How I turn messy time logs into an hours-by-client sheet

A week of work trapped in Calendar, Toggl screenshots, Slack timestamps, and "I think Tuesday was Client A" notes is not billable yet. It is a pile.

Here is the workflow I use when someone dumps messy time logs and wants a clean hours-by-client sheet back before they invoice.

What "good enough" looks like

• Every billable block lands on a named client (or "unassigned")
• Hours are numbers you can sum, not vibes
• Date + short description so the client can recognize the work
• Totals by client and a grand total on one skim
• Gaps and overlaps flagged so you do not double-bill by accident

Intake checklist

1. The raw dump (CSV export, screenshots, calendar print, notes app list, voice memo transcript)
2. Client name list (even rough nicknames — you will normalize later)
3. Billing unit (hour / 15-min / day) and rounding rule they already use
4. Timezone and date range for this pass
5. Anything non-billable they want tagged separately (admin, sales, learning)

The pass order that saves time

1. Normalize the dump — one row per block: date, start/end or duration, raw label, source.
2. Map labels to clients — collapse nicknames, project codes, and Slack channel names into a client column.
3. Convert to hours — compute duration; apply their rounding rule once, consistently.
4. Split mixed blocks — if one entry spans two clients, cut it; do not guess silently.
5. Flag problems — overlaps, missing dates, 0-duration rows, "misc" that ate half the week.
6. Build the sheet — detail tab + client summary + grand total.
7. Hand back with open questions — anything that would change the invoice if answered wrong.

Sheet sections that work

Tab / section	What goes here
Detail	Date, client, hours, description, source
By client	Client, total hours, % of week
Flags	Overlaps, unassigned hours, odd outliers
Notes	Rounding rule used, timezone, open questions

Common traps

• Leaving project codes uncleared so the client cannot read the invoice
• Mixing billable and non-billable without a tag
• Rounding each tiny fragment differently so totals drift
• Dropping "quick Slack help" that was actually billable
• Shipping a pretty chart with no row-level detail the client can dispute calmly

Soft handoff

When the sheet is done, send:

• The hours-by-client spreadsheet (detail + summary)
• A one-line list of unassigned or flagged hours
• One suggested next step (invoice as-is, answer mapping questions, or send the next week's dump)

That is the whole job. No full bookkeeping engagement required for a weekly cleanup pass.

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