Client-level time
Every hour lands on a client and an engagement
Assign time to an engagement under the right client and mark whether it is billable. Reports keep that context with the hours.
Free time and billing software for accountants
Track time by client and engagement, review unbilled hours and create invoices to send to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Timen is free for the whole firm.
Client time and billing for accounting firms, from the makers of Breeze, trusted by 6,000+ teams worldwide.
Why accounting firms track time in Timen
Keep client time organised from the first entry to the invoice. Review hours during the month so billing does not start with rebuilding the record.
Unbilled hours
See unbilled hours before the month closes
Filter a client report to Billable and Not invoiced to see recorded hours still to bill. Billable status alone also includes hours already invoiced.
Billing from the record
Invoice from the hours and send it to the books
Create an invoice from the reviewed hours, then approve its send to your accounting system.
Time tracking and manual entry
Record client work as you go
Run a timer for a client call, return or reconciliation, or add the time afterwards. Both timed and manual entries appear in the same reports.
Staff can track in a browser, from supported task pages with the extension, or on the phone at a client's office.
Clients, engagements and rates
Hourly and fixed-fee engagements, side by side
Set up each client once, with a project for each engagement: the year-end accounts, the monthly bookkeeping, the tax return, the advisory work. A rate can sit on the engagement or on the person doing it.
Hourly engagements bill from the hours at that rate. Fixed-fee engagements are tracked the same way, so you can see what the fee really bought: the hours are in the report, and the invoice carries the agreed fee as its own line.
Staff only see the engagements they are assigned to, which keeps the picker short and the time on the right client.
Reports
Review hours by client, engagement and person
Choose the client and date range, then select Billable and Not invoiced for unbilled work. Use the summary for totals and the detailed view to check individual entries.
Compare recorded hours with the engagement estimate and follow up on entries that need clarification. The report shows logged time, not a monetary WIP valuation or proof that someone has missed time. Export the results as CSV or PDF.
Report access is a permission, so partners and managers see the firm while staff see their own time.
Invoicing
Create the invoice from reviewed time
Start an invoice from the client's report, with a line per entry or engagement and the applicable rate. For a fixed-fee engagement, add the agreed fee as a manual line and remove any hourly charges it replaces.
Approve the send to QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks or Wave. Timen finds or creates the client and checks the resulting invoice total. Wave cannot accept tax or discounts, and an invoice sent there cannot be updated from Timen.
Timen marks invoiced hours to help prevent duplicate billing. You can also download a PDF or a CSV prepared for the QuickBooks or Xero importer. See invoice export options.
What Timen does not do for accounting firms
Timen covers time tracking, reporting and invoices from tracked work. Check these limits against the other systems your firm needs.
Not included
Practice management
No filing deadlines, no job workflow, no document requests, no client portal. Timen keeps the time and the bill; the work itself stays in whatever your practice already runs on.
Not included
Bookkeeping, tax and payroll
Keep bookkeeping, tax work and payroll in your accounting software. Timen sends invoices but does not run payroll or sync timesheets to it.
Not included
Timesheet approval
There is no submit-and-approve step. The controls a firm has instead are permissions on who can see reports and manage invoices, and a timesheet lock that closes a period to members once it has been billed.
Works differently
Realisation on fixed fees
Timen records the hours against the engagement. Working out what they cost against the agreed fee is arithmetic you do from the report: there is no fee budget on the project, no amount column in the reports and no alert when the hours pass it.
Timen fits firms that need to record client time and invoice from it. Keep practice management, approval workflows and financial reporting in the systems you use for those jobs.
Frequently asked questions
Can staff see each other's time?
Only if you let them. Reports are a permission, so partners and managers can see the firm while members see their own time. Owners and admins can also move an entry to another person when it was logged under the wrong name.
Can we close a month so nobody changes it?
Yes. An owner or admin sets a lock date in the team settings, by hand or on a schedule, and members cannot edit entries before it. Admins and owners are not locked out, so a correction after billing is still possible.
Can we bring our hours over from another time tracker?
Yes. Timen imports time tracking data from Toggl Track, Harvest, Clockify, Timely, Hubstaff and Jibble, with the clients and projects, so the reports start with your history rather than from the day you switched.
Review unbilled hours before the invoice run
Create your first client and engagement, track the work and review the hours before billing.