Sunset of Time Tracker!?

Couldn’t have said it better. They have to save money with the oh-so-expensive Time Tracker so they can direct funds to all that AI they’ve ‘invested’ so much in.

Well dang. I sat down this morning to send out all my monthly invoices to all my clients that were all recorded in time tracker. I don’t remember being told that time tracker was going to end, but it certainly did and it caught be off guard. Instead of sending out my monthly invoices today, I’ve been messaging Honeybook’s AI bot, reading this forum and researching alternatives to Honeybook now that time tracker is gone. 

I own a small landscaping business and send out invoices once a month based on all the work I’ve done for each client. All the dates, job descriptions, rates, hours, and totals were put into time tracker throughout the month as I did them and the entire month’s worth of work was turned into an invoice for my clients. This worked wonderfully. Not only that, but I could scroll down the time tracker page of each client and look at years’ worth of job history. This allowed me to look back to see how long it took me to mow a yard, mow a field, weedeat a property, etc. With this information, I was able to easily determine how long a job would take in order to give better estimates for the next time I did that job. 

Now though (until I find a new invoicing company), I’m going to have to record all this information on my own outside of honeybook in order to have this job history. Then, I’ll have to type it all back out again for my monthly invoices. With the time tracker, I only had to submit this information one time and it did both. Looks like invoicing will take me twice as long now. 

A lot of honeybook’s changes were progressive by making things easier, faster, and more efficient.  This change has done the opposite. 

I hope these posts will encourage Honeybook to bring time tracker back, but I haven’t heard anything about that possibility. I’ll continue using honeybook this year due to my subscription, but will have to switch to a new company for next year. 

I’ve heard good things about Harvest, Freshbooks, Zoho, Bonsai and Clockify. Has anyone tried these out? If so, what are your thoughts? 

Thanks, 

Josh 

Completely agree. If I recall correctly, I saw ONE banner-style notice in my platform one day that said something like “Time Tracker going away Sept. 8 -- consider using Zapier integrations to import time from third-party apps like Clockify or Toggl” or something lame like that. Nothing by email or even in my HB alerts/inbox.

Also, that was back in June or July, I think, and I never saw it again.

Hi, Josh -

I used Harvest before coming to HoneyBook - it was one of the 20-or-so tech services that I had patched together over time into what eventually grew into an unwieldy and inefficient mess as my business volume grew.

Each “component service” was great at what it did -- I used Harvest for time tracking and invoices -- but I was able to eliminate 80-90% of the inefficiencies by transitioning to HoneyBook. I willingly traded the more nuanced functionalities inherent in single-focus software for the simplicity and client-facing friendliness of a single platform with a good client portal.

I would say that Harvest is great if you are using it for invoicing, but for time tracking only (i.e., if using HoneyBook invoicing) it would be overkill / not worth the money. Harvest offers many more features than HB Time Tracker did because it is a dedicated component service, and the time-tracking is excellent, but it comes at a cost. The free version of Harvest is not really usable if you run any volume of projects at once. (I think it allows for something like 2-4 active projects before you have to archive one to free up a slot.)

On the plus side, Harvest was very conservative about raising their rates, so that was nice. I used them for many years.

That said, a word of caution to multi-business owners like me:

Harvest cannot accommodate different companies (clients/projects/company name/branding) without a separate user license for each one (I paid ~$120/year x 3 for three businesses). 

NOTE TO HONEYBOOK -

I pay a LOT for HoneyBook because I do operate 3 businesses - over $1,300/year. For HB to remove time tracking is a HUGE loss for users and honestly unacceptable for that kind of money. I am not at all amenable to paying for a separate time-tracking service on top of the high, high price of HoneyBook (justified only when it includes fundamental business components like time-tracking).

As you expand from a creatives/freelancer platform to an all-professions platform, you are going to find MORE people who need time-tracking. For example, I am a lawyer, mediator, and consultant, and every one of those professions uses time-based billing far more than project-based billing. Clients expect detailed time logs.

