Clockify tracks your agency hours. It can’t show clients what’s left.
Clockify’s Free tier is hard to beat for internal agency time tracking: unlimited clients, unlimited projects, clean reports, solid mobile app. The problem surfaces when a retainer client asks “how many hours remain?” Giving them a self-serve answer means either adding them to your Clockify workspace (where they can see other clients) or upgrading to a paid plan just to manage guest access. HourTab solves this without changing your Clockify setup — one shareable balance URL per retainer client, updated weekly from your existing Clockify export.
Free forever for your first retainer · no credit card.
The Clockify gaps that agencies hit with retainer clients
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Clockify client access exposes your whole workspace.
Adding a retainer client to your Clockify workspace as a Member gives them visibility beyond their own project — they can navigate to Reports and filter for other clients, see your team’s names, and access your workspace structure. For agencies managing 5–15 retainer clients simultaneously, one-workspace-for-all creates a data isolation problem. The alternative — a separate Clockify workspace per client — fragments your time-tracking workflow and multiplies the cost once you hit a paid plan. HourTab gives each client an isolated URL showing only their retainer data, while your Clockify workspace stays consolidated and private.
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Clockify’s shareable reports don’t know your retainer cap.
Clockify’s shareable report links show a filterable view of time entries for a date range. They present totals, not retainer balance. A client visiting a Clockify shareable report sees “47.5 hours” and must remember their monthly cap to calculate what’s left — and the link exposes the filter interface, so they can change the date range and see time outside their retainer scope. HourTab receives the same data via CSV and displays it the only way clients actually need: “12 of 20 hours used · 8 remain · resets Aug 1.”
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Multi-client agencies need per-retainer isolation, not per-client workspaces.
An agency with 10 retainer clients on different monthly caps, different billing cycles, and different renewal dates can’t manage client visibility by giving everyone separate Clockify workspaces. The overhead of maintaining 10 time-tracking setups — each with its own export workflow, member management, and report configuration — outweighs any benefit. HourTab handles the isolation at the retainer URL level: log all agency time in one Clockify workspace, then import per-client CSVs into HourTab. Each client gets their own balance URL, independent of the others.
How agencies use Clockify and HourTab together
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Keep logging in Clockify as normal. One workspace, all clients, all team members. Use Clockify’s Client records and Project structure exactly as you do today. No change to your internal workflow.
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Export the Detailed Report per client, import to HourTab. At the end of each week, export a Detailed Report from Clockify filtered to one client, billable only, current billing cycle dates. Import the CSV into that client’s HourTab retainer. Takes about 90 seconds per client.
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Send the balance URL once, update it weekly. Clients bookmark their HourTab URL. Each weekly import refreshes their balance. When a client asks “how many hours remain?” — the URL already answers it.
One Clockify workspace for the agency. Isolated balance URLs for each retainer client. No workspace access changes required.
“Clockify Free handles every time-tracking need we have. The only thing missing is a way to show clients their own balance without adding them to a workspace where they can see other accounts.”
— Common agency pain with Clockify client access
HourTab adds isolated per-retainer balance URLs. Clockify stays your source of truth — HourTab is the client-facing display layer.
Frequently asked questions
Does HourTab work with Clockify Free?
Yes. HourTab imports the Clockify Detailed Report CSV, which is available on Clockify’s Free tier. Export from Reports → Detailed (filter by client, billable only, custom date range), save the CSV, and import into HourTab. No Clockify paid plan is required for the export or for HourTab to process the data.
What does HourTab add that Clockify’s shareable reports don’t?
Clockify’s shareable report links show time totals for a date range. They don’t know your retainer cap, so they can’t show “8 hours remaining.” They also expose the filter interface, letting clients change the date range. HourTab shows exactly one thing: the retainer balance for one client. Cap, used, remaining, reset date, and work log — nothing else, and nothing changeable by the client.
Can I track time in Clockify and share a balance URL per client?
Yes. Log time in Clockify as normal. Export the Detailed Report per client at the end of each week and import into HourTab. Each client retainer has its own HourTab URL that the client bookmarks. When you import the new export, their balance URL updates immediately. Clockify is the tracker; HourTab is the client-facing balance layer.
Does each client need a separate HourTab retainer entry?
Yes. Each client retainer gets its own HourTab entry with its own monthly cap, billing cycle, and shareable URL. A client with two separate retainers gets two entries and two balance URLs. This maps directly to how retainer billing works: each retainer has its own cap and reset date, independent of the others.