Freelance Timesheet Template
Log what you did with a start time and an end time; the hours, the billable value and the summaries work themselves out. It answers the two questions a timesheet exists for — how much can I invoice, and where did the rest of the week go.
Who it is for. Freelancers billing by the hour, and anyone on fixed price who wants to know what their effective rate actually was.
Download this template
Free · No signup · No email · Version 1.0, updated September 2026
The files are generated when the site is built and served as ordinary static downloads. Nothing you type into them is ever sent anywhere — once the file is on your machine it has no connection to Freshlance at all.
What the file looks like
This preview is generated from the same definition the downloads are built from, so what you see here is what opens. The figures below are the file’s own formulas, calculated — switch to formulas to see the arithmetic behind them.
One row per block of work. Hours and billable value calculate from the clock times.
6 further empty rows are in the file, ready for your own entries.
Cream cells are yours to type into; grey cells are formulas. This sheet prints landscape.
What is included
Clock times, not durations
Start, end and break. Worked hours are calculated, which removes the most common timesheet error — arithmetic done in your head at 6pm.
A billable flag per row
Non-billable time still gets logged. Knowing you spent six hours in meetings is the entire point of tracking it.
A rate per row
Different clients pay different rates, and a timesheet that assumes one rate is useless the moment you have two clients.
Four aggregations
By client, by project, by week and by month, all on a second sheet, all driven by SUMIF over the entries.
Headline figures
Total hours, billable hours, billable percentage, billable value and average realised rate.
How to use it
Five steps, in the order that keeps the work out of trouble.
- 1
Set your rates in the top block, then log a row whenever you start and stop something.
- 2
Put the client and project names in exactly the same form every time — the summaries match on text, so “Northbeam” and “Northbeam Coffee” are two clients.
- 3
Mark non-billable rows as No rather than deleting them. Non-billable time is the number that explains your effective rate.
- 4
Read the billable percentage weekly. Under about 60% on a full week usually means admin has quietly taken over.
- 5
At invoicing time, filter by client and project and copy the billable rows straight into the invoice template.
The worked example
The example week logs twelve entries across two clients — delivery, meetings, revisions and admin — and lands at a billable percentage that is lower than most people expect, which is rather the point.
- Total hours
- 27.25
- Billable hours
- 22.25
- Non-billable hours
- 5.00
- Billable %
- 81.7%
- Billable value
- $1,958.75
- Average realised rate
- $71.88
Every figure above is read out of the workbook you can download, by evaluating its own formulas. If the file changes, this changes with it — there is no second set of numbers maintained on this page.
What to change
The parts that are deliberately yours to decide.
The task list
The Task column uses a short fixed list — Delivery, Meeting, Revision, Admin, Research, Communication, Sales. Change it to match your own work, but keep it short: a list of thirty categories is a list nobody uses consistently.
Breaks
Entered in decimal hours, so 30 minutes is 0.5. If you log in short blocks and never take breaks inside them, delete the column.
Rounding
No rounding is applied — the hours are what the clock says. If you bill in six-minute or fifteen-minute units, wrap the hours formula in a rounding step.
More rows
Select the last entry row and fill down. Every formula uses relative references, and the summary ranges cover the full table.
About the formats
What differs between the files, and why you might pick one over another.
- XLSX
- Header row frozen, filters on, times formatted as times and hours as decimals. Empty rows show nothing rather than 0.00.
- ODS
- The same workbook for LibreOffice Calc, formulas in OpenFormula, recalculated on open.
- CSV
- The raw activity data only — one row per entry, with hours and billable value as numbers. For importing into something else, not for reading.
- The entries and the summary sheet, laid out landscape so thirteen columns stay readable.
Questions
Should I track non-billable time?
Why start and end times rather than a duration?
How do the summaries know my clients?
Can I use this for a retainer?
Download it
Download this template
Free · No signup · No email · Version 1.0, updated September 2026
The files are generated when the site is built and served as ordinary static downloads. Nothing you type into them is ever sent anywhere — once the file is on your machine it has no connection to Freshlance at all.
What usually comes next
Freelance Invoice Template
Available formats: DOCXODTXLSXODSPDF
A complete client invoice for hourly, fixed-price or milestone work, with line items, tax, expenses and payment details.
Retainer Hours Tracker
Available formats: XLSXODSPDF
Burn-down for a monthly retainer: included hours, rollover, usage, projected month-end position, overage value and effective rate.
Freelance Project Profitability Spreadsheet
Available formats: XLSXODSPDF
What a project actually paid: contract value including changes, every hour by category, costs, net revenue, effective hourly rate and margin.