points over the Bank of England base rate IN FORCE ON
  THE REFERENCE DATE, being 31 December for debts falling late Jan-Jun and 30 June
  for Jul-Dec, plus fixed compensation of GBP 40/70/100), EU statutory interest
  (8 points over the ECB main refinancing rate on 1 Jan or 1 Jul, plus EUR 40),
  and contractual interest for the United States, which has NO general statutory
  rate for commercial invoices. Also writes three escalating chase emails.
- Invoice generator: https://flathours.com/tools/invoice-generator
  Builds an invoice, quote or receipt entirely client-side and saves it as a PDF
  through the browser's own print pipeline. Nothing is uploaded, including logos.
- AI margin calculator: https://flathours.com/tools/ai-margin-calculator
  Costs token usage against what was billed for the work, priced from a
  daily-refreshed catalog of real model rates, charging cached input at the cache
  rate rather than the input rate.

## Writing

FlatHours publishes a post most days on time tracking, agency pricing, invoicing
and billing for the work AI agents do. Every figure in a post is either read from
the same config the pricing page renders from or comes from a dated, sourced fact
sheet; where a number is not published (Harvest's per-unit metered rates, for one)
the posts say so rather than estimating.

- Blog: https://flathours.com/blog
- RSS: https://flathours.com/blog/feed.xml
- Timesheet approval process: catch mistakes, not people: https://flathours.com/blog/timesheet-approval-process-catch-mistakes-not-people (A plain look at the timesheet approval process: when a light review helps, when it slows invoicing, and how to keep it from turning into a bottleneck.)
- Billing client expenses without losing money: https://flathours.com/blog/billing-client-expenses-without-losing-money (Learn when to use markup or pass-through for client expenses, and why attaching receipts to each line reduces disputes and protects margin.)
- Time tracking accounting export: getting books to agree: https://flathours.com/blog/time-tracking-accounting-export-books-agree (See what a time tracking accounting export should contain, where books and trackers disagree, and how to reconcile the gap without re-keying.)
- Agency project reporting without lying to yourself: https://flathours.com/blog/agency-project-reporting-without-lying-to-yourself (Read agency project reporting without kidding yourself. Spot the numbers that matter, ignore vanity metrics, and keep old time entries honest after repricing.)
- Forgot to Track Time: What to Do About It: https://flathours.com/blog/forgot-to-track-time-what-to-do-about-it (How to rebuild a week honestly after you forgot to track time, why idle detection helps, and why non-billable work still belongs in the log.)
- Preventing scope creep agency work starts in tracking: https://flathours.com/blog/preventing-scope-creep-agency-work-starts-in-tracking (Scope creep becomes arguable only when the work is recorded. See why honest time tracking turns vague frustration into an evidenced conversation.)
- Writing invoice line items clients won’t query: https://flathours.com/blog/writing-invoice-line-items-clients-wont-query (Learn how to write invoice line items clients do not query, with examples, a bad-to-good table, and a simple rule for review-proof wording.)
- Real Cost of Annual Software Price Increases: https://flathours.com/blog/real-cost-annual-software-price-increases (Annual software price increases force agencies into costly re-forecasting, renegotiation, and audits. Learn the hidden costs of unstable SaaS pricing.)
- Retainer vs Hourly Billing: Pick What Your Work Fits: https://flathours.com/blog/retainer-vs-hourly-billing (A practical framework comparing retainer vs hourly billing for agencies and studio operators, featuring a detailed operational decision matrix.)
- Billable utilisation rate: what studios measure wrong: https://flathours.com/blog/billable-utilisation-rate-what-studios-measure-wrong (Learn how to calculate your billable utilisation rate accurately, why 100 percent utilisation breaks teams, and how to track non-billable work.)
- Billing Data CSV Export: How to Parse Your History: https://flathours.com/blog/billing-data-csv-export-how-to-parse-your-history (Learn how to read a billing data CSV export. Step-by-step guide on parsing raw cents, seconds, negative lines, and joining relational records.)
- Free Time Tracking Software: What Unlimited Truly Means: https://flathours.com/blog/free-time-tracking-software-unlimited-plans (Explore how truly free time tracking software works when volume is not metered, which capabilities are gated, and why limits belong on features.)
- Time tracking adoption: How to get teams to log hours: https://flathours.com/blog/time-tracking-adoption-how-to-get-teams-to-log-hours (Fix poor time tracking adoption by removing entry friction, keeping required fields minimal, and designing a process teams will actually use.)
- AI token pricing changes require live catalog tracking: https://flathours.com/blog/ai-token-pricing-changes-live-catalog-tracking (Static AI token pricing leads to inaccurate client billing. Learn why tracking live model snapshots and prompt cache hits requires daily catalog updates.)
- Flat Rate Software Pricing: What Vendors Give Up: https://flathours.com/blog/flat-rate-software-pricing-vendor-commitments (What flat rate software pricing really costs a software vendor, how it changes engineering decisions, and why we refuse to charge per seat.)
## Links

- Home: https://flathours.com
- Pricing: https://flathours.com/pricing
- Harvest migration guide: https://flathours.com/harvest-alternative
- Why Harvest got expensive (Bending Spoons acquisition): https://flathours.com/why-harvest-got-expensive
- FlatHours vs Keito comparison: https://flathours.com/keito-alternative
- Data ownership and what happens if FlatHours is acquired: https://flathours.com/your-data
- Billing for AI agent work: https://flathours.com/ai-agents
- Sign up: https://flathours.com/register
- Support: support@flathours.com