Best Time Tracking Software for Consultants in 2026: Timers, Billable Rates and Invoices

The best time tracking software for consultants is the one that gets billable hours onto an invoice without retyping. Harvest and Toggl Track suit consultants who start a timer and invoice from the same data, Bonsai suits independents who also want proposals and contracts, and Kimai and Solidtime are the open-source choices for those who prefer to host their own data.

Enlisted lists many time trackers, and the ones that fit consulting are those that name client billing, billable rates or invoicing. This guide groups them by job: timers that become invoices, a back office for independents, automatic capture, time inside project tools, and self-hosted options. Live pricing is in the table and the "Pricing compared" section, so no prices appear in the text.

What should time tracking software for consultants do?

Consultants sell hours or fixed-fee projects measured in hours, so time data is also billing data. The vendors' own descriptions suggest four features that matter:

• Billable and non-billable time, with rates. Solidtime sets billable rates for a project, a project member, an organization member or a whole organization, Clockify lists billable rates in its reports, and Timely reports billable and non-billable hours separately.
• Review before billing. Clockify lists approvals, Timely lists locked time entries, and Dailii lets a manager approve or reject a report with a comment.
• A path to the invoice. Harvest, Toggl Track, Clockify, Bonsai and Kimai list invoicing, ManicTime can invoice from a timesheet, and actiTIME and TimeCamp connect to QuickBooks.
• Budgets per client. Toggl Track has project budgets, Everhour adds budget threshold alerts, and actiTIME compares actual hours with estimates.

How we picked

Each tool tracks time against clients or projects and names billing, invoicing or billable rates in its own description. We left out candidates that only match the word "client", such as invoice-only tools with no time tracking and slide generators. Open-source entries also need recent GitHub activity and a stated licence. For how listings are ranked, see how Enlisted ranks tools.

Best for timers that turn into invoices

Harvest: best for professional service teams that bill by the hour

Harvest is a time tracking tool with expenses, reporting and invoicing for professional service teams that bill clients by the hour. People log hours against projects and clients, and the same data feeds reports and invoices with online payments. A companion product, Harvest Forecast, schedules team capacity.

The vendor publishes solutions pages for consulting, accounting, law firms, agencies, design and software teams, and lists integrations with Asana, Slack and Stripe. Desktop and mobile apps are available.

• Best for: consultants who want the shortest route from a running timer to a payment.
• Watch out for: the free plan is limited to one seat and a small number of projects, pricing is per seat, and there is no self-hosted version.

Toggl Track: best for simple timers with project budgets

Toggl Track is a time tracking application for freelancers and teams with an online timer, automated tracking, timesheet reports, project budgets, invoicing and time off management. Apps are offered for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, and listed use cases include time billing and project time tracking.

• Best for: consultants who want a clean timer, budgets per project and reports they can send to clients.
• Watch out for: invoicing is one feature among several, so if you also need proposals and contracts look at Bonsai. It is hosted and closed source.

Clockify: best for a free plan with approvals and rates

Clockify is a time tracker and timesheet tool with a timer, timesheets, calendar view, auto tracker, reports with billable rates, invoicing, approvals, expenses and time off. It runs as a web app, a desktop app and mobile apps, and the vendor lists more than 100 integrations and an industry page for consultants.

The free plan has no cap on users. The vendor has also added an activity monitoring feature, which you can ignore if you track only your own hours.

• Best for: small consulting teams that want approvals and billable rates without paying for a seat from day one.
• Watch out for: it is hosted only with per-seat paid plans, so check the vendor's plan comparison for approvals and invoicing before relying on the free tier.

Best back office for independent consultants

Bonsai: best for proposal-to-invoice admin in one product

Bonsai is business management software for freelancers and small agencies that combines a CRM, proposals, agreements, a client portal, project tasks, time tracking, timesheets, invoicing with online payments and expense tracking. Its listed use cases include consultants tracking billable time.

• Best for: independent consultants who want to move from proposal to signed contract to invoice without switching tools.
• Watch out for: there is no free plan (a trial is offered), pricing is per user, and it is aimed at freelancers and small agencies rather than larger firms.

Midday: best open-source business assistant for solo consultants

Midday is an open-source (AGPL-3.0) business tool for freelancers, contractors and consultants that covers time tracking, invoicing, receipt matching, file storage and a finance overview. Financial data can be exported as CSV for an accountant.

• Best for: solo consultants who want time, receipts and files in one app they can self-host.
• Watch out for: its README listed invoicing as an upcoming feature when Enlisted last captured it, the repository's last commit is older than for the other open-source picks here, and no pricing is listed in Enlisted's data. Confirm what is live before you commit.

For invoicing with an EU focus, InvoiceKit combines time tracking with VAT-aware invoices, and BillNotch is a desktop app that tracks work automatically and turns billable hours into PDF invoices.

Best for automatic time capture

Timely: best for consultants who forget to start the timer

Timely is an automatic time tracking and capacity planning product for agencies, consultancies and SaaS teams that bill or budget by project time. Its Memory app runs in the background, logs the apps, documents and sites you use, and lets you review that record and turn it into timesheet entries.

Integrations include Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Trello, Jira, Google Calendar, Zoom and QuickBooks.

