Timesheets that fit the day
Record a line in seconds, fill a whole week in the grid, or glance at the month. Start the timer when a call runs long; copy yesterday when it doesn't.
Free & open source · Self-hosted
Your hours. Your invoices. Your server.
TatuTime is a calm, fast timesheet and invoicing app for freelancers and small teams. Run it on hardware you control and keep every client, hour and invoice in files you actually own — never in someone else's cloud, and never fed to an AI.
- AGPL-3.0
- No account
- No telemetry
- AI never sees your data
- 01 One small container
- 02 Plain JSON files
- 03 No database
- 04 Works offline
- 05 Free software
Data sovereignty
Your business is not training data.
TatuTime has no cloud account, no usage analytics and no AI in its data path. AI tools helped build the software, but they never see your timesheets, clients or invoices. The app talks only to integrations you configure, plus an anonymous public exchange-rate feed.
Data/
├── customers/ clients, projects, tasks
│ └── 8f3c.../
│ └── projects/
├── entries/ one folder per day
│ └── 2026-10-23/
├── invoices/ documents + PDFs
├── expenses/ costs and receipts
├── users/ accounts and roles
└── audit.log who changed whatOpen it with any editor. Back it up with a zip.
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01
Yours to open
Every record is a JSON document in one folder. No proprietary database, no export request, no support ticket.
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02
Built with AI. Not on your data.
AI tools helped write the code. The running app has no model, no AI feature and no tracking pixel — your timesheets and invoices are never sent to an AI. Nothing reports back to TatuHQ.
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03
No lock-in, in practice
Export reports as CSV, take the data folder and run the app anywhere Rust runs. You cannot cancel what you never subscribed to.
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04
Open by licence
AGPL-3.0. The source is the product — read it, audit it, patch it, or pay someone you trust to do it.
Currency conversion uses the European Central Bank's daily reference rates — no client data is sent with the request. For a fully air-gapped install, point TATU_FX_RATES_FILE at a local copy. Accounting sync only runs if you configure it.
What's inside
The unglamorous work, made calm.
Track time the way you actually work, then turn it into invoices without re-keying a thing.
Invoices from tracked time
Pick a client and a period. TatuTime drafts the invoice from uninvoiced work, previews the PDF, then issues it with the next number.
Exact money, always
Cents and hundredths, never floating point. Each project carries its own currency and rate, and invoice lines freeze the rate they were drafted with.
Clients, projects, tasks
A clean three-level hierarchy with per-project budgets and profitability, so you can see where the margin actually went.
Expenses & claims
Log project costs with receipts and categories, mark what is billable, and submit reimbursement claims for approval — all without a shoebox.
Reports you can hand over
Totals by client, project or ISO week, plus invoice trends, budgets and profitability. Export a spreadsheet-safe CSV in one click.
Small team, clear roles
Admins invoice and approve. Members see only their own time and expenses, and submit a week for approval when it is ready.
Security on by default
Argon2id passwords, signed HttpOnly sessions, role checks, optional OIDC single sign-on and an encrypted vault for integration secrets.
An API, not a walled garden
A REST API covered by a checked-in OpenAPI contract, with browsable docs at /docs. Import Harvest CSV/ZIP exports, or automate the boring bits.
A look around
Small app. Serious detail.
No dashboards full of vanity metrics. Just the screens you need to record a day, send an invoice and get paid.
Self-host in minutes
One container. One folder. Done.
No database to install, no build step, no cloud account. Start the container, open the browser, and the first-run wizard creates your admin, your company and your first client.
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1
Run the image
A ~41 MB distroless build that runs as an unprivileged user, with every Linux capability dropped.
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2
Open
localhost:8080Create the admin account, name the company, add a client and a project. That is the setup.
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3
Point a backup at the folder
The data volume is the whole product. Scheduled ZIP backups are built in, or snapshot the folder yourself.
docker run -d --name tatutime \
--read-only --tmpfs /tmp \
--cap-drop ALL --security-opt no-new-privileges \
-p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 \
-v tatutime-data:/data \
-v tatutime-backups:/Backup \
ghcr.io/tatuhq/tatutime:latest
Then visit http://localhost:8080
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Runs where you already are
Docker, Compose, an Unraid template — or a single Rust binary on a VPS, NAS or spare laptop.
