How to Use Toggl Track Reports for Client Invoicing

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The Free Plan Cannot Do This, and It Is Worth Knowing Why

Turning tracked hours into an invoice your client will not argue with is mostly a setup problem. Get clients, projects, tasks and rates right at the start and invoicing becomes filter, review, export.

But one thing has to be said before the workflow, because it is usually got wrong and it decides whether the free plan is any use to you.

On Toggl Track’s free plan, PDF is the only export format. CSV requires a paid plan, and Excel export starts at Starter.

That matters because the free plan also has no billable rates. So a free user gets a PDF listing hours with no monetary values, and no way to get the numbers into a spreadsheet to apply rates themselves. The commonly recommended free workflow — export the CSV, apply your rates in Excel — is not available on the free plan. You would be retyping hours off a PDF.

Free is fine for tracking. For invoicing you need Starter at $9 per user per month on annual billing — and note that is dollars, not pounds: about £6.77 before VAT, or £8.12 with it, at the late-October 2026 rate of roughly $1.33.

With that settled, here is the setup that makes the reports worth exporting.

Why Setup Matters Before You Run a Report

Most people open Toggl, start a timer and type “website stuff”. Weeks later that means nothing to you, let alone a client querying a line item.

Twenty minutes of structure at the start of a project saves hours later.

Clients, Projects and Tasks

Toggl organises work as Workspaces → Clients → Projects → Tasks. For invoicing:

• Client — every paying client gets their own record, so you can filter any report by client instantly
• Project — one per distinct piece of work: “Website Redesign Q3”, “Monthly Retainer – October”. Do not lump everything into one ongoing project unless your contract bills that way, because it makes line-item breakdowns impossible
• Tasks — phases or deliverables within a project: “Homepage design”, “Copywriting”, “SEO audit”. Tasks are what create meaningful line items. Without them you have a lump of hours and no story. Note they are Starter and above; the free plan tracks to project level only
• Descriptions — write one for every entry. “Revised homepage hero section following client feedback” is worth far more than “design” when someone questions it six weeks later

Billable Rates, and Which Tier Gives You What

• Free: you can flag time billable, but no rates at all, so no amounts
• Starter: billable rates at user, project and client level
• Premium: adds cost rates — what a person costs you — held separately from billable rates

That last distinction is the one usually muddled. Per-member billable rates come with Starter, so a junior and a senior charging different day rates on the same project is a Starter capability. What Premium adds is the internal cost side, which is how you see margin rather than revenue. If your reason for upgrading is “different people, different charge-out rates”, Starter covers it. If it is “am I actually making money on this”, that is Premium.

To set a rate, open Project settings, enable the billable toggle and enter your hourly figure. Your workspace currency is a separate setting from whatever currency Toggl bills you in, so you can hold rates in pounds regardless.

If you bill fixed fees, still track the time. Use the report to show effort rather than compute a figure — the transparency is worth it on its own.

Generating Reports That Mean Something

Under Reports in the left-hand navigation.

Summary, Detailed or Weekly

Summary groups totals by project, client, task or team member. Good for your own overview — hours on a client this month, whether a project is over budget. Note it gives totals only, with no timestamps, which is precisely why it rarely satisfies a client.

Detailed shows every entry: date, description, task, duration and billable amount. This is your invoicing report. If a charge is questioned you can point to a date, a task and a description. That is what makes an invoice survive a query.

Weekly gives hours per day visually. Useful internally, not client-facing.

The workflow for most freelancers: run a Detailed report, filter, check, export.

Filtering Before You Export

• Date range matching the billing period — 1 to 31 October 2026
• Client, to isolate one client’s work
• Project, if you are invoicing one project rather than everything for that client
• Billable only, to exclude internal admin and speculative work

Check the totals before exporting. If they look wrong it is usually an entry assigned to the wrong project, or a stray entry from outside the period.

One practical note on permissions: any user can export the entries they can see; admins can export everything in the workspace.

Exporting: What You Get on Which Plan

Format	Free	Starter and above
PDF	Yes	Yes
CSV	No	Yes
Excel	No	Yes

PDF is the client-facing format — clean, Toggl-branded, not easily altered. Most clients are perfectly happy with a PDF time report alongside the invoice.

CSV is what you want if you are pulling data into your own invoice template, your accounting software, or a spreadsheet to apply different rates by task. It is paid only.

Plenty of freelancers prefer the CSV route precisely because it lets them add their own logo and layout rather than sending something Toggl-branded. That is a good instinct, and it is a Starter feature.

There is also a Full Data Export for admins, which produces JSON with invoices as PDF. The download link expires after 72 hours and only one compilation runs at a time per workspace.

What to Include So an Invoice Survives a Query

Whether you send the PDF or your own formatted sheet:

• Client name and project name
• Billing period, stated in full
• Task or deliverable per entry
• Date of each entry
• Duration in hours and minutes
• Billable rate, where applicable
• Line total per entry
• Grand total of hours and amount due

Cross-reference the total against your invoice so the figures match exactly. A client who spots a discrepancy — even a rounding difference of a few pence — will query the whole thing rather than the line.

If You Are VAT Registered, the Report Is Not the Invoice

Worth separating clearly, because this article is about making invoices stand up and a time report does not do that job on its own.

A valid VAT invoice has required content: your VAT number, a sequential invoice number, the tax point, the customer’s name and address, a description of the supply, the net amount, the VAT rate and the VAT amount. A Toggl time report contains none of that.

