Time & invoicing

This is the loop Clerq is built around: track time, turn it into an invoice, send it, get paid.

Tracking time

Start the live timer on a task, or add entries by hand. Every entry carries a billable flag and a rate locked in at entry time. Notes are multi-line and hold up to 10,000 characters, so you can record everything an entry covered in one place instead of padding the day with zero-hour tasks; line breaks are preserved on the timesheet and in the task dialog. The weekly timesheet rolls entries up into day and week totals, with easy week navigation.

Generating an invoice

Start a new invoice and pick the client, then pull in their unbilled, billable time with one of three grouping modes:

• By person and rate - one line per person/rate combination
• Per task - a line for each task
• Single line - everything as one line item

When you create the draft you can set a due date, an optional issue date, and an optional billing period - the stretch of work the invoice covers, say the last fortnight. The period prints on the PDF next to the issue and due dates, and the invoice total is shown right under the invoice number. Setting the issue date upfront is handy when a client paid before the invoice existed and you need to date it to match.

While an invoice is a draft you can edit its dates - the due date, the billing period, and the issue date. Setting an issue date is useful when re-issuing a corrected copy: the date you choose is the one printed on the invoice and is used when it's issued, so the number lands in that date's year. Leave it blank to issue at today's date.

You can also add free-text notes to a draft - payment terms, a bank reference, a thank-you. They print at the foot of the invoice, just above the footer. These details are part of the draft, so they're fixed once the invoice is issued. Duplicating carries over the due date, billing period and notes, and leaves the issue date blank so the copy can be dated afresh.

Billing the same client the same amount on a schedule? Set it up once as a recurring invoice and Clerq drafts each one when it comes due.

Issuing, voiding & re-issuing

A draft is editable and unnumbered. Issuing assigns the next sequential number, stamps the issue date and marks it sent - from then on the document is fixed. Sent invoices flip to overdue automatically once the due date passes, and you can mark them paid when the money arrives.

If an issued invoice turns out to be wrong - a client's address changed, say - you can void it. Voiding keeps the number (so there are no gaps in your sequence) but closes the invoice out: it no longer counts as revenue in the profit report, and the PDF is stamped VOID. You can record an optional reason, which is shown on the invoice and logged to the client's activity thread. Only sent or overdue invoices can be voided - paid invoices stay locked, and drafts are simply edited or deleted outright if you don't need them. Voiding also returns any time billed on the invoice to the unbilled pool, so that work is free to be billed again on its replacement (deleting a draft does the same).

To re-issue a corrected version, duplicate the invoice. Duplicating copies the client, currency, tax setup and every line into a fresh draft (with no number or issue date) and opens it for editing. The copy's lines are detached from the original's time entries, so the source invoice keeps its full record. Duplicate works on any invoice, not just voided ones - handy for reusing a past invoice as a starting point.

Currencies and VAT

Invoices can be raised in any currency. Conversion uses European Central Bank reference rates, fixed per line when the invoice is generated, with a manual override when you need a specific rate.

The VAT treatment picker only appears once your business has a VAT number set in settings. Until then there is nothing to choose - invoices are zero-rated - so a business that isn't VAT-registered never has to think about it, and can't accidentally claim VAT it shouldn't. With a VAT number set, three treatments are available:

Money math

All amounts are stored as integer minor units with half-up rounding, so totals are exact - no floating-point surprises. Invoice numbers are sequential per year (YYYY-NNNN) and concurrency-safe.

Generating invoices is one of the 61 actions exposed to AI assistants - see the MCP server guide.