I used to dread Friday. Tracking down hours, writing reports, sending invoices. Now Friday is the day I bake bread.
I'm Liv, a brand and web designer based in Utrecht. Solo, six retainer clients. For two years I'd avoid Fridays because Fridays were when all the admin caught up to me. Logbook didn't really change my work — it changed my Fridays. Here's how.
“Logbook didn't make me a better designer. It made me a calmer business owner. Those are different things and the second one is way more valuable than i thought.”
About me
Six clients. Not chill — at least not on Fridays.
Hi, I'm Liv. I run Flux, which is just me — a brand identity and web design studio in Utrecht. I have six retainer clients (a yoga studio, a small wine importer, two B-corp consultancies, a pediatric clinic and an architecture firm). Mix of brand work and ongoing site updates.
Six clients sounds chill. It mostly is. Except Fridays. Every single Friday for two years I'd open my laptop in the morning knowing I had four hours of admin ahead of me before I could send invoices and call it a week. Tracking down which client got which hours, opening Toggl exports, writing five 'what we did this month' summaries, then loading them into invoices in Moneybird.
4hr → 30 min
Friday admin time
Used to be a full half-day. Now it's the time it takes to make a coffee, scan the auto-reports, send the invoices. That's it. The other 3.5 hours go to deep work or, lately, baking bread.
€340
Avg unbilled hours recovered (per month)
Honest number. The on-card timer caught small time blocks I'd previously never logged — those 20-min Slack convos with clients, the half-hour explaining a Figma file. They add up. €340/mo over 6 clients = real money.
0
Late invoices since January
I used to be late on at least 1 invoice per month. Usually because I was avoiding the admin. Hasn't happened once since I started doing the report → invoice loop on Friday morning instead of Friday night.
What didn't work first
I tried discipline. Discipline doesn't scale.
I'd tried to fix this before. Bought into the whole 'better Notion template' lie. Tried Toggl with a complicated tag system. Tried just being more disciplined. None of it stuck because the friction was in the switching — open Toggl, find the project, start the timer, switch back to Figma, work, switch back, stop the timer. By Friday I'd have a Toggl report full of 'misc' entries i couldn't decode.
The thing that actually fixed it was the timer being on the card. I open the brand exploration card for the wine client, hit start, and design. When I'm done designing, I move the card to review, which auto-stops the timer. That's the whole loop. It's almost stupidly simple, which is probably why it works.
My migration — three weekends
I didn't want to use weekday work time on this. Three weekends, maybe 12 hours total.
- 1
Weekend 1
Set up two clients
Picked the two clients with the messiest current setups. Built their boards using the Logbook 'design retainer' template. Imported their secrets into the vault. Spent maybe 4 hours total across the weekend.
- 2
Weekend 2
Migrated the rest
By weekend 2 I was already faster — knew which template fields mattered, knew which boards I could simplify. Got the other 4 clients in. Maybe 5 hours total.
- 3
Weekend 3
First end-to-end Friday
First Friday using Logbook for invoicing. I was done by 11am. I sat there for a minute thinking 'wait, that's it?' Then i went and bought flowers for my apartment. True story.
What Friday looked like before vs now.
Same six clients. Same week. Different Friday.
Before
The old way
- 9am: open laptop, pour coffee, sigh deeply
- 9-11am: Toggl exports, Excel reconciliation, decoding 'misc' entries
- 11-1pm: write 6 monthly summaries from scratch
- Lunch break i couldn't really enjoy because I knew there was 2 more hours of invoicing
- 1-3pm: load summaries into Moneybird invoices, send
- 3-4pm: catch-up Slack with clients about invoice questions
- 4pm: too tired to do anything creative, scroll Instagram
After
With Logbook
- 9am: open laptop, pour coffee, no sighing
- 9-9:15am: scan auto-generated reports for accuracy
- 9:15-9:45am: edit the 'this month we...' paragraph in each report (this is my human touch)
- 9:45-10am: trigger invoices from Logbook → Moneybird sync
- 10am: done. Like genuinely done with admin
- 10am-12pm: design work I want to do
- 12pm-onwards: the rest of Friday is mine
“I didn't switch tools to make more money. I switched because Friday admin was eating my life. The fact that I now make more money is honestly the bonus, not the goal.”
Liv Janssen
Founder, Flux Designs
What I'd tell other solos
Two small things to know.
One thing I'd flag for other solos: the AI summary in the report is good but it has a 'voice' that isn't yours. I rewrite the opening paragraph of every single report to sound like me. My clients have known me for years and they'd notice if my reports suddenly sounded like a McKinsey deck. Five minutes per report. Worth it.
Also: I asked Logbook support about a small UX thing in the timer (I wanted to see total time-this-week per client without leaving the board). They added it as a tooltip in the next release. That responsiveness was nice. Made me feel like a person, not a ticket.
+€4,080
Annual revenue from recovered hours
€340/mo × 12 months. That's a real holiday. Or about three months of my apartment rent. I'm not picky.
14
Friday afternoons reclaimed (Jan-Mar)
I track this in my journal because i'm a freak. 14 Friday afternoons in 3 months I've spent on something other than admin. Bread, hiking, my partner, painting once.
Closing thought
It's literally one coffee a month.
I genuinely don't have a strong pitch for this. If your Friday afternoons are eaten by admin and you're solo with a few retainer clients, just try it. It's €2.99/month. The downside is approximately one cup of coffee. The upside, in my case, was getting Friday afternoon back.
That's a lot to get back for a coffee.
Get your Fridays back.
Solo plan, €2.99/month. Set up one client this weekend. See if your next Friday changes.