We often talk about how important time tracking is for freelancers working on Hourly projects. Aside from fostering transparency between freelancers and their employers, time tracking also prevents accumulating unpaid hours.
You can track your time with the Freelancer Desktop App, but there could be times you’re in a rush to finish something that you forget to log in to the app. Even worse, your job might involve working away from the computer. If this ever happens to you, there’s no need to worry anymore.
Those hours you weren’t able to track with the app won’t be put to waste because manual time tracking is now available!
What freelancers need to know about Manual Time Tracking
You now have the option to manually log your worked hours with the Manual Time Tracking feature, which you can see in your project view page.
These hours will then be paid out each week along with app-tracked hours on projects where automatic billing is enabled. A separate manual invoice won’t be necessary for the hours spent working that were not tracked with the app.
This feature is also relevant for those who don’t need screenshots of the tasks they’ve done within the tracked time.
How to track hours manually
1. Log in to your Freelancer.com account.
2. Under the My Projects tab, click on the hourly project you’d like to track time for.
3. Go to the Time Tracking tab.
4. On the Tracked Time section, click Add Time Manually.
5. Set the date and time when your work was rendered. This is optional. The time and date is defaulted to the current time and date if unchanged.
6. Enter the number of hours you worked for in hours and minutes.
7. Describe the work that you did. This is also optional.
8. Click Track Time to record the hours you worked.
It’s now easy to get paid for your hard work. Try the manual time tracking on your next project!
How to delete manually tracked hours
Made a mistake? You can still delete these hours before they’re billed by doing the following:
1. Still in the Time Tracking tab of your project, go to the Tracked Time section.
2. Under Unbilled Time, click the arrow down button to see individually tracked hours or sessions for the current cycle.
3. Across each session is a trash icon. Click the icon to delete the session you want deleted.
4. Click Delete to confirm action.
Note that deleted sessions cannot be restored.
What employers need to know
You can see manually tracked time in your project's Time Tracking tab. To determine the sessions that are manually tracked from Desktop App-tracked hours, look for the View screenshots icon across the sessions. The icon indicates that there are screenshots to view, and screenshots are only available in the Desktop App-tracked hours. Therefore, sessions without the View screenshots icon are manually tracked hours.
Manual Time Tracking guarantees a smooth payment experience between you and your freelancer. You don’t have to make separate payments for the manually and automatically tracked hours as you will see them all in one invoice.
If you have questions or comments regarding this release, feel free to contact us or start a conversation in the comment section below.