Hourly or fixed price, for freelancers

Bill by the hour or quote a price. Phased works either way.

Phased is time and project tracking for freelancers, however you price the work. Bill by the hour with no budget, or set a fixed price and see what it pays per hour. Keep a small job as one simple project, or split a bigger one into phases and tasks.

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Three jobs, set up three ways. The product renders are split into phases with a price on each. The website copy has one fixed price. The advisory calls are hourly with no budget, so they show no budget health.

Freelancers rarely price every job the same way.

A consultant bills advisory calls by the hour. A copywriter quotes one price for a website. A 3D artist splits a product launch into modelling, lighting and final renders. Sometimes that is the same person in the same month.

Hours alone do not tell you whether a fixed price paid off. A fee split is no help on work you bill by the hour. A setup built for one of these makes the others awkward.

Bill by the hour, with no budget.

Leave the budget empty and a project is hourly. Its value is the hours you log times your rate, and the calendar adds up the week's value as you go. The advisory calls above have 9h 30m logged at €70, which is €665 of work.

With no budget there is nothing to run over, so the project shows no budget health. This works on Free, at your default rate. If you want a limit, add an hour budget, also on Free, and Phased shows the hours left.

This week 24h 45m €1,527.50 at your rate
Nova Rebrand 10h Fern E-shop 7h Atlas App 6h 30m Studio Admin 1h 15m

Quote a fixed price and see what it pays per hour.

On Pro, give a project or a phase a money budget, and that budget is the price. Phased divides it by the hours you log, which gives your effective rate. The website copy above was quoted at €1,400, or 20 hours at €70. Fourteen hours in, it is paying €100 an hour.

Lighting & materials went the other way. It has taken 35 hours against 30, so its €2,100 is paying €60 an hour. Health reads On track below 80% of the budget, Approaching up to 100%, and Over budget past that. A budget warns you. It never stops you logging time.

How Phased calculates budget use and hourly earnings

Keep a job simple, or split it into phases.

A simple project is one job with one price, or no price at all. Behind it sits a single hidden phase that carries the whole job, so there is nothing extra to set up.

When a job has parts, split it. Name the phases yourself and give each one its share of the price, and Phased tracks each phase on its own. You can split a simple project later, and its hours move to the first phase. Free allows two phases per project. Pro has no limit.

  1. 01 Modelling €2,100 30h at €70/h The product modelled from drawings and reference photos.
  2. 02 Lighting & materials €2,100 30h at €70/h Surfaces, studio light, and the camera angles in the brief.
  3. 03 Final renders €2,100 30h at €70/h Every agreed angle, rendered at full resolution.
  4. 04 Delivery €700 10h at €70/h Exports, formats, and handing over the files.
€7,000 across 4 phases · 100h of work at €70/h Name them for the job: modelling, drafts, workshops, or anything else.

Keep out-of-scope work apart from the price.

When a client asks for something the quote did not cover, mark those time entries Out of scope. The fourth camera angle here took 4 hours. It stays in your records but stops counting against the 30-hour Lighting & materials budget.

On Pro, price it at an hourly rate or a flat amount and show it on a Phase or Project Report as Additional Work. Reports freeze when you create them, so a report you sent keeps its figures.

Common questions

Can I use Phased if I only bill by the hour?

Yes. Leave the budget empty and each project is valued at your hours times your rate. That works on Free, at your default rate, for up to three active projects. Time Reports give the client the hours, and CSV and JSON exports are included.

I quote fixed prices. How do I know if a job paid off?

Enter the price as a money budget, which is a Pro feature. Phased divides it by the hours you log, so you see the effective rate while the job is still open. Finish early and the rate goes up. Run long and it falls, and the budget health moves from On track to Approaching to Over budget.

Some jobs are hourly and some are fixed price. Can I mix them?

Yes. You choose per project, and per phase inside a phased project. One project can be hourly with no budget while the next has a fixed price. In a phased project, one phase can carry a price while another has no budget.

Do I have to split every job into phases?

No. Most small jobs stay simple: one project, with one price or none. Split a job when it has parts you want to watch on their own, such as research, drafts and revisions. You can split a simple project later without losing its hours.

Do I need to install anything, and does it work on a phone?

There is nothing to install. Phased runs in the browser on a computer or a phone. On a phone the calendar shows one day at a time: hold to draw an entry, tap one to edit it, and run the timer from the dock.

What happens to my projects if I go back to Free?

Nothing is deleted when you move to Free. Every project keeps its phases, hours, reports, and history. Free supports three active projects; the rest are archived after a short grace period, and you can swap which three stay active. Pro-only settings such as money budgets are kept but hidden until you return to Pro, while CSV and JSON exports remain available.

One person, one price.

Free includes the calendar, timer, three active projects with two phases each, tasks, time budgets, Time Reports, and data exports. Pro is €7 a month or €66 a year. It removes the project and phase limits and adds money budgets, budget health, effective rates, priced Additional Work, Phase and Project Reports, and your own letterhead.

See what is in each plan