The billing workflow freelancers wished existed, so we built it
Billnox is our own SaaS product: time tracking, client approvals and invoicing for solo freelancers, with per-client rates, retainers and native billing in each client’s currency. We designed it, built it and run it in production.
- Live in open beta
- Real client money flowing through it
- Designed and built in-house
- Product
- Billnox (our own SaaS)
- Audience
- Solo freelancers
- Services
- Product design, web app development
- Timeline
- April 2026 – ongoing, open beta
Freelancers bill from memory
Time trackers count hours and invoicing tools send bills, but the step between them, proving the work to the client, was left to screenshots and goodwill.
Hours scattered everywhere
Billable work lived in notes apps, chat threads and spreadsheets, a different place for each client.
Invoices rebuilt from memory
At the end of a cycle, freelancers pieced together what they did and hoped nothing was missed.
Clients asking “what did I pay for?”
Without a shared record, every invoice invited questions and slowed down payment.
One rate doesn’t fit all
Different clients pay different rates, in different currencies, on different cycles.
From tracked hour to paid invoice
One flow that the freelancer and the client both see, so the invoice is never a surprise.
- 01
Track
Start a timer or log time manually per client and project, with what was done.
- 02
Share
Send clients a progress report or a workspace link, no account needed on their side.
- 03
Approve
Clients approve entries and request new tasks, with threads and file attachments.
- 04
Invoice
Approved, unbilled work becomes an invoice in the client’s own currency, with a PDF.
What freelancers and their clients see
Screens from a demo workspace with sample clients, so no real freelancer's data is shown.
Every client billed their own way
Real freelance work doesn’t fit one rate card. A single Billnox workspace can bill one client hourly from approved entries, another on a fortnightly retainer, and a third a fixed price per project, each in that client’s own currency.
Invoices can also be built from reusable line-item templates, and shared invoice pages show the payment options that fit the currency, like a bank QR for pesos or Wise details for international clients.
- US clientHourly · approved entries$1,087.50
- AU clientFortnightly retainerA$1,640.00
- NZ clientFixed-price projectNZ$1,780.00
- PH clientMonthly retainer₱62,500.00
Treated as financial software, not a side project
Freelancers send real invoices from Billnox, so the hard parts are the ones where money or trust can quietly go wrong.
No currency conversion, on purpose
An early version converted amounts between currencies, and totals stopped matching. We removed it: each client is billed in their own currency, and dashboard totals are grouped by currency instead of converted.
Retainers on real 14-day cycles
Fortnightly retainers bill on true 14-day periods counted from each client’s anchor date, not twice a month, and a period can’t be invoiced twice.
Approvals that reset on edits
If a freelancer changes an entry in a way the client would care about, its approval resets, so an approved entry always means what the client saw.
Two clients, one hour, made visible
Freelancers can run timers for two clients at once. Overlapping time is flagged beside the wall-clock total before it reaches an invoice, so nothing is billed twice by accident.
Payments that confirm themselves, safely
A Wise deposit notification marks an invoice paid only when exactly one sent invoice matches the amount and currency. Zero or several matches are left for the freelancer to confirm.
Client workspaces that can’t leak
Clients enter by access link with no account, so every client-facing route checks that link itself. An end-to-end test confirms one client can never see another’s data.
The billing rules live in small, pure functions with unit tests, and a Playwright suite covers concurrent timers, overlap detection and client workspace isolation. We also cut background database work (no link prefetching, no polling in idle or hidden tabs) so the serverless database only wakes when someone is actually using the app.
Live, in open beta, and still shipping
Billnox went from first commit in April 2026 to an open beta used for real client billing, and it keeps growing with what freelancers ask for.
Billing currencies, each invoiced natively
Billing modes: hourly, monthly, fortnightly and fixed-price
Needed by clients to view, approve and request work
Commits shipped from first build to open beta
Planning a product like this? See custom web app development.
Have a SaaS or internal tool in mind?
Tell us who it's for and the workflow it should replace. We'll reply with a plan and a fixed-bid quote.
Build your product with us
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- Fixed-bid quote, no hourly billing
- Built the way we build our own products
- Built and supported from Cebu