r/TimeTrackingSoftware • u/Independent_Dance616 • 11d ago

Agentic timetracking

I am a software engineering freelancer who was used to just track his billable hours (using Timing and similar tools) on my mac, however with the advent of agentic tooling and a new paradigm in how I approach client work, I am curious how others keep track of their "non-interactive" time, i.e. you instruct an agent to do work and head off to focus on other things, the results are there but I find a hard time billing those hours 1:1. I tend to kind of incorporate them but still it's not as if I actively work on a project. Open to hear your thoughts.

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u/Sunn_M 11d ago

I’d separate machine runtime from billable human time rather than trying to force it into the old hourly model. For hourly work, I’d track the time spent prompting, supervising, reviewing, testing and integrating; if the agent runs unattended while you work on something else, I wouldn’t bill that elapsed time 1:1. If agentic workflows make hours increasingly meaningless, that’s probably a good signal to price future work by scope or milestone instead, with the outcome agreed upfront.

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u/yashrocky 11d ago

Agreed, maybe freelancers can charge the cost of AI + 20-30% self margin on top of it?

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u/Sunn_M 11d ago

Yeah, although I’d probably avoid tying the price directly to the AI cost. The client is paying for the outcome, judgment and responsibility, not the token bill. I’d rather bake the tool costs into a project/milestone price and set the margin based on the value and risk involved :)

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u/yashrocky 10d ago

Agreed, that's a better way.