FreshBooks · Time Tracking

How to Fix FreshBooks Time Tracking Error

Tracked hours do not appear on the invoice, the timer will not stop, logged time goes missing, or billable hours are billing at the wrong rate.

At QuickFix Bookkeeping, the mechanism people miss: time only reaches an invoice if it is marked billable and linked to a project and a client. Unassigned time is recorded but unbillable. Every year, businesses track hundreds of hours that can never be invoiced because nobody ticked a box.

What Causes This

Not marked billable

Time logged without the billable flag is recorded but will never appear on an invoice.

No project or client

Time not linked to a project and client has nothing to be billed to.

Already invoiced

Time billed on a previous invoice will not appear again, by design.

Wrong rate

The rate on the project, the team member, or the service does not match what you meant to charge.

How to Fix It

METHOD 1Mark the Time as BillableHours will not pull into an invoice
1

Open the time entry and confirm Billable is ticked. Unbillable time is tracked for your own records only and never reaches an invoice.

2

Confirm the entry is linked to both a client and a project. Time with no project has nothing to bill against.

3

Then create the invoice from the project rather than from scratch. FreshBooks pulls in unbilled billable time automatically when you invoice from the project.

METHOD 2Check Whether It Was Already BilledTime is missing
1

Time already included on a previous invoice will not appear again. This is deliberate, and it prevents double billing.

2

Open the project and filter for unbilled time to see what genuinely remains. If time you expected is showing as billed, find the invoice it went onto rather than re-adding it.

METHOD 3Fix the Billing RateHours are right, money is wrong
1

Rates cascade. A rate can be set on the service, on the team member, or on the project, and the most specific one wins.

2

If time is billing at the wrong rate, check all three rather than only the one you expect. A project rate silently overriding a team member rate is the usual surprise.

3

Changing a rate does not retrospectively reprice time already logged. Correct the entries directly, or the old rate persists.

METHOD 4Fix a Timer That Will Not StopTimer stuck running
1

A timer left running in a closed browser tab or a backgrounded mobile app can log an absurd number of hours overnight. Stop it, then edit the entry to the correct duration rather than deleting it, so the work is not lost. If timers regularly run away, switch to logging time manually at the end of each task.

Unbillable Time Is Money You Already Spent

Time that was worked, tracked, and never invoiced is pure loss. It is worse than not tracking at all, because you paid for the work and have the record proving it. Review unbilled time on every project before you invoice, every single month. It is the single highest-return habit in a service business.

Related Guides

Billable Hours Never Making It Onto Invoices?

Let QuickFix Bookkeeping Fix Your Billing.

Tracked time that never gets invoiced is revenue you already earned and simply did not collect. We audit your unbilled time, fix the setup, and recover what is billable.

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