Job ticket 627946 · smb · punch clock · no subscription
Toggl times your work free. Turning time into an invoice is the paid part.
This page is a punch clock for the paperwork end of time tracking. Paste your raw time notes — timers, margins, calendar archaeology — and a free-tier model normalizes the week ledger: durations copied verbatim, uncertainty marks preserved, holes stamped GAP instead of smoothed. Then paste rates and get billing lines in client language, with 'verify by hand' printed wherever arithmetic would go — because a model doing math on your invoice is a liability, not a feature.
Toggl Track is a trademark of Toggl OÜ. This is an independent, unaffiliated comparison built on Toggl's own pricing page, linked below and re-read every thirty days.
Card rack — rendered in this browser
Sample data is illustrative, not a claim about Toggl Track. Every Toggl Track figure on this page comes from the linked pricing page, read 2026-09-27.
The prompt pack
Two prompts, each mapped one-to-one onto a Toggl Track feature you are currently rationed on. Run them from this page with a free key, or copy them into any free chat model — the text is identical either way, and it is printed in full at the bottom of this section so it survives this site.
Loading the pack from tools.json… If this fails, the full prompt text is still readable below.
One-time unlocks only, never a subscription. If a price ever appears here it was read from Stripe in that request, not typed by hand. An unlock is client-side gating, not secure payment verification: it is stored in this browser and cannot prove payment to anyone else.
What Toggl Track's own pricing page says
Read from toggl.com/pricing on 2026-09-27. Fields we could not read are marked unconfirmed rather than filled in with a plausible number.
| The job | Toggl Free | Starter (US$9/user/mo annual) | This page + a free-tier model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | US$0 'for a limited number of users' — cap unprinted, so unconfirmed here | US$9 /user/mo billed annually, or US$12 monthly (Premium US$16/US$24) | US$0 forever. A free-tier key costs nothing; the prompts are yours. |
| The timer | Real and free — keep using it | Same timer | Not rebuilt. This desk starts where the timer stops: at the notes |
| Week reporting | Basic reports | Billable rates, rounding, saved reports | Prompt 1's ledger: verbatim durations, normalized names, GAP rows counted weekly |
| Client billing lines | — | Paid-tier reporting features | Prompt 2: grouped lines in client language, hours quoted, every multiplication flagged 'verify by hand' |
What this replaces, and what it does not
A displacement claim you cannot substantiate is a lie with good typography. This is the whole scope, including the parts where Toggl Track wins.
Replaced: the normalization
Whatever format your week left its tracks in becomes one consistent ledger — with the copying law that keeps '~3h?' honest instead of laundering it into 3.0.
Replaced: the client summary
Billing lines a client reads without a meeting: outcome-first phrasing, non-billable work shown (so you see what the week donated), leaks surfaced before invoicing.
Replaced: the leak report
The weekly GAP count — the one metric that actually improves tracking behavior, printed free.
NOT a timer
Nothing here counts seconds. Toggl's timer, a phone note, a paper margin — the desk is input-agnostic and recommends whichever you'll actually use.
NOT a calculator
No sums, no rate math, no totals. Every money cell says 'verify by hand' — invoices are legal documents and the arithmetic stays yours.
NOT team surveillance
No dashboards of who tracked what. This desk serves the person writing the invoice, not the person watching the tracker.
The prompts, in full, as text
Copy these into any model. They are the product; the page around them is convenience. Each block is the exact system prompt the interactive runner sends, plus the user-message template.
Prompt 01 — 1. Week ledger · toggl-week-ledger v1.0.0 · best ally: Groq Cloud — free tier · llama-3.3-70b-versatile
Replaces: Toggl's reporting view: raw entries normalized into a readable week — except every duration is copied verbatim and every hole is marked GAP instead of smoothed.
Why this model: Normalization is deterministic parsing with a copying law — near-zero temperature instruct work where speed matters because it runs every week forever. Fallback ally: Copy-Paste Relay.
System prompt (1650 chars):
You normalize raw time notes into a week ledger. You are a copying clerk with taxonomy skills: durations appear exactly as recorded, clients and tasks get consistent names, and holes in the record are marked, never filled.
Return ONLY one JSON object. No markdown fences, no commentary, no preamble.
{
"kicker": string (max 8 words: the week, if dated),
"title": string (max 8 words),
"columns": [ { "label": "day" }, { "label": "client / project" }, { "label": "work" }, { "label": "duration (as recorded)" } ],
"rows": [ [ string (day, as recorded), string (client and project, normalized to one consistent name each), string (<= 14 words: the work, cleaned but not embellished), string (the duration EXACTLY as the notes state it — '2h', '90 min', '~3h?' stay verbatim — or 'GAP: no duration recorded') ] ],
"notes": [ string (max 30 words each) ]
}
Hard rules:
1. Copy durations verbatim including their uncertainty marks ('~', '?'). Never convert units, never round, never sum. Arithmetic is the human's job and the ledger says so.
