How to Set Up Time Tracking When You're Working Alongside a Client's Internal Team
When you share a project with a client's own staff, your time tracking has to be precise enough to separate your hours from theirs.
Some projects have clear boundaries. You do the work, you track the hours, you send the invoice. Most projects are messier than that. Especially when a client has internal people involved: a project manager, a developer, a marketing coordinator who keeps jumping in.
When multiple people touch the same project, your time tracking needs to be sharper, not looser.
Why This Setup Is Harder Than It Looks
The client's team is working on the same deliverable. Sometimes you are handing off to them. Sometimes they are feeding you. There are shared calls, collaborative documents, review sessions where both sides are present.
The question that will come up at invoice time: which hours are yours and which are theirs? If your tracking is sloppy, you cannot answer it cleanly. That creates billing friction even with clients who trust you.
Create Task Labels That Separate Your Scope From the Shared Work
Before the project starts, define what is yours. Be specific. If you are doing the design but their developer is doing the build, your scope has edges. Log against those edges.
In Time-Trak, use task labels inside your project that map directly to your scope: Brand Design, Copy Review, Creative Direction. Anything that is clearly yours, label it clearly. Anything that is a shared activity, like a client review call, label it separately. Client Call or Review Session works. This lets you see in one glance how much of your time was billable execution versus collaborative overhead.
Track Shared Activities Separately and Be Ready to Explain Them
Joint review calls are billable. Client workshops are billable. Feedback sessions where you are actively participating are billable. But they look different from execution hours, and some clients push back on them.
Log them accurately and label them well. Your invoice should have a line item that reflects this time. When you send it, clients can see it. Most will not question it. If they do, your log is there and the label explains what it was.
Do Not Log to a Shared Project If One Does Not Belong to You
Sometimes a client will set up a project management tool and ask you to log hours there too. That is fine for their visibility. It is not a substitute for your own tracking in Time-Trak.
Your billing runs off your numbers, not theirs. Keep your own log. If there is ever a discrepancy between what their system shows and what yours shows, you want your own clean record to refer to. Time-Trak's automatic screenshots also give you a timestamped record of what you were actually working on during any logged session.
Set Billing Rates at the Individual Task Level When Scope Varies
If your contract has different rates for different types of work, creative direction at one rate and execution at another, make sure your task labels in Time-Trak map to the right rates. Set those rates before anyone logs an hour.
When the project involves a client's team, the complexity of the billing structure tends to increase. Getting the rates right upfront means your invoice is accurate without requiring manual math at the end.
Have a Weekly Check-In on Hours, Even a Short One
On projects where roles overlap, small misunderstandings about scope accumulate fast. A weekly five-minute review of your own logged hours tells you whether anything is drifting.
Before each client check-in, look at your Time-Trak report for that project. Know where you are against the budget. Know which tasks are running long. Show up to the conversation informed instead of reactive.
The Invoice Should Be Explainable, Not Just Accurate
When you work alongside a client's team, the invoice has more scrutiny. They have context. They were there for some of it. Your logged hours need to match what they observed.
Clean labels, accurate task separation, and a time report that reflects the actual breakdown of your work. That is what makes the invoice easy to approve instead of easy to question.
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.
Download Time-Trak →macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots