If you freelance for more than one client, you probably know Friday afternoon. The work is done, or most of it, and now you have to work out where the week went. Three hours for one client on Tuesday? Or was that Wednesday? Did Thursday's call count as client time? The calendar says one thing, your notes say another, and the time tracker only has what you remembered to start.
Mood Logger is built for that week. It's a planner and a time tracker in one place: you plan your clients' work on your day, start a timer when you begin, and end the week with each client's hours and what they're worth, ready to send.
This article explains who it's for, what it does, and how a week with it looks.
Who it's for
Mood Logger is for freelancers who juggle more than one client and want one place for when the work happens, where it stands and how long it took. For example:
- A freelance developer with two retainers, a fixed-price project and a side project of their own.
- A designer moving between client briefs, feedback rounds and files they're waiting on.
- A consultant or writer who bills by the hour and sends each client a monthly report.
- A one-person studio doing the work, the sales and the admin at once.
If you only ever work for one client, or you never need to know your hours, a simple to-do list may be all you need. Mood Logger earns its place when there are several clients to keep apart.
A week with Mood Logger
Monday: set up your clients and plan the week
Start by adding the people and companies you work for on the Clients page. Each one gets a colour, and if you bill by the hour, an hourly rate and the currency you bill them in. A client in Lisbon can be in euros and one in London in pounds.
Then add the work. A bigger piece of work, such as "Acme website redesign", can be an objective with its own tasks, subtasks and deadline. Give the objective a client and every task in it belongs to that client. Smaller things ("send Globex the quote") can be tasks on their own, each with its own client.
Finally, give the work a time. The timeline shows your day hour by hour. Drag a task from the tray of unscheduled work onto the hour you'll do it, and it snaps into place in 15-minute steps. Each block shows its client's colour, so a glance at the day tells you who you're working for and when.
Tuesday to Thursday: do the work, and let the timer count
When you start a block, press ▶. The timer starts and the task moves to In progress. While it runs, a small bar at the bottom of every page shows the task and the time so far, with a ■ button to stop it. It's there on your phone too, so the timer is hard to forget.
Switch to another task and press ▶ there: only one timer runs at a time, so the first one stops by itself. Tick a task off as done and its timer stops too.
Forgot to start it? It happens. Open the task and add the time afterwards: type 1h 30m, 1:30 or 90, pick the day, and it's saved. You can edit or delete any session the timer recorded as well.
Every block on the timeline is also your estimate. As you track, each task shows both numbers, for example Planned 1h 30m · tracked 2h 10m. After a few weeks you'll know how long client work really takes, which helps the next time you quote.
Wednesday: waiting on a client
Freelance work often stops because you're waiting on someone else: the copy for the homepage, access to a server, feedback on a draft. The board shows every task as To do, In progress, Blocked or Done. Move a card to Blocked and it asks what you're waiting on. Write "copy from Acme" and the card shows how long it has been blocked. After three days it turns red, so you know it's time to send a reminder.
Filter the board by client and you see exactly where each client's work stands. That's useful right before a call with them.
Friday: see the week and send the hours
Open the Hours page. For the week, or any month, it shows:
- the total time you tracked;
- for each client, their hours, their share of your time and the amount at their rate;
- the time on each task, so you can see where it went.
Amounts are shown in each client's own currency, and euros and pounds are never added together. Filter by one client and download a PDF to send them, or a CSV with one row per session to bring into a spreadsheet or your invoicing tool.
No more rebuilding the week from memory on Friday afternoon: the hours are already there.
The main features at a glance
- Clients with a colour, an hourly rate and a currency.
- A timer on every task, visible on every page, with time you can add or fix afterwards.
- Hours per client for any week or month, as a PDF or CSV.
- A timeline to give every task a time, with planned against tracked time.
- Boards for what's to do, in progress, blocked and done, filtered by client or project.
- Objectives and subtasks for bigger pieces of work, with a progress bar and a dated log of updates.
- Habits for the routines around the work: an admin hour on Fridays, a run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
- Reminders in the morning to plan and in the evening to review, by email or as a notification on your phone, plus a heads-up before a task starts.
- Made for phones: it works in any browser and can be added to your home screen, where it opens like an app.
- English and European Portuguese, with a light and a dark theme.
What about the "mood" in the name?
Mood Logger started as a mood tracker, and that's where the name comes from. Mood tracking is still there, but it's optional and off until you turn it on. If you do, it's a one-tap check-in at the end of the day, and over time Insights compares how you felt on days you finished tasks with days you didn't. Whether a heavy week is starting to wear you down is easier to see when it's written down.
What it doesn't do (yet)
It helps to be clear about this too. Mood Logger doesn't send invoices: it gives you the hours and amounts, and you bill from your usual tool. It doesn't connect to GitHub, Jira or other apps; a link in a task's notes does the job for now. And it's built for one person, not for teams.
Your data
There are no ads and your data isn't sold. From your Account page you can download everything you've stored, as a PDF to read or a JSON file to take elsewhere, or delete your account and everything in it.
Getting started in five minutes
- Add a client, with a colour and, if you bill by the hour, a rate.
- Add a task and pick its client.
- Give it a time by dragging it onto today's timeline.
- Start the timer with ▶ when you begin.
- Turn on a reminder so the app nudges you to plan in the morning.
The Get started checklist on your Today screen walks you through these steps, and the guide covers everything else.
We'd love your feedback
Mood Logger is made by one developer in Portugal, and right now we're looking for freelancers to try it and say what works and what doesn't. It's free to start. Create an account, plan a week of client work, and tell us how it went in the Discord community or at [email protected].