When I was a creative, which I was for many years, I would never have paid $1,300/year. I only pay that now because I work in a high-hourly-rates profession. If you lose your momentum with these professions, you will be hard-pressed to find emerging creatives or new entrepreneurs willing and able to pay those fees. 

I am also so sad to see the time tracker go. Especially when 60% of my client projects are based on an hourly rate, it makes it so difficult to track timing now. 

I have monthly design clients who get their design work based on an hourly rate. It used to be so easy to log the hours within the client portal and have them immediately applied to an invoice that listed out so clearly what each hourly entry was for. Now Honeybook wants me to download other applications, pay a higher yearly fee to upgrade my membership so that I can input and connect the outside platform? As a small business, it isn’t sounding worth it anymore. 

I’ve loved Honeybook as a one stop place to keep all of projects, proposals, contracts, and track my time for design projects. When the price increase recently happened, I wasn’t too bothered because it’s been worth it. But now with the time tracker no longer included and the HB team now charging MORE yearly and expecting us small businesses to now also invest in second use plugins, it just really sucks.

Honeybook, please bring back the time tracker. 

Sincerely, 

A very sad graphic designer.

This has really disappointed me. I’m from Australia and get really excited when Honeybook allowed Australian Companies… I’m in my trial period, and quite frankly, maybe, I’ll stick with Dubsado as this is also a dealbreaker for me. 

I too use the time tracker almost every day for my business and will have to be going elsewhere before my renewal. I cannot believe they got rid of something so important to freelance … 

Me too! I didn’t get an email or a notification - I triple checked. They said there was a banner, but I didn’t notice one at all. It’s going to take me hours to compare what was invoiced for certain projects to send the next invoice and now manually track time. It’s a disaster and I have no choice but to find something else. 

Was totally caught off guard when I went to log hours yesterday and it wasn’t there. Honeybook continues to get worse and worse. Definately have to switch now. In addition to Bonsai, I’m looking at Dubsado. I will get my money back as this cause a huge mess for our business and an FTC complaint coming on. 

Hey all, I had the same issue as some of you. Remaining unbilled hours that had been logged and disappeared overnight. Actually, a full day earlier than HB had said they were sunsetting time tracking.

Fortunately, you can now at least see and download your unbilled hours as of today, so there’s that.

I’m hoping all of us are vocal enough to get this feature back in. I’m in contact with someone who has a direct line to the developers, so we’ll see.

Just got an email today, September 10th, stating, “As of September 8, 2026, the Time Tracker feature has been retired.”

Subject: HoneyBook Time Tracker has been retired

Looks like someone is playing catch-up. 

I too am furious and not a little inconvenienced but heavily disrupted financially and time wise.  I have been with HB for years but now I have a reason to look elsewhere. I’m gonna be reading everyone’s comments in depth to see what else people have found.

At the very least, they should at least turn it back on for a month to give us time to prepare.  I didn’t think I’d ever leave HB.  I know its gonna take time for me to get things to transition but this cruel and clueless stunt has changed by opinion on HB a full 180!!

Hello all and adding on to what ​@Alicia Bauer shared

First, thank you for sharing your feedback and being honest about how much this change impacted you and your businesses.

Your frustration and candor gave us a much clearer picture of how much Time Tracker matters, especially for those of you who bill by the hour and had invoicing built around it. We heard it.

Time Tracker is back and available now. Your previous entries are still there, and you can start tracking time again today.

Based on your feedback, we're not stopping at just bringing it back either, we're planning to invest in making it better.

If there's something you've always wished it could do, reply here and tell us.

Thank you, Howard! I would love it if I could assign a billable hour to a project, so that all I had to do in a time entry is check “billable” or leave unchecked - rather than populate the rate each time.

Thank you for bringing it back!

