Introducing auftakt: Time Tracking and Invoicing Built for Freelancers Who Bill by the Hour
Today we're launching auftakt -- a time tracking and invoicing tool built for one specific person: the freelancer who charges by the hour and is tired of the gap between the work they do and the money they actually invoice.
auftakt Team
March 28, 2026
We built the tool we couldn't find
Every freelancer who bills by the hour has experienced the same Friday afternoon ritual: opening a blank invoice, staring at a week's worth of work, and trying to reconstruct how many hours actually went where.
You check Slack. You check your calendar. You check your commit history. You make your best guess. You send a number that feels about right -- and almost certainly isn't.
We built auftakt because that ritual is both entirely preventable and quietly expensive. The average freelancer undersells 20-30% of their billable time through a combination of reconstruction billing, forgotten context switches, and the vague guilt of charging for things that don't feel like "real work." Over a year, that gap adds up to thousands in lost revenue -- not because you charged too little per hour, but because you didn't capture all the hours in the first place.
What auftakt does
auftakt is a time tracker and invoicing tool designed to close the loop between starting work and getting paid for it -- with as little friction as possible at every step.
One-click timers. A persistent global timer bar sits across every page of the app. You see it whether you're on the client list, the time entries view, or the invoice screen. Start a timer with one click. Switch between clients and jobs without stopping. The clock keeps running even if you refresh the page or close and reopen the tab -- because a timer that dies when your browser hiccups is a timer you'll stop trusting.
Automatic cost calculation. Set an hourly rate on a client or a specific job, and every time entry automatically calculates its value. There's no step where you multiply hours by rates yourself. The maths is done the moment you stop the clock.
One-click invoices. When you're ready to bill, all tracked, unbilled time for a client is already queued up. Review it, add a note if you want one, and generate a professional PDF invoice. The whole process takes under a minute. There's no copying line items into a spreadsheet, no reformatting, no manual totalling.
Who it's for
auftakt is specifically designed for independent freelancers -- designers, developers, consultants, copywriters, and other knowledge workers who bill clients directly for their time.
It's not a project management tool. It's not a team timesheet. It doesn't have resource allocation or sprint boards or Gantt charts.
What it has is a very clear, very fast path from "I'm starting work now" to "here is a professional invoice for exactly what I did." That path should take seconds to start and minutes to complete. Everything in auftakt is designed around that constraint.
What's included at launch
Today's release ships with:
- Client and job management -- organise your work by client, create named jobs with individual rates, and see active projects at a glance
- Persistent global timer bar -- visible across every view, survives page refreshes and tab switches
- Time entries -- full log of every tracked session with client, job, duration, and cost
- Automatic billing calculations -- hourly rates applied per client or overridden per job
- One-click PDF invoices -- professional, client-ready, built entirely from your tracked time
- Dashboard overview -- total hours, amounts owed, and billable status across all clients
We're starting lean and intentionally. The features above cover the core workflow: track, calculate, invoice. We're going to keep improving based on how real freelancers use the product before we expand the scope.
A note on pricing
auftakt launches with a free tier that covers everything you need to manage a small number of active clients. Paid plans unlock unlimited clients, jobs, and invoices, along with additional invoice customisation options.
We're not locking core functionality behind a paywall to force upgrades. If the free plan is all you need, use it indefinitely. We'd rather have freelancers who genuinely get value from the product than ones who feel pressured into plans they don't need.
Try it
If you've been cobbling together a time tracking workflow from a spreadsheet, a notes app, and optimism -- auftakt is for you.
Start for free and track your first session in under a minute. No credit card required, no onboarding call, no setup checklist to complete before you can use the actual product.
We're glad you're here.