Manage projects and bill their time

If you bill by the hour, Stacks keeps the whole loop in one place: create a project for a client, track your hours against it, and turn that unbilled time into a draft invoice with a single click. Each time entry becomes its own invoice line — hours multiplied by your project rate — and Stacks marks the time as billed so you never charge for the same hour twice.

Before you start

• Projects and time tracking live inside the Invoicing module, so it needs to be switched on for your workspace.
• To bill a project's time it needs a client (contact) attached — that's who the invoice goes to. You can add or change the client on the project at any time.
• Set a default hourly rate on the project — that's the rate Stacks uses when it bills the time. A project left at a 0 rate has nothing to bill, so the Invoice unbilled time button won't appear until the time adds up to more than zero.
• Creating projects and turning time into invoices needs permission to create invoices — admins, managers and team members have it by default (view-only users can see projects but cannot log time).

Step by step

1. Create a project. Go to Invoicing → Projects and click New Project. Give it a name, choose the Client (contact), and set a Default hourly rate and Currency. You can also pick a status, a color, and add a description. Save with Create project.
2. Track time against it. Open Time Tracking (the button sits at the top of Projects). Pick the project, type what you're working on, keep Billable checked, and hit ▶ Start. Hit ■ Stop when you're done. Forgot to run the timer? Use + Add manually to log a date, project and hours (e.g. 1.5) after the fact.
3. Open the project to see what's unbilled. Back on the project, the Unbilled time card totals up every billable, un-invoiced entry and shows how many are ready to bill.
4. Invoice the unbilled time. Click Invoice unbilled time. Stacks builds a new draft invoice — one line per entry, hours × your project rate, labeled with your note and the date — and marks those entries Invoiced so they won't be billed again.
5. Review and send. Stacks opens the draft with a 14-day due date. Nothing is sent automatically — tweak the lines if you need to, then send it to your client just like any other invoice.

Good to know

• Only billable, finished time bills. Stacks invoices entries that are marked Billable, aren't already invoiced, and have been stopped. A running timer isn't counted until you stop it, and non-billable entries stay off the invoice while still showing in your totals.
• The rate follows the project. Amounts use the project's default hourly rate and its currency, so a change to the rate applies to time you bill afterwards.
• No double billing. Once time is rolled into an invoice it's marked Invoiced and skipped next time — click Invoice unbilled time again later and it only picks up the new hours.
• Deleting a project keeps the time. If you delete a project its time entries aren't lost — they're just unassigned from it, so your records stay intact.

Frequently asked