Solo consulting is a confidentiality problem wearing a timesheet. Client names, project names, the domains you visited, the hours per account: under an NDA that list is itself the sensitive document. TimePrivate is a consultant time tracker for Mac that keeps billable hours on the machine in front of you. The client gets a PDF when you choose to send one.
TimePrivate is not released. There is no download, no trial and no purchase today. Apple Silicon Macs first, Windows on the roadmap.
A consultant time tracker has a narrower job than a freelance calculator page. The question is whether the engagement record lives on your hardware, and whether anyone else can open it without you.
Planned pricing is $9 a month or $79 a year, subscription only. The app is waitlist only. There is no download and no trial. A free billable hours calculator already lives on the TimePrivate freelance time tracking app page, for people who just need a number in the browser today.
Search "billable hours tracker" and you will land on tools that are good at rates, retainers and a weekly total. Plenty of those are cloud accounts. They will happily store the client list for you, which is convenient when you want a phone app and a partner login, and a problem when the client list is the confidential object.
TimePrivate treats billable hours as rows in a local database, with clients and projects in that file, so you can map github.com to a client and a project and have the daily draft arrive labelled. You approve the draft before any of it is billable, then turn those hours into a PDF invoice with rates, tax, expenses, due dates and a per-client bill-to on the same Mac. The client receives the PDF. TimePrivate has no manager dashboard and no screenshots, so if a second person needs the week you hand them a CSV or a PDF, and there is no invite flow because there is no account to invite them into.
Independent consultants get asked to punch into someone else's system. Do that if the contract requires it, and keep your own record so you still have last February after the login closes.
Access to a client portal is a privilege of the engagement. When the SOW ends, so does the login. A dispute six months later is a poor time to discover you cannot export last February.
A portal can round differently, drop a Saturday, or hide a note you typed. Your own billable hours tracker is how you notice that, not how you fight the first invoice.
You may have three clients this month. Their portal knows one. Your machine is the only place the full picture is allowed to live, which is also why it should not be a shared cloud workspace.
Under a typical consulting NDA, the fact of the work can be as sensitive as the work product. A time tracker that lists clients in someone else's database is a second disclosure you may not have meant to make.
Who you bill, at what rate, for how many hours, is a business secret even when the deliverable is not. TimePrivate stores that roster locally. There is no team directory sitting on a vendor laptop.
A week of browser domains can describe an engagement more clearly than a status email. TimePrivate records the domain, not the page contents, and keeps that list on your Mac. How capture works in detail is on the automatic time tracking page.
Confidentiality is not a reason to skip billing. Approved hours become a PDF with a per-client bill-to on the same machine. The operations path is time tracking and invoicing.
If you use a second Mac, you can point TimePrivate at an iCloud or Dropbox folder you control. That is your sync, not a TimePrivate account. Leave it off if the engagement forbids even that.
Some trackers can be pointed at a desk and told to photograph it. TimePrivate cannot do that. There is no screenshot mode and no keystroke log.
If your contract limits where client data may sit, read the contract. TimePrivate keeps the file local. It does not certify that local is sufficient for your jurisdiction.
Read the TimePrivate column as a plan. The app is not released.
| Question | TimePrivate on your Mac | Typical cloud workspace |
|---|---|---|
| Who can open the client list? | You, on that machine. No account, no shared roster. | Anyone with a seat, plus the vendor that hosts the workspace. |
| Does the client get a login? | No. They get a PDF if you send one. | Often yes, or a guest report, depending on the plan. |
| Where do billable hours sit? | Local SQLite style database. Optional folder sync you control. | Rows in a company database, behind a password. |
| Screenshots or keystrokes? | Neither. App name and browser domain only. | Some tools offer both. You have to trust the off switch. |
| Manager dashboard? | No. If someone else needs the week, you export a file. | Usually yes. That is why the workspace exists. |
| What it costs | Planned $9 a month or $79 a year. Waitlist only today. | Often a free tier, then per seat once you want export or invoices. |
Day one of an engagement you create the client and a project, set a rate, and write the bill-to you were given in the SOW. You map the staging host and the repo domain so the draft arrives labelled. Each evening you approve or edit. Internal sales calls stay unbillable because you left them that way, not because a workspace admin wrote a policy.
At month end you produce a PDF on the same Mac and send it. If the client wants a timesheet attached, you export a file. They still do not get a login, and they still do not see the other two clients you billed that month. Next month you duplicate the invoice and attach the new approved hours, without a seat, a workspace owner, or a person whose job is to approve your timesheet.
If you need to see other people's hours every Monday, you want a workspace with a manager view. TimePrivate will not grow one. Exporting files is the collaboration model, and that is a poor fit for a staffing roster.
TimePrivate is a Mac app, Apple Silicon first, Windows on the roadmap. There is no mobile client in the plan described here. Field consulting that happens away from a desk needs a different tool, or a manual entry when you get back.
TimePrivate is waitlist only, with no Stripe page hiding under the button. Use the freelance calculator if you need a number today, and join the waitlist if you want the Mac app when it opens.
A consultant time tracker records hours against clients and projects so you can invoice the engagement and keep a copy after it ends. TimePrivate does that on your Mac, in a local database, with no account for you or for the client.
Yes, for one person. You approve a daily draft before hours become billable, then you can produce a PDF invoice from those hours. A consulting firm that needs a manager sitting on top of other people's timesheets will want a shared billing system instead.
Not through TimePrivate. There is no client portal and no shared workspace. If you email them a PDF, they see that invoice. They do not see the rest of the database.
If the contract says so, yes. TimePrivate does not replace a client's portal. It is the parallel copy you keep because portal access ends with the engagement.
Export a file. There is no manager dashboard, so a second person gets a CSV or a PDF you send.
No. TimePrivate cannot block other software. If you are on a client laptop that already runs monitoring tools, this app does not hide you from them.
No free tier is planned for the Mac app. Planned pricing is $9 a month or $79 a year. The free billable hours calculator remains on the freelance page, in your browser, with no sign-up.
No. Waitlist only. No download, no trial, no purchase. Apple Silicon Macs first, Windows on the roadmap.
If the client should not hold the only copy of the hours, join the waitlist and we will write when TimePrivate opens.
Not released yet. Leave your email and we will write to you the day it opens.