HourTab

Blog · July 3, 2026 · ~12 min read

Clockify retainer tracking: from free time tracker to a client-facing balance URL

Clockify is the most widely used free time tracker for freelancers managing retainer clients. Its free tier has no hard limit on clients, projects, or time entries — making it the starting point for most solo consultants before they know they need something more. The gap Clockify doesn't fill is the client-facing side: there is no native way to give a retainer client a live view of how many hours remain this cycle without giving them access to your entire Clockify workspace. This guide covers the full workflow: Clockify retainer configuration, Detailed Report export, and the one step that adds the client-facing balance layer.

Why Clockify works for retainer tracking (and why most freelancers start here)

Clockify's free tier includes everything a solo freelancer needs for basic retainer time tracking: unlimited workspace members (on Free), unlimited projects and clients, a Detailed Report that can be filtered by client and date range, and CSV export. For a consultant just starting to manage one or two retainer clients, there is no compelling reason to pay for a time tracker at all — Clockify Free handles the logging and reporting side completely.

The features that are specifically useful for retainer work:

The Shared Reports gap: what Clockify doesn't show clients

Clockify's Shared Reports feature lets you generate a public link to a report. A client can open the link without logging in and see the time entries or the summary. This sounds like it solves the client-visibility problem, but it doesn't solve the retainer-balance problem specifically.

A Clockify Shared Report shows time entries or totals for a date range. It does not show:

The client opening a Clockify Shared Report sees a list of time entries and a total. They see "32.5 hours" but they don't see "32.5 of 40 hours used, 7.5 hours remaining, cycle ends July 31." To compute the balance from a Clockify Shared Report, the client would need to know the cap separately and subtract manually — which means the "hours remaining?" question still requires your intervention.

The detailed reasons why this gap exists — and why Clockify's estimate/budget features don't close it either — are covered in the post on Clockify retainer tracking. The short version: Clockify's project budgets are internal alerts you set for yourself; they are not client-facing balance tools.

Step 1: Configure Clockify for retainer work

The Clockify setup for retainer tracking is straightforward but a few configuration decisions made at setup time make the export and workflow significantly cleaner.

Create a Client record for each retainer client

In Clockify, go to the Clients section and create a Client for each retainer client. This is the primary organizing dimension for retainer tracking. Every project for a given retainer client should be associated with the same Client record.

If you're managing three retainer clients simultaneously, you should have three Client records in Clockify. The Detailed Report filter at export time will be "Client = [this client]," pulling all billable hours for that client across all their projects.

Set projects to billable by default

When you create a project in Clockify, there's a billable setting in the project configuration. For retainer work projects, set billable to "on" by default. This means all new time entries logged under the project start as billable. You can override individual entries to non-billable if needed (for work you're doing for the client but not charging against the retainer cap), but the default should be billable so you don't accidentally under-report the hours consumed.

Workspace settings: hourly rate and billable flag visibility

In Clockify's workspace settings, ensure that the billable flag is visible to all workspace members who are logging retainer time. On the free Clockify plan, the billable flag is shown in the time tracker by default. On some configurations it can be hidden to simplify the UI; if the billable flag isn't visible to your team members, they cannot mark entries correctly.

Entry descriptions: write them at log time

Clockify's entry description field is the work log description the client will see in the retainer balance view. The discipline of writing meaningful descriptions at the time of logging — not retroactively — is what makes the client-facing work log useful rather than a list of generic time blocks. "Content strategy call — Q3 editorial calendar" is a useful work log entry; "client call" is not.

For consulting retainers where the work is advisory or analytical rather than deliverable-based, description quality is particularly important. The work log entry is how the client understands what the retainer hours produced. For more on this, the post on time tracking for consultants covers the billable work description discipline in the context of advisory retainers.

Step 2: Export the Clockify Detailed Report

At the end of the billing cycle (or mid-cycle when you need to update the client balance), go to the Reports section in Clockify and open the Detailed Report.

Filters to apply before exporting

Export as CSV

Once filters are set, click "Export" and choose CSV format. Clockify's Detailed Report CSV includes: project, client, description, task, user, group, billable status, start date, start time, end date, end time, and duration in hours. This is the file you'll import into HourTab.

The Clockify CSV export is available on the Free plan. There is no paid tier requirement for this step.

Step 3: Generate the client balance URL in HourTab

With the Clockify CSV exported, the HourTab import takes under a minute:

  1. Create a retainer in HourTab. Enter the retainer name, hours cap (the contracted monthly hours, e.g., 40 hours), cycle start date, and cycle duration. This is the contract information Clockify doesn't hold.
  2. Import the Clockify CSV. Upload the exported file. HourTab reads the duration and description columns, sums the hours consumed, and populates the work log with entries from the Clockify export.
  3. Share the URL. HourTab generates a permanent public URL your client can bookmark. The URL shows: a progress bar (hours used vs. cap), the work log with entry descriptions, and hours remaining. No client login required. No Clockify access required.

When you update mid-cycle (re-export from Clockify with the updated date range, re-import to HourTab), the client's URL refreshes to the current hours. The URL stays the same; the data underneath updates.