Thank you, thank you to the development staff at HB for listening to users.  I have been trying platforms and making decisions for when my subscription with HB ends in December and this has been incredibly frustrating.  I’m happy to stay with HB knowing the features that I need to run my business will continue to be available like time tracker and batch email.  :)

I’m genuinely disappointed that HoneyBook is removing the time-tracking feature.

My team and I have used this tool consistently for years. It is part of our regular workflow for tracking project hours, managing team responsibilities, and understanding how much time we actually spend on different areas of the business.

This also points to a larger frustration I have with HoneyBook. New features are regularly introduced and promoted, while existing tools are removed with little to no notice. Established users have built real systems and team workflows around these features. Removing them without adequate communication or a comparable replacement is incredibly disruptive.

I realize the time tracker may not be one of HoneyBook’s biggest or most visible features, but it has been incredibly useful for businesses with team members. From the user side, it also seems like a relatively straightforward feature to maintain compared with the amount of functionality we are losing by having it removed entirely.

It is frustrating to continue paying for HoneyBook while tools we have relied on for years are taken away, leaving us to find, rebuild our workflows around, and potentially pay for separate services to replace functionality that was already included.

Please reconsider removing the time tracker. At the very least, users deserve clear advance notice, an explanation for why established features are being discontinued, and a comparable replacement before they disappear.

​@Sara Welch - Did you see that the Time Tracker is back and staying? It was announced that they will be keeping it and doing some updates in the future! 💛

​@Alicia Bauer actually YES. Right after my post. THANK GOODNESS!!! 

I’m also very disappointed in this sudden drop of a critical feature. 

Like others have said, I then went to Clockify as recommend to track my time, BUT when I went to Zapier to automate and import the only actions available were to create a client or create a project. Nothing about time to invoices. And this was the workaround recommended by Honeybook.

I’m now looking into Moxie as it truly has everything in one place and I won’t have to waste time and extra subscriptions patching a solution together.

​@SDesmond - Did you see that Honeybook is actually keeping the time tracker around? They have brought it back and are working on making it even better! 🙌🏻

​@Alicia Bauer Yes, thanks. But my trust is broken at this point and having had to deal with a number of other glitches especially with the client experience.

So, did anyone else notice the time tracker ability, historical data and all, has suddenly reappeared?? Is this permanent? 🙏🏼

I am actively migrating my entire CRM to Bonsai, but if this is back permanently, I would love to save my self the headache. 

​@Chassidy Comella - It’s back! They heard the feedback and brought it back. They are even working on some updates to it as well! 🙌🏻

Glad Time Tracker is back! While it was gone I built Timecomb, and some of you might still find it useful because it puts unbilled hours straight onto invoices, flags forgotten timers, and does weekly views and budgets. Full disclosure: I made it, and it isn't affiliated with HoneyBook.

Timecomb is a browser extension that adds time tracking next to your HoneyBook projects:

• A Start timer button sits right on each HoneyBook project page (next to Create file), or you can time from the browser's side panel.
• Log time by hand too ("1:30", "1.5", "90m"), mark it billable or not, and set an hourly rate per project.
• See unbilled hours and amounts for every client at a glance.
• In the invoice editor, Add unbilled hours puts your logged time on the invoice as line items (name, date, hours, rate). You review and send it as usual; it never sends anything for you.
• Long-running timers get flagged so you don't bill a forgotten 9-hour timer.

Your hours stay in your own browser: no account, no server. You can export a CSV backup any time and import your old hours or an Excel sheet.

The free version tracks one open project. Pro is $19 once (not a subscription) for unlimited projects, adding hours to invoices, a week view, contracted-hours budgets, printable timesheets (save as PDF) and CSV import.

It's in the Microsoft Edge store now, and the Chrome version is on its way. It's new, so if anything doesn't work with your HoneyBook setup, reply here or email me at dgraciano8424@gmail.com and I'll fix it.

Get Timecomb for Edge · More info: otterpotter.org/timecomb