Tracking time and billing for it are usually treated as two separate jobs handled by two separate tools. That split is where money dies. Hours get exported from one system, massaged in a spreadsheet, and pasted into an invoicing tool, and every step in that chain invites errors, delays, and quiet write-offs of entries that feel like too much trouble to carry across. The fix is structural: use a tool where the hour you track is already sitting in the system that sends the bill.
This list covers five apps that genuinely do both, and we ranked them on a single criterion: the quality of the path from a tracked hour to a sent invoice. That means we cared about how time entries become line items, how rates and rounding are applied, how the invoice looks to a client, and how the client pays it. Tools that track beautifully but bill poorly, and tools that bill beautifully but track nothing, both lost points.
One disclosure up front: TrackTime is our product. It leads this list because of how entries get into the system in the first place, and we have been straightforward about what each competitor does better, including the cases where you should choose one of them instead.
The five apps at a glance
- TrackTime is the best choice when the problem is capturing the hours in the first place, since calls, texts, email time, and drive time flow automatically into a built-in invoicing workflow.
- Harvest has the most polished time-to-invoice flow for small teams, with online payment built in.
- Clockify is the budget pick, adding invoicing on its Standard tier at $5.49 per user per month.
- Bill4Time is the specialist for legal billing, with trust accounting and LEDES invoice formats.
- Clio Manage is the full practice management suite where invoicing is one piece of a much larger system.
1. TrackTime: best when the missing hours are the real problem
An invoicing feature can only bill the hours that made it into the system, and that is the quiet weakness of every tool below. TrackTime starts earlier in the chain. Its Android app runs in the background and automatically captures the work that rarely gets a timer: inbound and outbound cellular calls timed and matched to clients, SMS conversations and incoming RCS messages in Google Messages, time spent working in Gmail and Outlook, and drive time and mileage for client trips.
Those captured entries appear in the web dashboard for review and adjustment, and from there the invoicing is built in. You check the entries, assign or confirm the client, and generate the invoice from the same screen where the time lives. There is no export step and no second subscription. The plan includes unlimited clients, two-factor authentication, and full API access, and privacy is metadata only: TrackTime stores who, when, and how long, never message contents or email subject lines.
Pricing: The Professional plan is $14.99 per month or $161.89 per year for a single user, with a 7-day free trial. Team plans are available, and the Enterprise plan supports up to 30 users with team control from the dashboard.
Watch out for: Automatic capture requires an Android phone, because iOS does not allow any app to observe calls, message notifications, or foreground apps, and the full app is downloaded from TrackTime.com rather than Google Play. The invoicing itself is built for hourly billers rather than for specialized billing regimes, so if you need trust accounting or LEDES formats you should look at Bill4Time or Clio below. We compared the legal-specific field in detail in our roundup of time tracking apps for lawyers.
2. Harvest: the smoothest time-to-invoice flow for small teams
Harvest is what most people picture when they imagine time tracking and invoicing living together comfortably. You track hours against clients and projects with simple timers, and unbilled time accumulates until you turn it into an invoice in a few clicks. Invoices can be sent by email from inside the product, clients can pay online, and payment status flows back so you always know what is outstanding. For straightforward hourly billing, the distance from tracked hour to paid invoice is very short, and our TrackTime vs Harvest comparison looks at both tools side by side.
Pricing: Harvest offers a free single-seat plan, and the Teams plan is $9 per seat per month when billed annually. Harvest changed ownership in 2025, and its 2026 pricing added usage-based fees on top of seat prices for some features, so read the current pricing page carefully before committing.
Watch out for: The pricing change is the main caution, since usage-based fees make the total bill harder to predict than a flat seat price. Capture is entirely manual, so the calls and email you never timed are never invoiced, and there is nothing legal-specific such as trust accounting or LEDES support.
3. Clockify: invoicing on a budget
Clockify earns its place as the budget option. The free plan already handles unlimited users, timers, and timesheets, and the Standard tier adds invoicing at $5.49 per user per month, which makes it the cheapest route on this list to a combined tracking and billing stack; our TrackTime vs Clockify comparison covers the fuller feature picture. You mark time entries as billable with hourly rates, pull unbilled time into an invoice, and send it to the client, with the basics of taxes and discounts covered.
Pricing: The free plan supports unlimited users. Paid tiers run from $3.99 to $11.99 per user per month with annual billing, and invoicing starts on the Standard tier at $5.49.