Managing multiple retainer clients in Clockify

One of Clockify Free's advantages is that there is no client or project limit. Freelancers managing three, five, or eight retainer clients simultaneously can use a single Clockify workspace for all of them without paying for a higher tier.

Workspace organization for multi-client retainer management

The naming convention for projects matters more when you have multiple clients. A clear pattern like "[Client Name] — [Discipline]" (e.g., "Acme Corp — Strategy," "Acme Corp — Content," "Bright Labs — SEO") makes it easier to filter and export correctly. Projects with ambiguous names ("Strategy," "Content") become confusing when you have multiple clients with similar work types.

For each client in HourTab, the export-and-import cycle is independent. You run a Detailed Report for Client A, import it, and Client A's balance URL updates. You then run a report for Client B, import it, and Client B's URL updates. The workflows are parallel but not entangled; updating one client's HourTab retainer does not affect any other client's data.

Retainer clients vs. project clients in the same workspace

If you have both retainer clients and fixed-price project clients in the same Clockify workspace, the Client and Project structure keeps them separated. The Detailed Report filter "Client = [retainer client]" pulls only that client's time. Fixed-price project clients logged under different Client records won't appear in the export.

The edge case to watch: if a client has both a retainer engagement AND a fixed-price project running simultaneously, use separate Project records in Clockify to distinguish retainer hours from project hours (e.g., "Acme Corp — Monthly Retainer" and "Acme Corp — Annual Report Project"). Export and import only the retainer project hours for the balance URL.

Clockify Free vs. paid plans: what changes for retainer tracking

For the basic Clockify-to-HourTab retainer workflow, the free Clockify plan is sufficient:

The Clockify features that require paid plans (Clockify Pro, Teams) include: project budgets with automatic alerts, custom fields, invoicing, and scheduled report emails. None of these are required for the retainer tracking workflow described here. The HourTab side handles the balance view, the cap tracking, and the client-facing URL; Clockify handles the internal time logging and export.

This means the complete retainer tracking workflow — Clockify Free for time logging, HourTab Free for the client-facing balance URL of a single retainer client — costs nothing until you have enough clients or volume to justify paid tiers on either tool.

Common Clockify retainer tracking questions

Can I use the Summary Report instead of the Detailed Report for the export?

No. The Summary Report aggregates time into totals by project or client. It does not include individual entry descriptions, which are what HourTab reads to populate the work log. The work log — the list of what the client can see line-by-line — requires the Detailed Report, which includes per-entry data.

What if my retainer cycle doesn't align with calendar months?

Use a custom date range in the Clockify Detailed Report filter. The custom date range picker accepts any start and end date. Set it to the exact dates of your billing cycle (e.g., June 15 – July 14 for a retainer that started mid-month). In HourTab, set the cycle start date to the same day so the balance view reflects the correct cycle window.

What if a team member forgets to mark an entry as billable?

Clockify's workspace admin can edit any team member's time entries, including changing the billable flag. If you discover before the export that an entry was logged non-billable when it should have been billable, correct it in Clockify before running the export. The corrected entry will then appear in the billable-only filtered export.

If you discover the error after the export and after importing to HourTab, you have two options: correct the entry in Clockify and re-export/re-import, or add the missing entry manually in HourTab's work log editor. Re-exporting and re-importing is cleaner because it keeps Clockify as the single source of truth for the time data.

Can the client see my Clockify workspace if they have the HourTab URL?

No. The HourTab URL gives the client access to the balance view HourTab generates from the imported data. It is not a link to your Clockify workspace or report. The client has no access to Clockify through HourTab. This is one of the primary reasons for adding the HourTab layer: you can give clients visibility into their retainer balance without granting them access to your internal time tracking tool, your billing rates, or your other clients' data. The shared retainer dashboard page covers what clients see and what they don't.

Why adding the client-facing layer changes the retainer relationship

Clockify gives you an accurate internal record of retainer hours. The client has no access to this record unless you share it with them, and sharing your Clockify workspace shares everything — all clients, all rates, all projects. The result is that clients cannot self-serve the answer to "how many hours do we have left?" without asking you.

When clients can check the balance themselves, two things change. First, the "hours remaining?" question stops being a recurring support task for you. Second, clients who see the balance mid-cycle make different decisions about how to use the remaining hours: they prioritize requests, group related work, and plan ahead rather than submitting requests without awareness of the impact on the cap.

The work log entries from Clockify — the descriptions you wrote when logging time — become visible to the client in the balance view. This makes the work log a value-demonstration tool. Clients reviewing a work log of 40 detailed entries have a much more concrete sense of what the retainer hours produced than clients who receive a monthly email saying "40 hours used this month." For clients whose retainers involve work that's hard to make tangible — consulting, strategy, marketing advisory — the work log view is particularly valuable. The post on management consulting retainer management covers how this applies to advisory retainers specifically.

Give retainer clients a live balance URL from your Clockify data

Import your Clockify Detailed Report CSV. HourTab generates a shareable balance URL in under a minute. Free for one retainer.

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