How to Set Up a New Project Before the Work Starts

The project brief is signed. The client is excited. You want to start.

Do not start yet. Spend five minutes setting the project up in your time tracker first. What you skip now will cost you later, usually at invoice time when you least want to deal with it.

Create the Project With the Right Name

This sounds obvious. It is not.

Use a name you will still recognize in four months. Include the client name and a short descriptor. "Acme Homepage Redesign Q3" is better than "Acme" or "Web Project." If you run multiple projects for the same client, ambiguous names will cause you to log hours to the wrong one. That error is painful to fix and embarrassing to explain.

In Time-Trak, project names appear in your invoice line items and reports. Name them like a client might read them, because eventually one will.

Set the Billing Rate Before You Log a Single Minute

Every project needs a rate attached before work begins. Hourly or fixed. If hourly, what rate. If fixed, what is the total budget.

If you skip this, Time-Trak cannot calculate invoice totals correctly without you manually editing entries later. That editing takes time and introduces errors.

If the rate is still being negotiated, use a placeholder and update it before your first invoice. Just do not leave it blank and forget.

Decide on Billable vs. Non-Billable Defaults

Some projects have non-billable phases baked in. Discovery might be free. Internal review meetings might be your cost. Set the default behavior for the project so you are not making that decision entry by entry.

If a project is mostly billable with occasional non-billable exceptions, default to billable and flag exceptions manually. If the ratio is reversed, flip the default. Either way, decide upfront.

Break the Project Into Tasks or Phases

Even a simple project benefits from two or three task categories. "Strategy," "Production," "Revisions" covers most service work. Add them before you start logging.

This matters for reporting. A client who wants to know where time went needs more than a total number. Phase-level data answers the question without you having to reconstruct anything.

It also matters for your own sanity. When you pull up a project three weeks in and every entry is sitting in one flat list, reading it is painful. Phases make the data scannable.

Set a Budget or Hour Cap

If the project has a fixed fee, enter the total budget as an hour cap or dollar cap in Time-Trak. Turn on budget alerts so you get notified before you go over, not after.

This is the feature most people set up too late. By the time they think to add a cap, they are already over it. Build this into your setup checklist so it never gets skipped.

Add the Client to the Project Correctly

Make sure the client record is linked, not just named in the project title. Client records in Time-Trak control where invoices are addressed and what contact information appears. If you create a project without properly linking the client, invoices can go to the wrong place or require manual correction later.

If this is a new client, create the client record first. Fill in the billing email, payment terms, and currency before you create the project.

Make a Five-Minute Checklist and Reuse It

Project name with client identifier. Billing rate. Billable default. Task or phase list. Budget cap. Client record linked.

That is six items. Write them down somewhere and check them every time you open a new project. It takes five minutes. It prevents the kind of billing chaos that takes an afternoon to untangle.

The work is exciting. The setup is not. Do the setup anyway.

Track your time, bill every minute.

Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.

Free during beta.

macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots