Time and billing software for firms that sell their hours

Short answer: Alori's Time and billing app is time and billing software for consultants, firms and agencies: log hours against a client or project, see what is billable, and turn those hours into an invoice in one click, with retainers tracked as you go. It is coming soon, and you can join the waitlist at the bottom of this page. Today, Alori already logs your team's hours from jobs, and handles projects, tasks, invoices, card payments and QuickBooks Online sync in one all-in-one app. What is not built yet is turning hours into invoice lines.

What the Time and billing app will do

When you sell your time, every hour you forget to bill is money you worked for and never got. Most small firms keep hours in one app, projects in another and invoices in a third, then copy numbers between them at month end. The plan:

• Log time against a client, project or task, from a computer or a phone.
• Mark hours billable or not, with a rate per person or per service.
• Turn unbilled hours into an invoice for a client, with the lines filled in.
• Track retainers: see hours used against what the client prepaid, before you go over.
• See where time goes, per client and per person.

We will share the details with the waitlist first. Until it ships, treat this as the plan, not a feature you can use. Today Alori logs hours on jobs, for payroll and job cost, but hours are not marked billable and do not fill invoice lines. For the full flow, see billable time to invoice.

Who it is for

• Accounting and bookkeeping firms billing clients by the hour or on a monthly fee. See Alori for accounting firms.
• Consultants and professional services firms. See Alori for consulting.
• Agencies and dev shops working on retainers.

What you can do in Alori today

You can already run the work and get paid for it. These are live:

• Hours logged from jobs. Put people on a job's crew. When the job goes to In progress, they are clocked in on it; when it is finished, their clocks stop. The hours land on each person's timesheet under Employees › Timesheets. See jobs.

• Labour cost on each job. The owner sees the hours logged on a job, what they cost at each person's hourly rate, and the margin left from the job's price.

• Timesheets for payroll. Approve the week, then export a pay summary to CSV, with regular, overtime and statutory holiday hours per person. See employees.

• Invoices without a job. In Invoices, click New invoice, then Bill something else, without a job. Pick the client, add lines with a description, quantity and price, or pull a saved price from your catalog. Taxes are added for you. See Invoices.

• Card payments. Every invoice you email has a pay-by-card link, and the invoice turns Paid by itself. No Stripe account needed.

• Unpaid invoice reminders by email, text or both, up to three times, stopping when the invoice is paid.

• QuickBooks Online sync. Customers, companies and invoices stay the same in both places, so nothing is retyped at month end.

• Projects and tasks per client. Group a client's work in a project, assign tasks, and follow them on a board with To do, Waiting, In progress and Done.

• Repeating tasks for monthly work, like a month-end close for each client.

• Monthly lines on quotes and deals, for a fixed monthly fee or a retainer amount.

• Recorded meetings with a transcript and a summary, so you remember what a client call covered when you write the invoice.

How it will fit with the rest of Alori

Billable hours will build on the same clients, jobs and timesheets you already use, and land on the same invoices that sync to QuickBooks. A teammate logging time will not need a second app. For planning who works on what next week, see resource planning. Like the rest of Alori, you will shape it by asking, for example "round time to the nearest 15 minutes".

FAQ

Is time tracking available in Alori now? Yes, from jobs: the crew is clocked in when a job starts and out when it is finished, and you approve and export timesheets for payroll. Billing those hours to clients is the part that is coming soon. Join the waitlist at the bottom of this page and we will tell you when it is ready.

Can I bill hourly work in Alori today? Yes, by typing the hours as quantity on an invoice line with your hourly price. The timesheet shows how many hours to type; Alori does not fill the line for you yet. Alori adds taxes, emails the invoice with a pay-by-card link and syncs it to QuickBooks Online.

Will it handle retainers? That is part of the plan: tracking hours used against what a client prepaid. Today you can put a monthly retainer line on a quote or a deal.

What does Alori cost? See pricing. There is a free plan, no card needed, and every plan has unlimited users.