Hourly invoice
Hours times a rate, done exactly. Enter 7.5 hours or 0.25 of an hour and the line total is right to the cent — quantities are held to three decimal places, and the rounding happens once, where you can see it.
Invoice
Fill in the form above and this invoice updates as you type.
From
Your name and address
Bill to
Client name and address
| Description | Hours | Unit price | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| No line items yet. | |||
Billing time without quietly losing hours
Decide your billing increment before you start, not while you are writing the invoice. Law firms have used six-minute units — tenths of an hour — for decades because they map cleanly onto a decimal rate, and fifteen-minute quarters are the common alternative everywhere else. Either is defensible. What is not defensible is choosing per task, which always ends up rounding in the same direction.
The direction matters more than the size. Rounding every task up to the next quarter hour looks trivial until you count the tasks: twenty short interruptions in a week, each rounded up by ten minutes, is more than three hours you have billed and not worked. Clients who audit will find it, and it is the sort of finding that ends an engagement rather than starting a negotiation.
The honest arrangement is to round to the nearest increment rather than always up, and to say on the invoice which increment you use. It costs you almost nothing over a month, and it turns your timesheet into something you would be happy to show.
Where the half cent goes
An hourly line is the one place on an invoice where a fraction is normal, and therefore the one place a cent can go missing. Seven and a half hours at 83.33 an hour is 624.975, which is not an amount anybody can pay. Somebody has to round it, and the only question is whether it is done once, visibly, or three times in three different places.
This tool rounds once per line, half away from zero — so that line bills as 624.98. The subtotal is then the exact sum of the rounded lines, which is what makes an invoice reconcile: the total is the number you would get by adding the printed lines with a calculator, because that is literally what it is.
If a rate produces awkward figures every single line, the rate is the thing to change. A round hourly rate makes invoices readable, makes your own estimates faster, and removes an entire category of question from the conversation.
From timesheet to invoice
Group by what the client recognises, not by what your timer recorded. A day-by-day dump of forty entries is a document nobody can approve; four lines by workstream or milestone, each with its hours and rate, is one somebody can sign off in a minute. Keep the detail — send it as an appendix if they want it — but do not make the summary do two jobs.
Where several people bill at different rates, give each rate its own line. Averaging them into a blended figure hides the composition of the bill, and the first time a client asks how the number was reached you will be reconstructing it from memory.
Where the rounding actually happens
At $83.33 an hour — a deliberately awkward rate. The middle column is the exact arithmetic to three places; the last one is what the invoice says, rounded to the cent once, half away from zero.
| Hours | Exact | Billed |
|---|---|---|
| 0.25 | 20.8325 | $20.83 |
| 0.5 | 41.665 | $41.67 |
| 1 | 83.33 | $83.33 |
| 1.5 | 124.995 | $125.00 |
| 7.5 | 624.975 | $624.98 |
| 8 | 666.64 | $666.64 |
| 37.5 | 3124.875 | $3,124.88 |
The subtotal is the sum of the billed column, not the sum of the exact one. That is what makes an invoice reconcile: the total is what you get by adding the printed lines.
Common questions
How do I invoice for half an hour?
Type 7.5 in the hours column, or 0.5 on its own. Quantities are held to three decimal places, so quarter hours, tenths of an hour and even thirds all work, and the line total is rounded to the cent once at the end.
Should I bill in quarter hours or tenths?
Tenths — six-minute units — are the professional-services standard and divide neatly into a decimal rate. Quarters are simpler to track by hand. Pick one, round to the nearest unit rather than always upwards, and state the increment on the invoice.
Why is my line total a cent different from what I calculated?
An hourly line often lands on a fraction of a cent — 7.5 hours at 83.33 is 624.975. That is rounded once, to the nearest cent, away from zero. Your calculator may have truncated instead, or rounded at a different point in the sum.