Time tracking and invoicing for freelance designers

How should a freelance designer track time on a project?

Track time against the phase you're working in, not against the project as a whole. A brand identity project might have tasks for discovery, moodboards, concepts, each revision round, guidelines, and file handoff. When each phase has its own time log, you can see where a project ran long and show a client exactly what a change request cost. In Aeto, every task on the Kanban board has its own timer. Start it from the task in the browser, or from the Mac menu bar while you work in Figma or Illustrator. The hours land on that task, and the task becomes a line item when you invoice.

How do you know if a flat-fee design project was worth it?

Divide the fee by the hours you actually spent. The result is your effective hourly rate, and it's the most direct way to tell whether a fixed price worked. Many designers quote flat fees from an estimate and never check the estimate afterward, so an underpriced quote gets reused on the next project. In Aeto, a flat-fee project invoices at the agreed amount while you keep tracking hours against its tasks, and Aeto shows the effective hourly rate as the hours come in. The hours are broken down by phase, so you can see which part of the job pulled the rate down.

What does a flat-fee brand identity project look like in Aeto?

Illustrative example. A brand identity for a regional coffee roaster, quoted at $4,800. The designer's target rate is $120 an hour, so the quote assumed about 40 hours and two revision rounds.

Aeto shows the effective rate for this project as $100 an hour, $20 under target. The out-of-scope third round and the extra concept time account for most of the gap. With hours broken out by task, the next quote has two clear fixes: price concepts higher, or write two rounds into the contract and bill a third as its own task.

How do you bill a client for extra revision rounds?

Add the extra round as its own task and bill it separately from the original scope. Revision creep is hard to charge for when every round lives in the same "design" time log. In Aeto, a new revision round is a new card on the board. Track time against it, and it appears on the invoice as its own line item, such as "Revision round 3: homepage layout." If the round should bill at a different price than your usual rate, set a rate on that task and it overrides the client's default. A separate line gives the client a clear record of what they asked for, which makes the charge easier to accept.

What doesn't Aeto do for designers?

Aeto covers the path from task to timer to invoice, and stops there. It doesn't handle proposals or contracts. If your process depends on those, HoneyBook covers more of it, and the Aeto vs HoneyBook comparison lays out the tradeoffs. Aeto has no Figma or Adobe integration, so tracking starts from the board or the menu bar instead of from inside your design tools. It's also built for one person, with no team seats or shared projects.