Hour banks
An hour bank gives a project a running balance of hours. Gigtime keeps the count and prints it on the invoice, so a client who pays for 25 hours a month, or who bought a block of hours, can see where they stand without a spreadsheet on the side.
Projects without a bank bill by the hour, exactly as before. The cap and retainer presets are part of Pro and included in the 30-day trial (Free vs Pro). Track only is free on every plan. If Pro lapses, existing banks are kept and shown read-only, sent invoices do not change, and new invoices bill the project by the hour until you upgrade again.
Turning it on
Open the project, edit it, and answer How is this work billed?
| Choice | What it does | You set |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Plain hourly billing. The default. | Nothing |
| Hourly with a cap and banked overflow | Bills up to the cap each period. Hours above the cap go into the bank. In a lighter period the wizard offers to draw from the bank, billed at your normal rate. | Hours per period, and whether extra hours are banked or billed |
| Prepaid hours (retainer) | Bills the block every period whether the client used it or not. Unused hours become credit that rolls forward. Hours beyond the block and the credit are billed at an overage rate. | Hours per period, optional flat price for the block |
| Track only | Lists the hours on the invoice with dates and descriptions, with no amount. | Nothing |
Advanced holds the rest: the period (week, month, quarter, or a custom number of days) and its start date, a rollover limit, an expiry in periods, the overage rate or a service to take it from, whether a negative balance is allowed, an opening balance for a bank that already has history, whether dated entries are listed on invoices, and Apply to other projects of this client, which lets several projects share one bank.
What the balance means
The bank counts hours, never money.
- A positive balance is hours you have worked but not billed yet. Comp time waiting to be claimed.
- A negative balance is hours the client has paid for but not used yet. Retainer credit.
Draws from the bank are billed at the project rate in force on the invoice that uses them, so changing a rate later does not rewrite old invoices.
Building the invoice
Log hours on the real project as usual. When you create an invoice that includes a banked project, the wizard adds an Hour bank card for each period the invoice covers. It shows hours worked, the cap or block, what will be billed, what goes into or comes out of the bank, and the closing balance. The suggested draw is the most you can take without going over the cap. Change it if you want, then continue.
Two invoices in the same period are fine. The second one sees the cap minus what the first already billed, and a retainer's flat line is billed only once per period.
What the client sees
The invoice carries a small Hour bank box: opening balance, hours added, hours used, anything that expired, any manual adjustment, and the closing balance. If List hours with dates is on, the entries behind the banked hours appear in the reference section underneath.
The box is frozen when the invoice is created. Editing the project's rules afterwards changes future invoices only.
Corrections
Adjust balance on the project's overview adds a correction with a note you have to write. It shows on the next invoice as an adjustment line. Use it when a client's bookkeeper disagrees with the count, or to seed a bank that started before you used Gigtime.
Cancelling an invoice reverses its bank movements and returns its hours to unbilled. Only the most recent invoice on a bank can be cancelled this way. For an older one, leave it and use Adjust balance instead.
Hours for reference without a bank
If you only want some hours shown and not charged, the invoice wizard has a toggle to include unbilled hours for reference. It picks up non-billable entries and entries on $0 projects and lists them in their own section. See creating an invoice.