Turn a messy work week into a client-ready timesheet.
HourBack is a weekly reconstruction packet for 2-12 person digital agencies and solo consultants: send a redacted week of calendar, commits, tasks, email subjects, and rough notes; get a billable-hour draft your client can understand.
Validation page only. Early users get one manual packet before any always-on integration is built.
hourback weekly
42.5 hrs · 7 gaps · 3 client notes
Client Alpha
Calendar + 11 commits + 4 issue updates support 14.0 billable hours
Client Beta
Timer gap after design review; ask owner to confirm 1.5 hours of admin/revisions
Internal
Sales call and proposal cleanup separated from invoiceable delivery work
Client note
“Includes implementation, regression fix, and two review calls. Admin/email time was grouped under project coordination instead of appearing as unexplained extra hours.”
Narrow customer
2-12 person web, mobile, and software agencies plus solo consultants who bill hourly or retainer clients from weekly project hours.
Paid problem
Forgotten timers and Friday reconstruction cause missed billable time, delayed invoices, client questions, and weak budget reports.
Landing test
Join to test a concierge packet from redacted exports before HourBack asks for email, calendar, or source-control integrations.
Day-in-the-life pain
Friday arrives. The invoice depends on memory.
The team shipped work all week, but the final timesheet lives across Slack decisions, client calls, Git commits, bug tickets, review emails, and half-used timers. The owner now has to recover the truth without overbilling, underbilling, or sending a line item the client will challenge.
Input
Export a calendar week, GitHub/GitLab activity, issue/task updates, email subject lines, timer gaps, and rough notes. No write access required.
Reconstruction
HourBack clusters artifacts by client and project, identifies likely billable blocks, flags missing context, and separates delivery work from admin/review time.
Output
A client-ready timesheet draft with confidence flags, invoice-safe explanations, and budget variance notes your team can approve or edit.
Why the workaround breaks
Spreadsheets record rows. They do not recover context.
A timer can be accurate only when people remember to run it. A spreadsheet can invoice only what someone typed. HourBack targets the messy middle: recover the week, mark uncertainty, and make the invoice explanation credible.
Artifact-to-hour draft
Turn calendar events, commits, issue updates, and email subjects into a first-pass weekly timesheet instead of starting with a blank Friday spreadsheet.
Timer-gap repair
When someone forgot to switch timers, HourBack highlights probable work windows and asks targeted questions instead of silently losing the time.
Invoice-safe explanations
Convert admin, review, and communication time into concise line-item notes that reduce client questions about unexplained extra hours.
Budget variance view
Show which client/project consumed more time than expected so agency owners can spot scope creep before the invoice goes out.
Concierge first
Early users get a manually prepared weekly packet from redacted exports before HourBack asks for calendar, email, or source-control integrations.
Evidence, not proof
The repeated signal: service teams need a recovery layer.
These sources do not prove demand. They justify a focused validation question: will tiny agencies join a waitlist and share redacted exports for a weekly packet that saves invoice cleanup time and protects billable revenue?
HN · digital agency Friday timesheets
An iOS developer at a digital agency reconstructed weekly hours by checking emails, commits, and meetings; the task was tedious but important for invoicing and budgeting.
HN · one-person shop spreadsheet workflow
A one-person shop wanted spreadsheets to generate timesheets, invoices, and accounting-package exports without custom macros or duplicate re-entry.
HN · admin/email time invoice friction
A freelancer discussion warned that clients may question invoices with extra unexplained admin hours, so billing notes need to be defensible.
Objections
Not a timer. Not a surveillance tool.
Why not another timer app?
The evidence says timers fail because people forget to switch tasks. HourBack starts after the week and reconstructs what actually happened.
Why not Harvest, Toggl, or spreadsheets?
Those tools are useful when the source data is clean. The pain is cleaning gaps, artifacts, and explanations into a trusted client timesheet.
What about privacy?
The validation offer accepts redacted exports and subject-line metadata first. Full integrations come only if buyers prove they want the workflow.
Will this fit fixed-fee agencies?
The first wedge targets hourly or retainer teams that still need budget burn, change-order evidence, or client-facing delivery notes.
Early waitlist
Get one manual reconstruction before we build the product.
Early users get a secure checklist for redacting exports, one reconstructed weekly timesheet packet, and a short call to compare recovered billable time against the old spreadsheet workflow.