For shops that bill the campaign, not the hour
You sell ideas. Your software should not rent you by the seat.
Campaigns run on hours, retainers, and media buys you front. owntime tracks the hours, reminds you when the retainer is due, and puts the buys right on the invoice next to the time. One payment for a license that covers up to three people. Done.
One payment. No rent. File is yours.
Advertising & Marketing — straight talk
The parts that usually go sideways.
Scope creep, but make it a campaign
Set an hours budget per campaign. At 75% you get a nudge, at 90% an alert, at 100% a plain warning. You see it before the client does, not after the wrap report. Budgets count hours only, so pair them with a fixed-fee line on the invoice when the deal is flat.
Retainers, every 30 days, forever
Save a retainer as a recurring template with its own cadence: every few weeks, or pinned to month end, for as long as the engagement runs. When it is due, owntime reminds you and one click builds the draft, either a fixed amount or the client's unbilled hours and expenses. You check the lines, you hit send. It never sends on its own, so a short month never bills itself.
That stock photo you paid for? Gone.
Snap the receipt, mark it billable, link it to the campaign. It waits on that client's next invoice as its own line item. Media buys, stock, fonts, courier. If you fronted it, it shows up.
Nobody knows what the account actually cost
Timesheet grid grouped by campaign, with tags for channel. At month end you can say search took 31 hours and social took 12, with notes to prove it. Renewal talks start from a number.
What you’ll actually use
Just the bits you bill for.
Campaign budgets that warn you early
Hours per campaign, with a live bar on Today. 75% nudge, 90% alert, 100% plain talk. The whole shop sees the same bar, so the account lead and the maker agree.
Retainer reminders, not auto-bills
Weekly, monthly or month-end templates, a fixed amount or the client's tracked time. When due, one click builds the draft. You stay the person who sends the bill, which is how retainers should work.
One invoice. Time and stuff.
Hours plus billable expenses on one PDF, itemized clean. Fixed-fee lines sit next to hourly lines. No second doc for disbursements, no retyping.
No seat math as you grow
$99 early-bird per license ($149 after the first 50), each covering up to three people. Add a freelancer for a sprint without getting a bill from us. Remove them without a ceremony.
And the rest of owntime
Timers, timesheets, invoices with tax, expenses with snaps, estimates, per-client currency, CSV you can hand to anyone — the full list.
Set it up like this
Your world, in your trade’s words.
First run: pick Advertising & marketing
owntime renames the boxes (Campaign for projects, Brand for clients, Workstream for tasks, Channels for tags), seeds Creative, Media, Account, Production, and suggests Social, Search, OOH, Email as you type. Tints the app magenta. Rename anything.
Client = the brand
One client per brand, with their currency set once. All campaigns roll up here at invoice time.
Project = a campaign or a retainer
Q1 brand push gets an hours budget. The monthly social retainer gets a recurring template instead. Different math, different tool, same client.
Tasks = workstreams
Creative, media, account, production. Four tasks cover most shops. Time lands in the right bucket without a form.
Tags = channels
Social, search, OOH, email. Tag entries as you log. Month-end channel splits come free.
A week in owntime
How the work actually flows.
Monday: start the week on timers
Each maker picks their campaign and hits start. Notes autocomplete from past entries, so logging takes seconds. The daily goal bar shows where the day stands.
Wednesday: check the bars
Open Today and read the budget bars. Anything past 75% gets a talk with the account lead now, while there is still time to trim or re-scope.
Friday: expenses and wrap
Snap any leftover receipts. Mark them billable to the right campaign. The timesheet grid shows the full week per person, ready for a fast review.
Month end: retainers and bills
Retainer reminders fire. A tracked template builds the invoice from unbilled time plus waiting expenses in one click, you add any fixed-fee line, send the PDF. Mark paid when it lands.
What the client sees
A bill that looks like you wrote it.
| Description | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign strategy — March | 12h | $150 | $1,800 |
| Media buying coordination | 6h | $120 | $720 |
| Expense: Stock photography | — | — | $250 |
| Social retainer — March | — | — | $2,000 |
| Total | $2,000 | ||
Plain lines, your letterhead, your numbers. PDF, made locally. No server in the middle.
Straight talk
What it will not do.
Every tool has edges. Here are ours, plainly, so you find out now and not in month three.
- ×Budgets count hours, not media spend. Your ad platform spend still lives in its own report.
- ×Retainer templates remind you. They never draft or send on their own, so you always review first.
- ×No roles or approvals. If you need a producer to sign off before a bill goes out, that step stays outside the app.
Asked a lot
Questions advertising & marketing people ask.
How do media buys appear on the invoice?
As expense lines with their own description and amount, under the time lines. Snap the receipt at buy time, mark it billable, and it waits for the next invoice for that client.
What if a retainer month is short?
Then you bill what is true. The template suggests the amount, you edit the draft before sending. Nothing goes out without your click.
Can we bill one brand in dollars and another in euros?
Yes. Set currency per client once. Invoices, expenses, and totals follow that client's money.
We import from Harvest or Toggl. Does history survive?
Yes. CSV import reads Harvest, Toggl, and Clockify exports, keeps tags, and skips exact duplicates so re-imports are safe.
Test it on a real week.
14 days, full app. If it doesn’t survive your busy week, don’t pay. Simple.
Other worlds: