I never thought time tracking would be the thing that almost burned me out.
I'm a freelancer. I build things. I help clients. I love what I do.
But every end of the week or month, the same nightmare came back:
"Hey, can you send me a time report?"
"We need a breakdown of what you've worked on."
"This doesn’t look professional. Can you reformat it?"
I was stuck juggling Google Sheets, Notion tables, manual calculations, and ugly PDF exports. It was eating my evenings. It was hurting my image. And it was starting to affect how clients saw me — disorganized, unclear, unprepared.
So I built myself a weapon.
⚒️ Enter: TimeTally — A simple app that tracks my work and creates client-ready reports
Instead of fighting spreadsheets, I now do this:
- I log my work sessions with a small description.
- I assign them to a client/project.
- At the end of the project, I hit "Generate Report".
- TimeTally creates a clean, minimalist PDF and a shareable link.
That’s it. And honestly… it changed everything.
Clients LOVE the clarity.
I LOVE the time I’ve saved.
🧠 The Stack Behind It (for fellow devs)
Here’s what I used to build TimeTally:
- Next.js (App Router) — for the frontend
- TailwindCSS — for clean, responsive UI
- Django + Django Rest Framework — for the backend API
- PostgreSQL — as the database
- WeasyPrint — to generate beautiful PDF reports
- Stripe — for handling credits and payments
- Framer Motion — for smooth animations
- Docker — to make it all deploy-ready
The whole stack is designed to be fast, scalable, and easy to maintain.
💡 Why I'm Sharing This
Because if you're a freelancer like me — or building tools for freelancers — you know the struggle is real.
Time reporting shouldn't feel like a punishment. It should be smooth, reliable, and actually help you build trust with your clients.
That’s what I wanted.
That’s what I built.
And now I’m sharing it.
👉 Check out TimeTallyApp (Free credits to try it)
If this inspires you, I’d love to hear your thoughts ❤️
Let’s make freelancing easier, together.
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