Get your first project ready to bill

These guides walk you through the work you do in PayPolka: recording hours, keeping track of project expenses, sending estimates and invoices, and checking what’s been paid.

If you’re new, Getting started helps you set up one client and follow the billing process that fits your business. You can add the rest of your settings as you need them.

What would you like to do?

• Record this week’s client hours.
• Set up a project and its budget.
• Add an expense and its receipt.
• Turn tracked work into an invoice.
• Bill a deposit from an accepted estimate.
• Find unbilled work or review a project’s costs.
• Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or scripts with MCP and the API.
• Bring customers and open invoices from QuickBooks.
• Photograph a bill and record what you spent.
• Hand your accountant the year.
• Move time and expenses from Harvest.

Browse the docs

Getting set up

• Getting started: create an account and complete your first billing task.
• Dashboard: the tiles, the lists, and who sees what.
• Projects: billing methods, budgets, the project page, archiving.

Logging work

• Time tracking: the weekly grid, duration formats, locking.
• Expenses: categories, unit rates, receipts.
• Approvals and the Team page: submitting weeks, reviewing, sending back.

Estimates and invoices

• Clients and contacts: clients, contacts, defaults, the client tabs.
• Estimates: lines, statuses, online acceptance, change orders.
• Billing an estimate: bill a portion of an accepted estimate, or all of it.
• Invoices: create a bill from logged work, review it, and send it.
• Recurring invoices: cadence, templates, prepaid blocks, autopay.

Getting paid

• Getting paid: how clients pay, partial payments, ACH, autopay, refunds, receipts.
• Payments and Stripe: connecting Stripe, methods, fee passthrough, reminders.
• Public pages and client portal: what clients see, links, expiry, the payment page.

Running the account

• Labor categories and catalog: rates that flow to estimates, time, and invoices.
• Purchases and overhead: bills, photographed bills, repeating purchases, overhead pools.
• Reports: the six reports and CSV export.
• Accounting and statements: the year at a glance, the year-end package, exports, statements.
• Account settings: every Settings tab, subscription, and your profile.
• API and AI: personal access tokens, the Remote MCP Server, and the JSON REST API.