Freelancers are a vital part of the economy. With more companies now switching to remote work, and a rise in platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, freelancers have been a real game-changer across industries, creating a more dynamic, efficient & niche workforce.
But it’s not all fun and games.
While freelancing gives you great flexibility in terms of working hours – it also presents a unique challenge since you are (pretty much) working on your own. Without a line manager supervising your every task, it means you need to find a way to keep tabs on your own progress and performance. Plus, since most freelancers charge by the hour, it’s often hard to keep track of the hours for which you have been paid and those that still need to be paid for.
Our Freelance Time Tracking template is a simple Excel spreadsheet designed to help you record and monitor time spent on specific tasks or projects. Unlike more complex accounting software such as QuickBooks, our template uses simple functionalities to help you calculate time spent on each task, track billing status, and provide clear records for invoicing to your clients.
Now, let’s see what’s inside our template:
Automatic Earnings Calculator
Bid farewell to those hefty calculations, as our Automatic Earnings Calculator, will do all the maths for you. To be fair, this is probably the simplest but also the most useful feature of our template.
Once you have entered your standard hourly rate (in this case, 25 dollars), our template automatically calculates your total earnings over time. This allows you to keep track of your total earnings for each project or per client.
Basic time management consists of three cyclical steps: IDENTIFY, TRACK, and ANALYSE. Our template lets you do all three with one simple spreadsheet:
Identify Your Task
Project & client name
Since there is always a possibility that you may be working on multiple projects for the same client, we have included separate sections to identify each to help you effectively organize your tasks.
Task name & description
These two columns help you identify the category & nature of the task using a drop-down menu.
The current template has been designed particularly for a digital marketing firm. After all, the IT and digital marketing sectors alone account for approximately 50% of freelance work. That said, you can easily edit the list of tasks and task descriptions shown in our drop-down menus, and tailor it to whatever industry or sector you are working in.
Track Your Hours
TIme management is a vital skill for any professional, especially for freelancers who work without constant supervision. Since you are charging clients by the hour, it’s important to keep a clear record of exactly how many hours you are putting in for each billable task.
Make it a habit to note down the time when you start working (Start Time) and when you clock out (End Time). You can simply do this directly on a spreadsheet; alternatively, you can jot it down on a piece of paper or in memory, and enter this data in the spreadsheet at the end of the day.
Once you do this for every task, we automatically calculate the total duration of your work activity for you. Remember, the times are entered using the format “3:45 PM”. If you do not include the AM or PM, Excel assumes you mean AM, unless you enter 24-hour time such as 15:34. The space before the AM or PM is also required.
By giving you a snapshot of how much time you have spent on each project or specific kinds of tasks – our template helps you to understand time allocation, prioritise your tasks, and identify areas for improvement.
Analyse Your Tasks
When developing this template, we divided tasks into two categories: billable and non-billable.
Billable tasks are directly related to a client’s project and, therefore, included in the hours billed to the client.
Non-bailable tasks are ones that are not invoiced to clients, but are still important for running a business smoothly, such as administrative tasks, internal meetings, or buying new equipment. Please note that our template is only designed to take stock of billable tasks.
Right at the top of our template, we insert three graphic tools that give you an easy visual representation of your bills and task status for an entire project. These tools come in handy as they allow you to analyse your income flow and overall work progress on a project-by-project basis.
Billing Status Bar Chart
Here, we let you track the billing status of your project as a whole.
In addition to a task-by-task list, this feature allows you to get a quick idea of the overall number of tasks for which the bills have been paid (Green) against the number of tasks for which the bills remain unpaid (Red).
Billing Amount Bar Chart
We also include a simple bar chart to show the total amount of bill that has already been paid by your clients (Blue) against the total billable amount that is yet to be paid (Purple).
This not only gives you a good idea of your generated income for a certain period of time, it also lets you know what to expect in the foreseeable future, ensuring better income management.
Task Status
No activity template is complete without a feature that allows you to track the status of each task. Use this drop-down list to select from statuses like ‘Complete’, ‘Pending,’ or ‘In Progress’. We also included this easy-to-read pie chart to provide a quick snapshot of progress across all tasks.
How this Template Makes Your Life Easy
We have intentionally kept this spreadsheet as simple as possible while still hoping to offer the same functionality as more complex work management software.
Here are some ways using this template can make your life easy:
- Supports invoicing and payroll for better income management
- Ensures accurate billing based on actual work completed.
- Improves productivity by helping freelancers understand time allocation and reduce time spent on non-billable activities.
- Facilitates transparent reporting by providing clients with a detailed log of hours worked
- Allows you to effectively meet deadlines and maintain a work-life balance.
Wrapping Up
Whether you are a freelancer, a research consultant, or even a small business owner – this template is great if you want to plan, track and analyze your task inventory. It also makes it easier to justify your invoices to a client or customer and helps build their confidence in you as a professional.
With our Freelance Time Management spreadsheet, you can now create a proper time-tracking system to improve your efficiency and productivity as a freelancer.
Explore our complete series of automated workflow templates to help you set up, run, and scale your business.
Our editable template can be instantly accessed in .xlsx, .xltx, and .ods formats. Be aware that spreadsheets are somewhat prone to error. Even if the spreadsheet is completely free of errors at the time you download it, there is always a possibility that you might accidentally introduce errors as you edit it. With that said, download and enjoy!