Watch out for: The invoicing is serviceable rather than refined, and you will feel the difference next to Harvest in template polish and payment handling. Invoicing is also not on the free plan, which surprises people who chose Clockify specifically to avoid paying. As with the others, every tracked minute depends on someone remembering the timer.
4. Bill4Time: the legal billing specialist
Bill4Time exists for practices whose billing is more complicated than hours multiplied by a rate. It is built around legal time and billing, with trust (IOLTA) accounting, LEDES invoice formats for insurance and corporate clients, and ABA task codes, and its invoice templates can be customized to match the formats those clients demand. Time entries, expenses, and increments feed a billing engine that understands how legal invoices actually get reviewed and paid.
Pricing: The Time & Billing plan is $39 per user per month billed annually, or $49 billed monthly. The Legal Pro tier is $59 per user per month with annual billing, and Legal Enterprise is $89.
Watch out for: You are paying specialist prices for specialist features, and a consultant or freelancer with simple hourly billing does not need most of them. The interface is functional rather than modern, and capture is manual, so the billing engine is only as complete as the timers and after-the-fact entries feeding it.
5. Clio Manage: invoicing inside a full practice suite
Clio is the dominant legal practice management platform, and its billing module is genuinely strong. Bills are generated from unbilled time and expenses logged to a matter, LEDES formats and split billing are supported, and clients can pay invoices online by card or bank transfer through emailed links and a client portal. If you want intake, matters, documents, billing, and payments in one system, this is that system.
Pricing: Plans run from $49 to $149 per user per month billed monthly, or $39 to $139 with annual billing. The popular Essentials tier is $89 per user per month.
Watch out for: Judged purely on the time-to-invoice criterion, Clio asks you to buy an entire practice management suite to get its billing workflow, and at $89 per user per month for the popular tier, that is an expensive way to send invoices if you do not need the rest. The time tracking is manual timers, so the capture problem is untouched.
How to choose
- If entries are missing before billing even starts, meaning calls, texts, and email never got tracked at all, TrackTime fixes the input side and includes the invoicing, provided you carry an Android phone.
- If you track diligently and want the most pleasant path from hours to a paid invoice, Harvest remains the benchmark for small teams.
- If you want the lowest possible price for a combined stack, Clockify's Standard tier is hard to argue with at $5.49 per user per month.
- If your clients require trust accounting, LEDES files, or task codes, Bill4Time gives you the billing specialist tools alone, and Clio gives you those tools inside a full practice platform.
One principle sits underneath all five recommendations. The invoice can never be better than the timesheet behind it, and a timesheet reconstructed from memory understates the work. Whichever tool you pick, record time when the work happens, not after; our guide to capturing every billable hour shows what that takes in practice.
Frequently asked questions
Why does built-in invoicing matter if I already use accounting software?
Because the handoff is where billable entries get lost. When hours live in one tool and invoices in another, every billing cycle involves exporting, reformatting, and re-entering data, and small entries tend to get dropped along the way because they feel like too much effort to carry over. When the invoice is generated from the same system that holds the time, every captured entry is one click from being billed.
Does Clockify's free plan include invoicing?
No. The free plan covers tracking, timesheets, and reports for unlimited users, but invoicing begins on the Standard tier at $5.49 per user per month with annual billing. It is still the cheapest paid route to invoicing on this list.
What is LEDES billing and do I need it?
LEDES is a standardized electronic invoice format that insurance companies and corporate legal departments often require from outside counsel. If your clients ask for it, you need a tool that produces it, which on this list means Bill4Time or Clio. If no client has ever mentioned LEDES to you, you almost certainly do not need it.
Can these tools handle billing increments and rounding?
The legal tools are strongest here, since Bill4Time and Clio support the six-minute increments common in legal billing, and TrackTime lets you review and adjust every captured entry before it reaches an invoice. General tools such as Harvest and Clockify record raw durations and leave stricter increment conventions to you.
Bill the hours you actually worked
Any tool on this list will shorten the distance between your work and your revenue. The bigger question is whether the hours are getting recorded at all, because the entries that never existed are the ones no invoicing feature can save. Start a free 7-day TrackTime trial and see how much billable time a week of automatic capture turns up, or learn how the Android app captures calls, texts, email, and drive time.
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