Freehold Now Tracks Time on Files. Nobody Has to Start a Timer.

Most TCs have no idea what a file actually costs them in hours, and the reason is simple: tracking time by hand is miserable. Timers get forgotten, spreadsheets go stale by Tuesday, and billing by the hour was never the point anyway. So the number stays unknown, and every flat fee is priced on instinct.

Freehold now records it for you. No timers, no punch clock, no behavior change at all.

Passive Capture

While a transaction page is open on your screen, Freehold quietly counts the minutes against that file. Switch to another file, the counting follows you. Close the tab or switch away to your email, the counting stops. That's the whole system. You work the way you already work, and the numbers accumulate on their own.

The counting is deliberately conservative. Two open tabs on the same file don't double-count. A tab sitting in the background while you're on a call records nothing. The result is a floor, not an inflated estimate: time the file genuinely had your attention.

The Ledger

Every minute lands in a per-file, per-person, per-day ledger. That structure matters because of what it can answer later: what this file cost in total, what this client's files cost across your whole team, and how this month compares to last. One file's number is trivia. A season of them is how you find out whether your pricing actually works.

What It Is Not

This is file-cost analytics, not employee surveillance. The dashboard shows numbers per file and per client, not a per-person scoreboard, and the whole feature is a single workspace switch under Settings. Owners and admins can turn it off entirely: nothing records, nothing shows, and anything already recorded is kept in case you turn it back on. Same policy as everything else in Freehold, your data is yours and a settings toggle never destroys it.

What Comes Next

The numbers feed three new panels on your Today page: time against fee on every file, which clients absorb the most hours, and which clients cost the least time per deal. Each one answers a different pricing question, and each one is worth its own explanation. Those are coming over the next three weeks on this blog, starting with the one number that matters most: what your flat fee actually works out to per hour.