Agency & Professional Services Automation Software - Hour Cap

Overview

Hour Cap is time tracking and billing software for agencies and professional services firms. It's our own product, and we design, build and maintain it, along with its marketing site, blog and free tools.

It started as a way to get tracked time onto Xero invoices without retyping it, and has grown into two products on one platform: time tracking and billing, and a shared customer support inbox. The platform has more than 3,100 automated tests that run on every change.

Challenges

1. Double Handling: Most small firms track time in one tool and retype it into Xero to invoice. It takes time, causes errors and delays payment, and the invoice often loses the detail of what was done.

2. Different Billing Types: Clients are billed on monthly retainers, fixed-price projects or time and materials. Retainers often go over their cap before anyone notices.

3. Accurate Invoice Totals: Firms bill in 6 or 15 minute increments and in their own currency, and Xero calculates invoice totals itself. The totals in Hour Cap have to match Xero exactly.

4. Unbilled Support Time: Client emails get answered from personal inboxes, and that time often isn't recorded or billed.

5. Email Deliverability: Sending email on behalf of many firms means one firm's sending problems can't be allowed to affect the others.

6. Getting Found: A new product needs a way for customers to find it, so it needed a marketing site, blog and content alongside the app.

Solution

1. Time Tracking: A timer that keeps running as users move around the app, plus manual entry in formats like 1h30m, 1:30 or 8h. Each entry has a multi-line description that becomes the wording on the invoice.

2. Xero Invoicing: Users choose the time to bill by date range, retainer period or project, group it per entry, project, day or team member, and send the invoice to Xero. Account codes, tax types, branding themes and tracking categories carry across, and contacts and items sync automatically.

3. Rounding & Multi-Currency: Billing increments are applied when the invoice is created, so the original tracked time is never changed. Rounding and rates are calculated in one place so totals match Xero, and each firm bills in the currency of its Xero organisation.

4. Retainers & Project Budgets: Projects are time and materials, fixed price or retainer. Retainers work out their own billing periods (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or custom) and show hours used against the cap, with amber and red alerts. The dashboard lists the most urgent budgets first.

5. Teams, Roles & Timesheet Approvals: Four access levels, from owner down to employee. Billable rates fall back from project, to person, to the firm's default. Managers approve or reject weekly timesheets, approved time is locked, and only approved time can be invoiced. Users can belong to more than one organisation.

6. Shared Support Inbox: Clients email a dedicated address, replies go out from the agency's own domain, and time logged while replying is attached to the conversation. It includes statuses, snoozing, priorities, response time targets based on office hours, tags, saved views, canned replies, internal notes, scheduled replies, keyboard shortcuts, and a Linear integration for turning client requests into issues. Each firm's sending reputation is tracked separately.

7. Subscription Billing: Three Stripe plans with per-seat pricing. The support inbox is a separate add-on with its own free trial.

8. Marketing Site: 60+ pages covering solutions, competitor comparisons, migration guides and pricing, plus a blog, a glossary and nine free calculators other sites can embed. Automated tests check page titles and descriptions so SEO changes don't slip through, and the product demo video is checked against the live app.

Key Features Implemented:

• Persistent timer plus manual entry in natural formats
• Multi-line descriptions that become the invoice wording
• Xero integration with automatic reconnection and contact syncing
• Invoice grouping per entry, project, day or team member
• Billing increments applied at invoicing, never to tracked time
• Multi-currency billing
• Retainer, fixed-price and time and materials budgets
• Retainer cap meters with alert thresholds
• Four-level role hierarchy with cascading billable rates
• Weekly timesheet submission and approval
• Multi-organisation support
• Shared support inbox on the agency's own email domain
• Response time targets based on office hours
• Tags, saved views, canned replies, internal notes and scheduled replies
• Linear integration
• Per-firm email sending limits and reputation tracking
• Per-seat Stripe subscriptions with a separate inbox add-on
• Time, revenue and support reports with spreadsheet exports
• Full audit trail
• Two-factor authentication and encrypted credentials
• 60+ page marketing site, blog and glossary
• Nine free embeddable calculators

Results

1. No More Retyping: Tracked time goes straight to Xero, and invoices show the descriptions written when the work was done.

2. Retainer Overruns Caught Early: Retainer caps change colour as they fill and the most urgent appear first, so firms can talk to clients about extra budget before it runs out.

3. Support Time Gets Billed: Replying to a client and logging time against their retainer happen in the same place.

4. Reliable Email: Each firm's sending reputation and limits are managed separately, and incoming mail isn't lost.

5. Marketing Built In: 60+ search-optimised pages, a blog and nine free tools ship from the same codebase as the product.

6. Tested & Monitored: More than 3,100 automated tests, quality checks before every release, automatic retries for background jobs, encrypted credentials, two-factor authentication and production monitoring.

Project Services Breakdown

• SaaS Product Design & Full-Stack Development
• Multi-Tenant Architecture & Role-Based Permissions
• Business Software Integrations (Xero, Stripe, Linear)
• Email Infrastructure & Deliverability on AWS
• Subscription & Per-Seat Billing
• UI/UX Design & Design System
• Marketing Site, Technical SEO & Content
• Product Demo Video Production
• Automated Test Suite (3,100+ tests) & CI/CD

Technology Stack: Laravel, PHP 8.5, Livewire, Tailwind CSS, Alpine.js, Stripe, Xero API, Linear API, Amazon Web Services (SES & S3), MySQL, Redis, GitHub Actions

Services provided

Website

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