Running a small operation is hard enough without overpaying for software you barely use.
When I started freelancing, I did what most people do: I Googled "best time tracking app" and signed up for the first thing that looked legit. It was a good product. It had timers, reports, team dashboards, integrations with tools I'd never heard of, and a pricing page that assumed I had a department to manage.
I didn't have a department. I had a laptop, three clients, and a spreadsheet that was slowly becoming unreadable.
What I actually needed was dead simple. Track hours against a client. Log the occasional expense. Generate an invoice at the end of the month that didn't look like it was made in Google Docs. Send it. Get paid.
That's it. That's the whole workflow.
But the tools on the market weren't built for that workflow. They were built for mid-size agencies and enterprise teams — and priced accordingly. Harvest runs $11–12 per seat per month. Toggl Track starts at $9 and climbs fast. FreshBooks is $15+ and it's really accounting software that happens to have a timer bolted on. Even the free options came with trade-offs: Clockify's invoicing felt like an afterthought, and Wave didn't have time tracking at all.
I kept paying for features I never opened. Team capacity planning. Resource forecasting. Manager approval workflows. Integrations with Jira and Basecamp. Every month, $12 went out the door so I could use maybe 20% of what I was paying for.
And the thing is — I know I'm not the only one feeling this. There are over 36 million small businesses in the US, and the vast majority of them are lean operations. According to the SBA, 82% are solo ventures with no employees at all. On top of that, roughly 73 million Americans are doing some form of freelance work. Most of these people and businesses have the same basic needs I did: track time, send invoices, understand where the hours go. The existing tools are genuinely good at what they do, but they're solving a bigger problem than most of us actually have.
So I Built the Thing I Wanted
byllr started as a simple question: what if a time tracking and invoicing tool was designed from day one for freelancers and small businesses — not for enterprise teams that happen to let individuals sign up?
Not for 50-person agencies with project managers and department heads. Not for companies that need Gantt charts, approval chains, and capacity forecasting. Just for the person sitting at their desk at 10pm trying to figure out how many hours they billed last Tuesday so they can send an invoice before the weekend. Or the small shop owner who needs to track a handful of employees' time against client projects without buying software that costs more than the projects themselves.
The goals were straightforward:
Keep it focused. Time tracking, expense logging, invoicing, and basic reporting. No CRM, no payment processing, no integrations you'll configure once and forget about. Every screen in byllr exists because someone needs it to get paid.
Keep it affordable. The Professional plan is $5 a month. Not per seat, not per user — just $5. That's less than half of what most competitors charge for a single person. When you're running lean, every dollar you save on overhead is a dollar that stays in the business. The $70–100+ you save per year over the alternatives adds up, especially when you're starting out and watching every expense.
Keep it fast. You should be able to sign up, add a client, track some hours, and generate your first invoice in under five minutes. No onboarding wizard that asks about your org chart. No guided tour of features you'll never touch. Just the tools you need, immediately available.
Make the invoices look good. This one mattered to me personally. Your invoice is often the last impression a client has of you before they decide how quickly to pay. byllr ships with five professional templates — Classic, Modern, Minimal, Corporate, and Creative — with customizable branding, per-client rates, and tax configuration built in. The PDFs look polished because they should.
Built for One Person — and Ready When You Grow
One of the things that frustrated me about other tools was the binary choice: either you use a bare-bones solo tool and outgrow it the moment you bring on a partner or contractor, or you buy the team plan on day one and pay for capacity you won't use for years.
byllr takes a different approach. At its core, it's simple enough for a single freelancer. But under the hood, it supports organizations and teams from the start. You can create multiple organizations under one account — say, one for your consulting practice and another for the side project you're billing separately. You can invite team members, assign roles, and keep each organization's clients, projects, time entries, and invoices completely separate.
The free plan gives you one organization and up to two seats, which is enough to run a real workflow solo or with a partner. The Pro plan unlocks unlimited organizations and additional seats, so when your one-person operation becomes a three-person shop, you don't have to migrate to a completely different platform. Your data, your clients, your invoice history — it all stays right where it is.
This was a deliberate design decision. Growth shouldn't mean starting over with new software.
What byllr Doesn't Do
I think it's just as important to talk about what we intentionally left out.
byllr doesn't process payments. It doesn't replace your accounting software. It doesn't do capacity forecasting or resource planning across departments. It doesn't have a Slack integration or a Zapier connector (yet).
Those are real features that real businesses need — and there are great products that provide them. But if you're a freelancer, a sole proprietor, or a small team that bills clients for time, you probably don't need most of that. And you definitely shouldn't have to pay for it.
There's a real cost to feature bloat, and it's not just the subscription price. It's the mental overhead of navigating a dashboard designed for a different kind of user. It's the extra clicks to do something simple. It's the settings page with 40 options when you need three.
byllr is opinionated about staying small and focused because that focus is what makes it useful for the people it's built for.
Who This Is For
If you're a freelance developer, designer, writer, or consultant who bills clients for your time — byllr was built with you in mind. If you run a small business, a law practice, a bookkeeping firm, a creative studio, or any operation where tracking billable hours and generating invoices is part of how you get paid — this is for you too.
If you're just getting started and can't justify $15/month for software you'll barely scratch the surface of, the free plan lets you work with one client and up to 10 time entries per month. That's enough to test-drive the full workflow before you spend anything.
If you've been at it for years and you're tired of paying for enterprise features on tools built for companies ten times your size, the $5/month Pro plan gives you unlimited clients, entries, invoices, and the ability to run multiple organizations from a single account.
Where We Are Today
byllr is currently in closed beta. We're working closely with a small group of early users to refine the experience, squash bugs, and make sure the core workflow is as solid as possible before opening the doors wider.
If you're interested in getting early access, you can sign up for the waitlist. Beta users get a direct line to me for feedback, and they'll be the first to benefit as we roll out new features.
What's Next
I'm building this in the open. The roadmap includes CSV import for bulk time entries, Google OAuth, calendar integration, a mobile-friendly PWA, and continued improvements to the team and organization features. But the core promise won't change: a fast, focused, affordable tool for freelancers and small businesses who just want to track their time and get paid.
If that sounds like what you've been looking for, I'd love to have you along for the ride.
byllr is a time tracking and invoicing tool for freelancers and small businesses. Track time, manage clients and organizations, and send professional invoices — starting free. Learn more at byllr.com.