Nice Software
Time Tracking for Freelance Artists and Studio Practices
Published 26 September 2026
TLDR
Hourly time tracking built for consultants and contractors does not map cleanly onto studio work. Here is what to log instead for commissions, grants, and long-running paintings, and a lightweight way to keep the numbers without babysitting a timer all day.
Why Generic Time Tracking Fails Studios
Most time trackers assume billable hours against a client project code, with screenshots or activity monitoring layered on top to prove the hours happened. Studio work rarely looks like that: a painting might sit unfinished for weeks between sessions, a grant application eats an afternoon with nothing visual to show for it, and no client is watching a dashboard waiting for proof of activity.
Forcing that mismatch produces the same result as forcing invoicing software to handle artwork sales: workarounds, renamed project codes, and a tool nobody actually opens after the first week.
What to Log Instead
A studio-relevant time record needs a small, specific set of fields:
- Which painting, series, or project the time belongs to
- Start and stop times, so a session can be trimmed after the fact
- A short note on what the session covered — underpainting, glazing, admin
- An optional rate, if the time needs to become a number on an invoice or grant report
That is enough to answer the two questions that actually come up later: how long did this piece take, and where did the hours in a given month actually go.
Grants, Commissions, and Proof of Work
Grant reports and commission negotiations both benefit from a plain export: a CSV or printable timesheet grouped by project, showing hours and dates without extra interpretation. Export the number, attach it to whatever report format the grant body or client actually wants, and move on.
A Quieter Way to Track It
NotaTime is a minimalist timer built for exactly this: start it, close the app, and it keeps running. No screenshot capture, no activity monitoring, no team dashboard to maintain. Entries export as CSV, JSON, or a printable timesheet, and a one-time purchase means the tool does not turn into another subscription to track.
If invoicing and materials are also part of the admin load, see the full studio management guide or browse the rest of the Nice Software shelf, including Studio Instruments.