• Best for: consultants who switch between many documents and calls and want a draft timesheet to edit.
• Watch out for: there is no free plan (a trial is offered), and a tool that records apps and sites should be checked against any confidentiality terms in client contracts.

ManicTime: best for automatic tracking with local storage

ManicTime is an automatic time tracker for Windows, Mac and Linux that captures applications and documents, can add screenshots and idle time tracking, and lets you assign tracked time to projects and tasks. It offers timesheets, reports, invoicing from a timesheet, and integrations with Jira, GitHub, Asana, Harvest and QuickBooks Online.

Data can be kept in local storage, or on a cloud or on-premise server.

• Best for: consultants who want automatic capture while keeping the data on their own machine or server.
• Watch out for: it is closed source and paid, and screenshot capture is optional but worth turning off if client work is confidential.

Best when time sits inside project tools

Everhour: best when clients or teams already use Asana, ClickUp or Jira

Everhour is a time tracking tool that works inside project management apps, with timers available directly in Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Jira and Linear. It adds budgets with threshold alerts, reports, time off, scheduling, invoicing from tracked time and expense tracking.

• Best for: consultants embedded in a client's project tool who want to log time where the tasks live.
• Watch out for: the paid plan has a minimum seat count, and the value depends on the project app you pair it with.

TrackingTime: best for agency-style retainers

TrackingTime is a time tracking and project management tool whose current positioning is an operational back office for agencies. It covers billable hours, retainers, billing, timesheets, time cards, project profitability and leave management, and its AutoTrack feature captures time automatically.

The free plan has unlimited users, with a trial of paid features.

• Best for: small consultancies that bill retainers and want profitability by client.
• Watch out for: the vendor aims at agencies rather than consulting, so check that its retainer and billing views match how you invoice. It is hosted and closed source.

If you also manage client work, the guide to project management software for consultants covers tools such as Paymo that combine tasks, time and invoicing. Teams that want budgets and payroll can look at actiTIME or TimeCamp.

Best open-source and self-hosted time trackers

Kimai: best open-source time tracker with invoicing

Kimai is an open-source (AGPL-3.0) web-based time tracking application for freelancers and teams, with timesheets, reports and invoicing. It supports multiple timers, a punch-in and punch-out mode, tags, a JSON API, data exports, translations into more than 30 languages and sign-in through SAML, LDAP or the local database, plus two-factor authentication with TOTP.

You can self-host it, and the vendor also sells a hosted version.

• Best for: consultants and small firms that want invoices, exports and role-based access on a server they control.
• Watch out for: self-hosting means you maintain a PHP and Symfony application, including updates and backups. The hosted version avoids that.

Solidtime: best newer open-source option for clients and billable rates

Solidtime is an open-source (AGPL-3.0) time tracking app for freelancers and agencies with projects, tasks, clients and billable rates. One account can manage several organizations, which suits a consultant who keeps separate workspaces, and data can be imported from Toggl, Clockify and generic CSV files.

It has a free Solo plan for one user, a paid Professional plan and an on-premise option.

• Best for: consultants moving off Toggl or Clockify who want an open-source tool with rate controls.
• Watch out for: invoicing is not part of the listed features, and it is a younger project than Kimai, so check the current feature set on the vendor's site.

Two other open-source tools do less. Traggo is a self-hosted tracker built around tags instead of projects, and ActivityWatch is a privacy-focused automatic tracker that stores data locally. Neither lists invoicing.

Best for French consulting firms

Dailii: best for the monthly activity report (CRA)

Dailii is a French web app for the monthly activity report, or CRA, used by French IT services firms, consultancies and freelance consultants. Instead of filling in a timesheet day by day, you describe the month in a sentence, an AI places worked days, half-days and leave in the calendar, you correct it, and a manager approves or rejects it. Dashboards follow revenue and average daily rate, and reports export as CSV or PDF.

• Best for: freelance consultants and consulting firms in France that must submit CRAs.
• Watch out for: the site is in French and the product is built around the CRA, so it is not a general hourly timer or invoicing tool.

What about accountants and other professional services?

The same tools work for accountants, lawyers and architects. Harvest publishes solutions pages for accounting and law firms, and Clockify lists industry pages for accountants and lawyers. For firms that bill by the hour in those fields, see the guides to time tracking software for lawyers and time tracking software for architects. If you keep the books too, free accounting software is a good next read.

What should consultants check before buying?

Two requirements decide most choices.

1. Where the rates live and who can change them. Decide whether you bill by person, by project or by client, then confirm the tool stores rates at that level. Solidtime lets you set rates at several levels, Clockify lists billable rates and Timely lists locked time entries; for the others, ask the vendor how rates and already-invoiced entries are handled.
2. How the invoice is produced. Built-in invoicing (Harvest, Toggl Track, Clockify, Bonsai, Kimai) is quickest. If your accountant works in QuickBooks, check the integration lists: actiTIME, TimeCamp, Timely and ManicTime name QuickBooks. If your client contract limits where data is stored, check whether the tool can be self-hosted (Kimai and Solidtime) or stores data locally (ManicTime, ActivityWatch).

How to choose

For related reading, browse the project management category, the productivity category or the guide to the best productivity apps.