Good mechanics do one small thing that lazy ones skip: when the job is done, they hand you the old parts. The worn brake pads, the gray filter, the lot. I couldn't tell you much about brakes – but I know what I paid for, and I know nobody was hiding anything.
Web work is the opposite. When it goes well, nothing happens. The site stays up, the certificate renews, the form keeps sending email. The better you are at the job, the less anyone sees of it.
That invisibility gets expensive with the small stuff. "Can you swap this image?" "Can you fix the typo on the contact page?" Each one is too small to invoice by itself, and each one ends up in nobody's records. I can't tell you how many times I didn't bill for a small renewal, text change, or minor tweak because I didn't write it down.
I built the work log in Yven to be the pile of old parts. Here's how it works:
Press w. From any page in Yven, w opens a Log Work box over whatever you're doing. Pick the client (and site or project if there is one), add the minutes – there are chips for the common ones – and write one line about what you did. That's the whole job. You don't have to leave the page, and you don't have to remember it at the end of the month.
Decide what each entry is. Every entry carries two flags: is it billable, and is the client allowed to see it. Not everything gets billed – sometimes a favour is a favour. But you can log it, mark it written off or covered by the client's plan, and keep the record. A freebie you chose to give is very different from one you forgot.
Give the client a window. Each client gets a share link. No login, read-only. They see the work you marked client-visible, grouped by month and project. They never see your rates, amounts, invoice status, private notes, or any other client. You choose whether minutes show. You can revoke the link any time, and Yven shows you when it was last viewed.
Bill it once. At the end of the month, the invoice composer lists the open billable entries for the period, already checked. Pick what goes on the invoice, adjust if you need to, done.
One honest caveat: Yven is young, and I don't have data yet on how clients use the share link. I built it because I think "here's what I did for you this month" should be easy to give. I'd like to hear whether your clients would actually open it.
This is also where my "keep building" habit shows up. I've written before that managers should keep a hand in the work their folks do, because you can't advocate for work you can't see. It holds for your own work too. If nobody can see what you do – including you – you can't value it, and you can't defend it.
If you try the work log and it gets in your way, tell me through the Feedback link inside Yven. That's the feedback I want most.
Try it: Yven has a 21-day trial. Start your trial at yven.ca.