How to Set Up a Weekly Hours Review That Takes Less Than Fifteen Minutes

The hours you don't review before the week closes are the hours you'll spend time reconstructing later. Or you won't bother and you'll just bill less than you earned.

A fifteen-minute review every Friday stops both of those outcomes. The goal isn't to be exhaustive. It's to catch the obvious problems before they compound into a bad invoice.

Here's how to structure it so it actually happens.

Block the Time First

This sounds too simple to mention. It isn't. If the Friday review doesn't have a calendar slot, it doesn't happen. Clients will book that time, a project will run long, or you'll just move it to Monday and then Monday happens.

Put it on your calendar as a recurring block. Friday afternoon, late enough that most of the week's work is done. Treat it like a client meeting. It's actually more important than most client meetings.

Pull the Week in Time-Trak

Open Time-Trak and filter your entries to the current week. Look at every entry. You're checking three things.

First, are there entries with no description or a vague one like 'work' or 'email'? Those need to be fixed now while you still remember what you actually did. A description that says 'drafted homepage copy for about-page revision' is something you can put on an invoice. A description that says 'writing' is not.

Second, are there any entries where the timer clearly ran too long because you forgot to stop it? A four-hour entry for something that takes forty minutes is a problem. Fix it now. If you send an invoice with inflated entries and a client questions it, you want the time log to reflect reality.

Third, are there any entries missing entirely? Think back through the week. Discovery calls, quick client emails that ran long, prep work before a meeting. Anything you did but didn't log.

Match Entries to Projects and Clients

Scroll through the week and make sure every entry is attached to the right project. It's easy to start a timer on the wrong project, especially when you're switching between clients mid-day. A misfiled entry means one client gets billed for another client's work, or the hours just disappear into the wrong project and you don't see them when you invoice.

This takes two minutes if you do it weekly. It takes much longer if you try to sort it out at month end.

Check Billable vs. Non-Billable Flags

Time-Trak lets you flag entries as billable or non-billable. During the weekly review, spot-check that the flags are correct. Internal admin that you logged and accidentally left as billable will show up on your invoice. Work you did for a client that got flagged non-billable won't show up at all.

Neither of those outcomes is good. Two minutes of checking saves a lot of cleanup.

Note Anything That Needs a Client Conversation

If you see that a project is running close to the quoted hours, or that you logged significant time on work that wasn't in the original scope, make a note. Don't wait until invoice day to have that conversation with the client. A quick message on Friday or early the following week is a much easier conversation than an invoice that comes in higher than expected with no context.

Your time log is the evidence that supports that conversation. It's easier to talk through while the work is fresh.

End With a Quick Count

Before you close the review, look at your total billable hours for the week. Compare it to what you expected. If it's lower than it should be, you know to look harder for missing entries or you know you had a light week. Either way, you're going in with clear eyes instead of a guess.

Fifteen minutes, done right, means your invoices are accurate and your billing conversations are short.

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