Ask HN: How do you bill your freelance consultation services?

Not sure I understand where or why you are struggling. If you are doing hourly consulting you have to track all your hours and invoice for them. You are a one person show as a freelancer so you aren&#x27;t tracking 10 people, so this isn&#x27;t a big problem and trying to optimize on invoicing seems like there might be a different problem. You do have to set clear boundaries with clients on what is billable hours and what isn&#x27;t though or they will kill you.<p>There are tools that can help make time tracking easier, I used to have my teams use an app (IIRC HoursTracker, or TimeTracker something like that) that let us setup projects, roles and rates and people could track their time in it. The app was inexpensive, like $5-6&#x2F;per user and at the end of each week they would just use the app to send us their time. It would put it in a csv file and email to admin so we could then add the details to the invoices for clients. We didn&#x27;t really use the rates section of the app, but the csv could&#x27;ve easily been converted into an excel invoice with a tiny bit of script. We did use the csv to import the time into our accounting tools too, made it nice to eliminate data entry mistakes.<p>I didn&#x27;t do so much freelancing as I built consulting groups where we did software&#x2F;hardware design&#x2F;development, marketing and go to market planning for clients across numerous industries. So billable video calls and conference calls for strategy talks or status check ins were common. For the vast majority of clients we also stopped billing hourly all together and did weekly flat rates or monthly retainer agreements which made invoicing easier, but we still tracked time using the app.<p>Just a comment, not necessarily your issue, but something I council new freelancers and startups on quite often. A lot of business is done in excel and by hand, this is not bad, it actually forces vigilance and properly used is more powerful than a full blown ERP sometimes. Dismissing the use of simple tools or feeling like everything has to be automated and perfect is a recipe for disaster IMO, automate only once you have a repeatable process that has low to no variation in output etc.

I&#x27;m a developer by trade, but the nickel and diming of time tracking is something I&#x27;m well familiar with. A few thoughts:<p>1) If you can, give a fixed-fee model a chance. Since your deliverables currently are, &quot;We meet on Skype for a discussion about your needs and possible solutions,&quot; you could very easily charge a set rate for each meeting and just make sure you set a hard timebox on it. Set a pair of timers, one at 15 minutes to remind you and them that there&#x27;s only 15 minutes left on this consult, and one when the time slot is over. Stick to your guns as if you have another appointment afterwards (and you should have one in that slot; that appointment is for compiling your deliverables for sending off).<p>2) Getting paid is a pain everyone experiences, freelancer and traditional business alike. A good way to deal with that is to require payment up-front. A fixed-fee model is perfect for this, but you can do it with hourly billing models as well. If your consults are always at least half an hour long, require a minimum up-front payment for that half-hour. Or have it be for a full hour, just to cover yourself. This also gets rid of the tire-kickers who just want your knowledge without actually wanting to pay you. Forcing them to put money on the table up-front, even if it&#x27;s not the full amount, leaves you with the serious clients only.<p>3) For invoicing and time tracking, I recommend Harpoon (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpoonapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpoonapp.com&#x2F;</a>). For your purposes, you&#x27;d use the time tracking functionality during your consultations, and then create an invoice for that time and send it off. Click start on the timer at the beginning of the call, click stop when you&#x27;ve ended the call, create invoice, add time entry, send to client (via email through Harpoon). You can even integrate it with Stripe for online payment collection, which reduces their barriers to paying you. It also has automatic reminders sent to the clients for unpaid invoices.<p>I&#x27;d be happy to discuss more on your specific needs. My email is in my profile.<p>Cheers!

I’m working in a small shop and we are using Salarybookapp.com on the iphone, it simple but very easy to use and gets the job done.

Wave (waveapps.com) is easy and straightforward.