What Toggl is missing for retainer clients.
Toggl is the go-to time tracker for consultants — fast to log, clean reports, solid mobile app. The gap appears the moment a retainer client asks “how many hours do I have left?” Toggl has no native way to give a client a live balance view. Shared Report links show time totals for any date range, but they don’t know your monthly cap, can’t show hours remaining, and let clients see data beyond their retainer scope. HourTab is the client-facing layer that Toggl users add to answer that question without building a portal or sending a spreadsheet.
Free forever for your first retainer · no credit card.
Why Toggl users switch to HourTab for client-facing retainer tracking
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Toggl’s shared reports show time totals, not retainer balance.
A Toggl Shared Report link gives anyone the URL access to filter your time entries by date range and see totals. What it can’t do: show “8 hours remain of your 20-hour retainer.” Toggl has no concept of a monthly hour cap per client relationship. A client who visits a Toggl Shared Report sees raw time entries and a total — they have to do the math themselves, and they have to already know what their monthly cap is to interpret what the number means. HourTab knows the cap because you set it, and displays “12 used · 8 remaining · resets Aug 1” without any client arithmetic.
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Toggl client access is workspace-level — everyone sees everything.
If you want to give a client visibility into their time data in Toggl, you add them to your workspace as a Member. The problem: your Toggl workspace contains all your clients. A client added as a Member can see projects, clients, and reports for your entire account depending on workspace settings. The alternative — a separate workspace per client — means separate Toggl subscriptions per client, losing your unified time-tracking workflow. HourTab solves this with one isolated URL per client retainer: each client URL shows only that client’s retainer data, nothing else.
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Toggl doesn’t know your retainer cap, so it can’t answer the only question clients ask.
The client question is never “how many hours have you logged for me?” — it’s always “how many hours do I have left?” Toggl tracks consumed hours accurately, but it has no field for the retainer cap that makes “hours remaining” calculable. You can export a Toggl report and build that context in a spreadsheet, which is exactly what most consultants do — and which they stop updating after month two. HourTab holds the retainer cap, the billing cycle, and the import history, so every update is automatic from the same Toggl export you were already doing.
How it works with Toggl
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Set up the retainer in HourTab. Enter the client name, monthly hour cap, and billing cycle start date. Each active client retainer gets its own HourTab entry. The setup takes under two minutes.
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Export the Toggl Detailed Report and import it. In Toggl, go to Reports → Detailed, filter by client and billing cycle dates, tick Billable only, then export as CSV. Import that CSV into HourTab. The work log and running total update immediately.
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Share the balance URL once. Copy the HourTab balance URL and send it to the client in your onboarding email or retainer agreement. They bookmark it. Every time you import a new Toggl export, the URL updates automatically. No login required on the client side.
Keep using Toggl exactly as you do today. HourTab adds the client-facing layer that Toggl was never designed to provide.
“Toggl is where I track time. But ‘how many hours do I have left?’ is a question Toggl can’t answer for my clients — it only knows what I’ve used, not what the cap is.”
— Common experience among Toggl-using consultants
HourTab closes that gap. Toggl exports the hours. HourTab turns them into a balance your client can bookmark.
Frequently asked questions
Does HourTab replace Toggl for time tracking?
No. Toggl stays as your internal time tracker. You keep logging hours in Toggl exactly as you do today. HourTab adds one thing Toggl can’t do: a public URL per client that shows their retainer balance in real time. The workflow is Toggl → export Detailed Report CSV → import into HourTab → client sees live balance. Most consultants update once a week, taking about two minutes per client.
What Toggl data does HourTab import?
HourTab imports the Toggl Detailed Report CSV (available under Reports → Detailed in your workspace). Filter by client and billing cycle dates, export billable entries only, then import into HourTab. The columns HourTab reads are Date, Description, Duration, and optionally Client and Project. The entry descriptions become the line items in the client’s work log, so descriptive Toggl entries (“API integration — error handling, 2h”) translate directly into a clear work log.
Can multiple team members log time in Toggl and share through one HourTab URL?
Yes. The Toggl Detailed Report can include all workspace members — leave the “Team member” filter on “All” when exporting. The combined CSV captures every billable entry across the team for that client. Import it into HourTab and the balance URL reflects the full team’s contribution to the retainer. The client sees one total balance, not per-person breakdowns — though the work log entries show who logged what if you keep names in the description.
Do clients need a Toggl account to see their retainer balance?
No. HourTab balance URLs are fully public links — no login, no account, no app download required. Your client bookmarks the URL and visits it whenever they want to check their balance. They see hours used, hours remaining, cycle reset date, and a work log of what those hours covered. They never interact with Toggl at all.