A freelance week

Five days of work, an hourly rate, and the question everyone actually has: what lands in the bank. This is one document you can paste and edit, rather than four separate sums.

8h15m #worked
7h45m #worked
8h30m #worked
8h00m #worked
6h15m #worked
total of #worked in hours // 38.75 hours
prev at £65/hour // £2,518.75
prev - 20% // £2,015.00

Change any day and every line below it follows.

What each line is doing

8h15m is a duration written the way a timer prints one. 8h 15m means the same thing; use whichever you have to hand. See time.

#worked is a category tag. It marks a line as belonging to a group, and it does not change what the line is worth. See category tags.

total of #worked adds up every line carrying that tag, wherever it sits in the document. in hours converts the total, which arrives in minutes because that is the unit durations are counted in.

prev is the result of the line above. It saves naming a variable for a number you are only going to use once. See line references.

at £65/hour multiplies a duration by a rate and gives money. The rate carries its own unit, so the hours and the rate agree without you converting either. See rates and speeds.

- 20% takes twenty percent off. It is a flat rate stated on the line, which is the right shape here: a real tax position depends on your allowances, your other income and where you live, and none of those are on this page.

If you want the bands instead of a flat rate

For a UK salary rather than a flat percentage, after tax runs the HMRC income tax and National Insurance bands. It takes pounds, because those bands are British, and everywhere else states its own rate.

£50,000 after tax // £39,519.60
£50,000 after 20% tax // £40,000.00

See payroll for which year’s figures those are and what they deliberately do not cover.

Changing the shape of the week

The document is not fixed to five days or to one rate. A tag can hold any number of lines, so a six-day week is one more line with #worked on it. Two rates means two tags.

The forms mix freely: an aggregate adds durations however they are written, so 6h, 6h00m and 3h30m all combine into one total. What it refuses is adding different measures, so a stray 6kg among your hours is a refusal (INCOMPATIBLE_UNITS) rather than a guess.

6h00m #client-a
3h30m #client-a
4h00m #client-b
total of #client-a in hours at £65/hour // £617.50
total of #client-b in hours at £80/hour // £320.00