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Quiet by default
No account, no telemetry, and no AI in the data path. Outbound calls exist only for integrations you configure, plus the ECB reference-rate feed — replaceable with a local file for air-gapped installs.
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Backups without a service
Scheduled ZIP backups land in a folder you choose. Restore by extracting into the data directory.
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Upgrade without drama
Data is plain JSON with documented migrations. Pull a new image, restart, and your files stay where they were.
The price
Free. Not “free tier”.
TatuTime is free software under AGPL-3.0. There is no per-seat pricing, no invoice limit, no trial and no credit card. The whole product is in the repository, and it stays that way.
If you modify TatuTime and offer it as a network service, the AGPL asks you to share those modifications. That is the whole catch.
€0 forever
- No per-seat pricing or edition locks
- No invoice quotas or feature gates
- Self-host as many instances as you like
- Full source, and your data exportable at any time
Built in the open
Good software is a group project.
TatuTime is built in the open by TatuHQ, and it gets better when people use it, break it and send the fix back. You do not need to be a Rust expert to help: a reproducible bug report, a clearer sentence in the docs, or a test on your own NAS is real work.
Pick a good first issue
Small, well-scoped tickets labelled for newcomers, with the context you need to start.
Browse issuesReport a bug
Tell us what you expected, what happened, and the steps to reproduce it. Screenshots help.
Open an issueRead the code
A Rust backend, a dependency-free vanilla JS frontend, and contract tests that keep both honest.
Explore the repoImprove the docs
Setup guides, operations runbooks and the API reference all live in the repository, next to the code.
Read the docsStart with a clone
The usual Rust workflow. Open a pull request against main; every behaviour change ships with tests.
git clone https://github.com/TatuHQ/TatuTime.git
cd TatuTime
cargo test --all-targetsQuestions
The things people ask before they self-host.
Still unsure? Open an issue — questions are welcome there too.
Is TatuTime really free?
Yes. The whole product is AGPL-3.0 open source. There is no paid edition, no seat count and no invoice limit. You pay only for the hardware you run it on.
Where does my data live?
In a directory you choose — /data in the container, ./Data locally. It is plain JSON plus archived PDFs. Copy it, zip it, inspect it. The app never needs a cloud account.
Was AI used to build it? Does it touch my data?
AI tools helped build TatuTime — but they never see your data. The running app has no AI features, no analytics and no telemetry. Your timesheets, clients and invoices stay in your data directory and are never sent to an AI. Network calls happen only for integrations you configure yourself: SMTP, an ICS or Google/Microsoft calendar, OIDC single sign-on, or optional accounting sync. Currency conversion fetches the ECB's anonymous daily reference rates, or reads a local TATU_FX_RATES_FILE for a fully offline install. Secrets live in an encrypted local vault.
Is there a hosted version?
No. TatuTime is self-hosted by design: there is no vendor cloud to sign up to and no place for your client list to leak. You run it, you own it.
What do I need to run it?
Docker (or a Rust toolchain), a few megabytes of disk, and a machine that stays on if you want it always available. A NAS, VPS, mini-PC or spare laptop is plenty for a small team.
Can my team use it?
Yes. Admins manage clients, invoices and approvals; members record only their own time and expenses. Optional OIDC single sign-on can provision accounts from your identity provider.
Can I import from another tracker?
TatuTime includes a Harvest importer for CSV/ZIP exports, including original invoice PDFs, with a review step before anything is committed. The API is open if you need a different migration path.
Do I need a database?
No. There is no Postgres, MySQL or SQLite. Records are JSON documents written atomically, and the data folder is the database. That also makes backup and restore a file operation.
How do I back it up?
Scheduled ZIP backups are built into Settings → Backup, and the data directory can be copied or snapshotted like any other folder. Archives are never deleted automatically.
How can I contribute?
Start with a good first issue, open a bug report, improve the docs, or test a release on your own hardware. The repository is github.com/TatuHQ/TatuTime.
TatuHQ
One small company. Tools that stay yours.
TatuTime is the first completed product from TatuHQ. The TatuTest tools are also being built in the open, with the same principles: small, self-hostable, and yours to inspect.
