Why the gap exists
A time entry and an invoice line are not the same shape. You logged eleven entries across three weeks: calls, revisions, fixing the export. The client wants to see two or three lines they recognise from the quote.
So the work of invoicing time is not arithmetic — it is grouping and rewording. Which is why it gets postponed, and why postponed hours turn into “let's just call it a round number” two months later, always rounded down.
Grouping that clients accept
| Group by | Reads as | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Project phase | Discovery — 12h · Build — 34h | Fixed-scope work where the quote was phased the same way. |
| Month | Consulting, September — 18h | Retainers and ongoing work billed monthly. |
| Deliverable | Homepage — 9h · Checkout — 14h | Clients who approve work item by item. |
| Every entry, itemised | Eleven dated lines | Clients who ask for it, and disputes. Otherwise it invites line-by-line argument. |
The last row is the trap. Full itemisation feels transparent and reads as an invitation to negotiate each line. Unless the client has asked, group.
Marking time as billed
This is the part that protects you, and it is invisible until it fails. Once hours have gone onto an invoice they must be flagged as billed, or they stay in the unbilled pile and get invoiced again next month.
Double-billing a client is worse than missing hours. Missing hours cost you money; double-billing costs you the client's confidence in every invoice you have ever sent, and it is the kind of mistake that gets discovered in front of their accountant.
In Flowzivo, invoicing a client's unbilled time creates the invoice and marks those entries as billed in the same action. The remaining unbilled figure updates, so what is left really is what is left.
A worked example
Three weeks on one client: 31 entries, 46h 30m, of which 8h are marked non-billable (your own admin and a fixed-price revision you agreed to absorb). 38h 30m billable at €85 is €3,272.50.
Grouped into three lines — Discovery 9h, Build 24h 30m, Handover 5h — that is an invoice a client approves in a minute. Sent as 31 dated lines it is an invoice that gets a reply asking about the 40 minutes on the 14th.
Start the timer instead of reading about it
The demo is the real product with example data in it. No account, nothing to install, and anything you add you can keep when you sign up.
No account to look around. Example data, and anything you add is yours to keep.
Questions
Should the invoice show hours or just a total?
Show the hours and the rate. A total with no basis invites the question anyway, and answering it in a follow-up email is worse than answering it on the document. Group the hours into lines the client recognises.
What if the hours exceed the quoted budget?
Talk before you invoice, never after. An invoice that arrives 30% above the quote without warning is a dispute; a message at 80% of budget asking how they want to proceed is project management. The overage conversation is much cheaper before the work is done than after.
How do I handle rounding?
Pick a rule and apply it to every entry — nearest 15 minutes is common and easy to defend. What you must not do is round some entries and not others, because the pattern of which ones you rounded up is visible to anyone who adds them back up.
Can I invoice part of the unbilled time?
Yes. Select the entries you want to bill now; the rest stay unbilled and appear next time. This is the normal case for a long project billed monthly against the same running timesheet.