Projects, clients and hourly rates
The hierarchy is deliberately shallow: client → project → task. An entry points at a project (and optionally a task); the client comes along with the project. Nothing forces you to use all three levels — a freelancer with five clients may never create a single task.
Clients
A client is who you invoice. Projects hang under it, and reports can group by client, so „how much do I bill Acme this month“ is one filter away.
Projects
A project carries a colour (so you recognise it in lists), a default for the billable flag, and optionally its own hourly rate. Archive a project when it ends: it disappears from the pickers but its hours stay in reports. Deleting would take the history with it, which is why archiving exists.
Tasks
Tasks are the level below a project, for when „Website redesign“ is too coarse to invoice from. They are optional, they can be marked done, and done tasks drop out of the picker without touching past entries.
Which rate applies
Rates can be set in three places. The most specific one wins:
- the project's rate,
- the member's rate in the workspace (a senior costs more than a junior),
- the workspace default rate.
If none is set, the entry has no amount — reports show a dash, not a zero, because zero would be a lie about work you did.
Rates have a history. The first rate you ever set on a level applies to everything before it — there was nothing to recalculate. Every later change applies from the moment you save it: an entry takes the rate that was valid when it started, so older entries keep the old rate, a running timer finishes on the old one, and an entry typed in for last Tuesday gets last Tuesday's rate. Removing a rate is a change like any other. Once a rate has actually changed, the field says „Applies from …“ so you know the history is in play.
Currency
The currency is a workspace setting, one per workspace. If you bill in two currencies, use two workspaces — mixing them in one total would produce a number that means nothing.
Budgets
A project, a client or a member can carry one budget — in hours or in money, either a total (optionally „from“ a date) or a recurring one per calendar year, quarter, month or week. Usage is computed from finished entries with the same pricing as reports and shown as a bar: „42 h of 50 h · 84 %“, amber above 80 %, red above 100 %. Owners and admins get an e-mail and a push at 80 and 100 % (the thresholds are yours to change — „Every 25 %“ suits a yearly budget), at most once per threshold and period; a member with a budget of their own gets it too.
Reports carry a Budgets card with a forecast („at this pace it runs out on 18 Sep“) that follows the report period: it shows the budget period your selection falls into (both of them when the selection crosses a boundary) and how much of it the selection used; a finished period shows how it ended instead of a forecast. The dashboard has a tile for budgets at risk. A member sees the budgets of the projects they can see, and their own.