Time Tracking for Freelance Consultants
Built for solo freelance consultants working on retainers and day rates.
Get started freeNo credit card · EU-hosted · later $9/mo
Where the rate slips
Consultants tend to bill in big, clean units. A monthly retainer, a day rate. It feels efficient, but it hides a lot. A retainer is only as good as the hours it costs you, and 'a day' has a way of becoming ten hours of client work plus three of unbilled prep, follow-up and email. The headline rate looks great. The real rate tells a different story.
CronLoom keeps score in that gap. Set the floor rate behind your day rate, track the real time a retainer or engagement consumes — billable and non-billable — and CronLoom flags the retainer the moment its real rate slips below your floor. You stop renewing the ones you keep out of habit. It also projects your income so you can see, mid-month, whether your pipeline adds up.
The leak
The comfortable retainer
A $3,000/month retainer feels like stable, premium income, right up until you track it and find it's eating 45 hours a month once you count calls, prep, reporting and the 'quick questions' between sessions. That's $67/hour, not the $150 your day rate implies. The most dangerous client is often the comfortable one you never re-examine. Set your floor and CronLoom flags it before renewal, while the conversation is still yours to have.
The numbers you'll see
What CronLoom shows you
- Every retainer and day-rate engagement whose real rate has slipped below the floor you set.
- Per-client profitability, so you know which retainers to renew, reprice, or drop.
- Non-billable admin and prep time as a share of each engagement.
- Projected monthly income across your active engagements.
Not sure what to charge in the first place? Try the free rate calculator. Already invoicing? See what an hour really pays with the effective hourly rate calculator.
Questions, answered straight
Frequently asked questions
- I bill retainers, not hours. Why track time?
- Because a retainer's profitability depends entirely on the hours it consumes. Tracking reveals the real rate behind it and flags it the moment it slips below your floor, so you renew the good ones and reprice the rest.
- Can it handle day rates?
- Yes. Track the real hours behind each day, and CronLoom flags it whenever your day rate, once prep and follow-up are counted, falls below the floor you set.
- Is my client data private?
- Yes. It's EU-hosted and GDPR-compliant, with no ad-tech or cross-site tracking, and you can export or delete everything anytime.