So the report is a supporting document. The invoice itself comes from your accounting software, and the report is what you attach to justify the hours. That is the right way round anyway — Toggl has no invoice builder at any tier, which is worth knowing if you assumed a paid plan would provide one.

By comparison, Clockify does build invoices in-tool from Standard at $5.49, below Toggl’s Starter price. If having the invoice generated in the same place matters to you, that is the relevant difference between the two. Our guide to using Clockify for UK client billing covers how that works.

And What You Can Charge When They Pay Late

Since the point of a good time report is settling disputes, it is worth knowing the backstop. Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, where no payment terms are agreed the default period is 30 days, and you may charge statutory interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate plus a fixed sum of £40, £70 or £100 depending on the size of the debt. Check the current base rate for the actual figure.

You need not invoke it. Knowing it exists changes the tone of a chasing email.

Record-Keeping: What HMRC Expects

Your time records are part of your wider obligations, not just invoicing material.

Sole traders must keep records for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline for the relevant tax year. Limited companies, six years from the end of the financial year. Both figures in the usual version of this advice are correct.

For a Self Assessment return, detailed time reports saved alongside invoices show what work was done, when and for whom — a clear trail if HMRC queries your income.

And the filing cadence has changed. MTD for Income Tax has applied since 6 April 2026 to sole traders and landlords with more than £50,000 of qualifying income, measured on gross income before expenses, falling to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028. In scope you file quarterly updates by 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, then a Final Declaration by 31 January — the quarterly filings sit alongside the year-end submission rather than replacing it.

That is a real argument for the weekly review habit below. Under annual filing you could reconstruct a messy year each January. On a quarterly cycle you cannot, and a tidy Toggl export four times a year is the difference between a half-hour task and a bad weekend.

Note that MTD for Income Tax does not apply to limited companies — if you run through a company, MTD for VAT applies if you are registered, and there is no MTD for Corporation Tax.

The workflow most freelancers settle on: track in Toggl, export the report, raise the invoice in your accounting software, attach the report as a supporting document. Our guide to MTD for VAT against MTD for Income Tax sets out which applies to you, and our FreeAgent review covers one of the better options for UK sole traders — free, incidentally, with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Mettle business accounts.

Practical Tips

Run the report weekly, not monthly. A quick weekly review catches missing descriptions, unassigned entries and time logged to the wrong project while you still remember what you were doing.

Archive completed projects once invoiced, so they do not clutter the active list or attract stray entries.

Use rounding. On Starter and above you can round entries to the nearest 5, 6, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. If your contract bills in quarter-hours, this keeps report totals clean and avoids awkward fractions.

Save your filters. Recurring client reports can be saved as favourites on paid plans, which removes most of the monthly admin.

FAQ

Can I invoice from Toggl’s free plan?

Barely. You get PDF export only — no CSV, no Excel — and no billable rates, so the PDF shows hours with no values and you cannot move the data into a spreadsheet to price it yourself. For anything beyond retyping hours manually, you need Starter.

How much is Starter?

$9 per user per month on annual billing — dollars, not pounds. About £6.77 before VAT, £8.12 with it. Monthly is around $12.

Does Toggl produce invoices?

No, at any tier. There is no invoice builder. Toggl exports time reports; your accounting software raises the invoice. Clockify does build invoices in-tool from $5.49 if that matters to you.

Which report do I send a client?

Detailed. It shows every entry with date, description, duration and amount. Summary gives totals only with no timestamps, which is why clients query it.

Can I set different rates for different team members?

Yes, from Starter — billable rates work at user, project and client level. Premium adds cost rates, which is what each person costs you, for margin analysis rather than billing.

How long do I keep the reports?

Five years after the 31 January deadline if you are a sole trader; six years from the end of the financial year for a limited company.

Does Toggl handle Making Tax Digital?

No. It feeds accounting software that files. MTD for Income Tax has applied since April 2026 above £50,000 of gross qualifying income for sole traders and landlords, and does not apply to limited companies.

My client is querying the hours. What now?

Pull the Detailed report filtered to that client and project, and walk them through dates, descriptions and durations. If your descriptions are specific, most queries close quickly. Treat every description as something you would be content to read aloud to a sceptical client — and if the invoice is simply late rather than disputed, statutory interest and a fixed sum are available.

The Bottom Line

Toggl’s reporting genuinely turns tracked hours into defensible invoices, but only with the groundwork: clients, projects, tasks, descriptions and rates set up properly from day one.

Starter at $9 — about £8.12 a seat including VAT — is the working minimum for invoicing, and the reason is more specific than it is usually given. It is not only billable rates. It is CSV and Excel export, without which you cannot take hours into a spreadsheet or your accounting software at all. The free plan’s PDF-only export is the real constraint, and it is the one that catches people out.

Beyond that, two things make the difference. Review weekly, which matters more now that in-scope sole traders file quarterly. And keep the report and the invoice as separate documents that reconcile exactly — the report evidences the hours, the invoice demands the money, and if you are VAT registered only the latter can carry the required content.

Pair Toggl with a proper accounting package and you have a clean trail from tracked hour to filed return. Our Toggl Track pricing guide covers every tier in sterling, and Toggl Track for UK agencies covers the team end. For the tracking habit itself, see tracking billable hours as a UK freelancer.

Pricing and features correct at time of writing, published in US dollars; sterling figures are illustrative conversions at $1.33 and exclude VAT unless stated. Export formats and plan limits change — confirm current details in your own account before relying on them. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice; confirm your MTD position, VAT invoicing requirements and record-keeping obligations with HMRC or a qualified adviser.