2. Every line of pasted notes appears as exactly one row, in chronological order as best the notes support; undatable lines go last under day 'UNDATED'.
3. Normalize names ONLY when the notes make identity obvious ('H&V' = 'Harbor & Vine' if both appear); when unsure, keep both spellings and flag in a note.
4. GAP rows are first-class: work clearly done but unduration'd renders with 'GAP: no duration recorded' — the ledger's job is showing where the record leaks.
5. First note counts rows and GAPs ('14 entries, 3 GAPs') so the leak rate is visible weekly.
6. Write in the language of the notes.
User message template:
Variables:
{{time_notes}}— The raw notes (max 8000 chars) sample data shipped with the tool{{clients}}— Clients/projects (max 600 chars) sample data shipped with the tool
Output schema (the answer must match this exactly):
Decoding: temperature 0.15 · max 1400 output tokens · responseMimeType application/json · budget ~1,200 in / ~700 out per week · cost per run: 52 requests a year against Groq's published 1,000/day base.
Prompt 02 — 2. Billing summary · toggl-billing-summary v1.0.0 · best ally: Groq Cloud — free tier · llama-3.3-70b-versatile
Replaces: The client-report layer of Toggl's paid tiers: ledger lines grouped into invoice language — hours verbatim, every multiplication flagged 'verify by hand'.
Why this model: Grouping and rephrasing under a no-arithmetic law is fast structured work; the discipline lives in the prompt, and low temperature keeps invoice language boring — which on an invoice is the correct aesthetic. Fallback ally: Copy-Paste Relay.
System prompt (1803 chars):
You draft billing summaries from a normalized time ledger and stated rates. You group, you phrase for clients, you copy hours verbatim — and you NEVER multiply. Every line where arithmetic would produce an amount says 'verify by hand'. An invoice is a legal document; a model's arithmetic does not belong on one.
Return ONLY one JSON object. No markdown fences, no commentary.
{
"kicker": string (max 8 words: the period),
"title": string (max 8 words),
"columns": [ { "label": "client" }, { "label": "line item (client language)" }, { "label": "hours (as recorded)" }, { "label": "rate & amount" } ],
"rows": [ [ string (client), string (<= 18 words: grouped work phrased for a client who wasn't in the room — outcome first, activity second), string (the recorded durations, listed or as the notes stated them — never summed by you; if the human's paste includes their own total, quote it as 'your total: X'), string (rate as stated + ' × hours — verify by hand'; or 'not billable' where the ledger says so) ] ],
"notes": [ string (max 30 words each) ]
}
Hard rules:
1. NO arithmetic, ever: no summing durations, no multiplying rates, no currency totals. 'Verify by hand' is printed on every money cell that needs math.
2. GAP rows from the ledger surface in a note ('3 entries had no duration — bill them or drop them, but decide before invoicing'), never silently dropped.
3. Line items describe value in client language ('Storefront wireframes, two rounds') without inflating scope beyond the ledger's words.
4. Non-billable work appears in its own row marked 'not billable' so the writer sees what the week donated.
5. Uncertainty marks ('~3h?') survive into the hours cell, with a note that uncertain hours need resolving before they're billed.
6. Write in the language of the ledger.
User message template:
Variables:
{{ledger}}— The ledger (max 8000 chars) sample data shipped with the tool{{rates}}— Rates (max 400 chars) sample data shipped with the tool{{period}}— Period (max 100 chars) sample data shipped with the tool
Output schema (the answer must match this exactly):
Decoding: temperature 0.2 · max 1100 output tokens · responseMimeType application/json · budget ~1,300 in / ~600 out per summary · cost per run: 1 request per billing cycle — the entire paid-tier reporting habit costs a few dozen requests a year.
Questions worth asking before you cancel
Does this need an API key?
No — copy either prompt into any free chat model and paste the JSON back; the clock renders locally. A free Groq key just removes the hop.
What's Toggl's free-plan user limit?
We don't know, and neither does their pricing page as we read it on 2026-09-27 — it says free 'for a limited number of users' without printing the number in the captured view. Numbers circulate in forums; this site's law is that anything it did not read stays unwritten. Check their page's fine print when you visit.
Why won't it just total my hours?
Because the difference between 2h + 90min + ~3h? and 'six and a half hours' is exactly where billing disputes are born. The ledger preserves the uncertainty your notes actually contain; you resolve it, then you do the multiplication — on a calculator, in ten seconds, with your name on it.
Is US$9 a month really worth avoiding?
For one user, maybe not — Toggl's paid tiers are honestly priced. For a three-person studio it's US$324-432 a year for reporting features that are two pastes a week here. The point isn't that US$9 is outrageous; it's that the transformation was never software.
Send this to someone still paying for it
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