What is a Billable Hours Tracker?

Every hour your team spends on client work has financial value, but only if it's captured and billed correctly. A billable hours tracker is how agencies and professional services firms ensure that valuable time is recorded, attributed, and converted into revenue.

Billable Hours Tracker: Meaning

A billable hours tracker is a tool that allows employees or contractors to log the time they spend working on client-billable tasks, and then use that data for invoicing, profitability analysis, and capacity planning.

Unlike general time tracking, a billable hours tracker is specifically designed around the distinction between time that can be charged to a client and internal time that cannot. It ensures that billable time is captured in full, accurately attributed to the right client and project, and translated into correct invoices.

Billable vs. Non-Billable Hours

Billable hours are time spent directly on client work — strategy, design, development, account management, or any activity that falls within the agreed scope of a client engagement.

Non-billable hours include internal meetings, business development, training, administrative tasks, and any work outside the scope of a client's contract.

Tracking both is essential. It gives leadership a clear view of team utilization — the ratio of billable to total hours worked — which is a key indicator of agency profitability.

Key Features of a Billable Hours Tracker

• Billable/non-billable classification: Easily distinguish between client-chargeable and internal time on every entry.
• Client and project attribution: Assign each time entry to the right client and project for accurate billing.
• Billing rate management: Apply different rates per team member, role, or client agreement.
• Invoice generation: Convert logged billable hours into draft invoices automatically.
• Utilization reporting: See billable efficiency across the team, by individual, project, or time period.
• Budget vs. actuals: Compare estimated hours against actual time to identify scope creep early.
• Approval workflows: Route time entries through manager review before billing.

Why Billable Hours Tracking Is Critical for Agencies

For agencies, revenue is directly tied to the accurate capture of billable time. Common problems agencies face without a proper tracker include:

• Unbilled hours slipping through because team members forget to log time
• Incorrect invoices due to time attributed to the wrong project or rate
• Scope creep going unnoticed until a project is over budget
• No visibility into which clients or projects are actually profitable

A billable hours tracker eliminates these problems by making time capture a consistent, structured part of the team's workflow.

How Noloco Helps You Track Billable Hours

Noloco's Agency Operating System allows agencies to build a billable hours tracking system that's fully connected to their project and client data — not bolted on as an afterthought.

Team members log time directly against projects and clients in Noloco Tables, with custom fields for billing rates, billable classification, and approval status. Leadership sees real-time utilization dashboards through Noloco Charts. And automated Workflows can trigger invoice generation, approval requests, or budget alerts based on time logged.

Because Noloco is fully customizable, you can build the exact billing workflow your agency uses — whether you bill by the hour, by retainer, or by milestone — without forcing your process into a rigid off-the-shelf tool.

Explore the Noloco Agency Operating System to see how agencies are tracking, billing, and maximizing their billable hours.

Visit our main glossary page to explore more key terms shaping modern business software.

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