Quick start: your first project
From an empty sidebar to a finished invoice: create a project, track time, add a customer, and generate your first PDF.
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This quick start walks you through the whole loop once: project → tracked time → customer → invoice. On a fresh install you'll also find two example projects in the sidebar. They're safe to explore or delete, as explained in the welcome screen and example projects.
1. Create a project
Click Add Project (+) in the sidebar toolbar, or New Project in the detail-pane placeholder. Give the project a name; everything else can be changed later in the project's detail view.
On the free plan you can have up to 10 projects, and archived projects count toward that limit.
2. Add a task and track time
Open the project and add your first task. You can then either start the task's live timer or record time after the fact with Add Manual Time. If you like working with a stopwatch in the corner of your screen, open the task's small floating timer window; closing it brings the main window back. All the options are covered in tracking time.
On the free plan, each project holds up to 5 tasks.
3. Enter your company details
Invoices need to know who is sending them. Click Your Details at the bottom of the sidebar and fill in the Company Information section (Company Name, Street, Post Code, City, Email, Phone). If you also complete the Payment Information section (pick your Account Type and enter the matching bank fields, e.g. IBAN and BIC/SWIFT for SEPA), your invoices get a payment section, and EUR invoices with a valid SEPA IBAN even get a payment QR code. Click Save.
4. Add a customer and assign it to the project
Choose View → Customer Management (Shift-Cmd-M) and add your client (see adding and managing customers). Then assign that customer to your project in the project's detail view.
5. Generate the invoice
In the project, click Generate Invoice. If the button is disabled, TimeBill tells you what's missing ("Assign a customer first" or "Set up your company details first"), which is exactly what steps 3 and 4 took care of. Review the details in the sheet (including the Currency picker), then export with Generate PDF.
Three things to know about what happens next:
- All of the project's unbilled tasks are marked as billed.
- There is no save dialog: the finished document is archived in the Invoice Vault, and that's where you share, print, or re-export it to send to your client.
- On the free plan, invoice PDFs carry a "Generated with TimeBill for macOS" watermark, and the Premium sheet appears after generating.
The full generator walkthrough is in creating your first invoice. From here, check the Dashboard now and then — it shows your tracked time, earned vs. billed, and a "Continue working on" card that jumps back to your last tracked task.