A purchase creates a client automatically, with the hours they bought on their balance. You can also add one by hand — useful when somebody paid you another way and you still want the work tracked here.
The balance
Hours in, hours out. Buying adds to it, logging time draws it down, and the number left is what they have in hand.
A client can go overdrawn if you log more than they bought. That is allowed on purpose — the work happened and pretending otherwise helps nobody — and it is flagged, because an overdrawn client is a conversation waiting to happen.
Adjusting a balance
Add hours credits time without a purchase: a goodwill hour, a correction, work agreed off-platform. Every adjustment takes a reason, and the reason is kept.
Nothing changes a balance silently. If the number moved, the record says why.
Opening hours
A client added by hand can be given a starting balance, so an existing relationship can be brought in without inventing a fake purchase.
Notes and their own rate
Each client carries notes, and can carry their own hourly rate — which is how you charge a funded startup and a solo founder different numbers without either of them seeing the other's.
Archiving and deleting
Archive a client when the work stops: they leave the active list and their history stays. Delete one for good and it is gone, which is deliberately a two-step confirmation.