How to track time for taxes without a bookkeeping app

23 August 2026 · 6 min read

For most self-employed people, the tax question about hours is a question of evidence: a dated record of working days and their length, kept as they happened, that you can produce if anyone asks. You do not need bookkeeping software for that. A daily receipt, a monthly CSV export, and a folder you keep for as long as your jurisdiction requires will do it.

What an hours record is for, and what this post is not

Hours show up in tax in a few common ways: apportioning a shared cost between business and personal use (a home office, a computer, a phone plan), showing that a business was actively run rather than a hobby, supporting a claim that depends on time spent, or simply backing up the income you declared from time-based work. Which of these applies to you, and what the rules say, depends on where you live and how you file. Your accountant or your tax authority’s own guidance is the source for that, and nothing here replaces it.

What this post covers is the record itself: how to keep one that a reasonable person would accept as honest, without adding a bookkeeping subscription to do it.

What makes a record credible

Tax authorities and accountants tend to care about the same three properties, whatever the rule being applied.

Contemporaneous. Written at the time, not reconstructed in March from memory. A record that was clearly produced day by day is worth far more than a neat spreadsheet assembled at year end, however accurate the spreadsheet claims to be.

Consistent. The same method, every working day, for the whole period. Gaps and changes of method are where questions start.

Retained. Kept for the full period your jurisdiction requires, in a form you can still open. A record inside an app you no longer pay for is not retained.

A timer you remember to start on some days fails the first two. A receipt that prints itself every day at closing time passes them, as long as you keep the exports.

Set up the record

1. Install an automatic daily record. Punchcard does this from the menu bar: it notices which app is in front during the day, with no timer to start or stop, and at your closing time prints a receipt listing each app with its time and a day total, stamped with the date. Every working day produces one, and a day that runs late still prints, headed SORRY WE MISSED YOU, with the real total.
2. Set the closing time to your normal end of day. This is the time the day’s receipt prints; it does not stop tracking, so the late-day hours are still counted.
3. Decide what counts as a working day and write it down once. For example: “Any day with more than thirty minutes on the receipt is a working day.” A stated rule, applied consistently, is what makes the record defensible.
4. Keep a one-line note for anything the Mac cannot see. Calls, site visits, reading away from the screen. A text file with a date and a line is enough. For most desk-based work this is a minor addition; for some trades it is most of the day and the Mac record is only a supplement.
5. If you split a shared space or device, note the split at the same time. A tracker records app names and totals; it does not know that Tuesday’s six hours were in the home office and Wednesday’s were at a client’s desk. If that distinction matters for your claim, it goes in the daily line.

Keep it: the monthly export and the folder

The record is only useful if it survives. Two habits cover that.

Export monthly. Punchcard stores everything in one SQLite file at ~/Library/Application Support/Punchcard/punchcard.sqlite and exports it as CSV. On the first of each month, export, and save the file as something like hours-2026-08.csv in a folder named for the tax year. The month roll, which prints a list of every day in the month with its total, can be saved alongside as a PNG or plain text; it is the human-readable version of the same data. Export your time data to CSV and keep it forever covers the mechanics.

Put the folder somewhere that gets backed up. The Mac’s own backup, a second drive, wherever your other tax papers go. The point of CSV is that it opens in anything, in ten years, with no account and no app that has to still exist.

At year end, the folder contains twelve CSV files, twelve month rolls, and your notes file. That is the hours record. It took about five minutes a month.

What this record is not

A bookkeeping app does things this record does not, and you should be clear about the difference before deciding you do not need one.

The record contains hours, by app, by day. It does not contain income, expenses, invoices, mileage, receipts for purchases, or anything with a currency symbol on it. Punchcard has no rates, no billing, no projects and no clients; it will not tell you which hours were for which customer, and it will not calculate a deduction. If you need those things, you need either a bookkeeping app or a spreadsheet, and the hours record is one input to it.

It also records app names only, never window titles, document names or URLs. That is a feature for privacy and a limit for detail: the receipt says three hours in a spreadsheet app, not which spreadsheet. If a claim depends on proving what you were working on, the artifacts (the files themselves, dated) are the evidence, and the receipt is the time.

A year-end routine

When the return is due, the folder makes the hours part quick.

1. Open the twelve CSV files, or the month rolls, and count the working days by your stated rule.
2. Total the hours for the year, and by month if the claim needs it.
3. Add the hours from your notes file for work away from the Mac.
4. Write a one-paragraph description of the method: what was recorded, how, by what rule a day counted, and where the files are. Keep it with the folder. If anyone ever asks how the number was produced, this paragraph is the answer.
5. Hand the totals to your accountant or put them in the return, as their guidance directs.

The month in review post shows what a month roll looks like and how to read it; twelve of them in a folder are the whole year at a glance.

Questions

Is an app-level record acceptable as evidence?

That depends on your jurisdiction and the specific claim, and your accountant is the one to ask. What can be said generally is that a record produced automatically every day, exported monthly and retained in an open format has the properties (contemporaneous, consistent, retained) that evidence is usually judged on, and it is far stronger than a reconstruction.

What if I forget to export for a few months?

The data is still in the SQLite file, and a later export includes every day since tracking started, so nothing is lost. Export as soon as you notice and get back to monthly. The only way to lose the history is to use Burn the roll, which deletes everything, so do not do that on a Mac whose record you need.

Do I need to track on days off?

Leave tracking running; a day with nothing in front of the screen simply prints a near-empty receipt, and by your stated rule it is not a working day. An unbroken record with quiet days in it is more credible than one with gaps you have to explain.

Can I use this instead of a bookkeeping app entirely?

For the hours, yes. For income, expenses and invoices, no; those need a ledger of some kind, even if it is a spreadsheet. The hours record is one column of that ledger, kept for you by the Mac.