A Freelance Income Tracker You Actually Own

Freelancing runs on two numbers you can never quite see at once: what you earned and what's coming next. Most people chase them across a spreadsheet, an invoicing app, and their own memory — and still open every month unsure whether it's a good one. Dedicated invoicing tools handle the paperwork, but they lock your history in a cloud, charge a subscription, and rarely show the shape of your business at a glance.

Baton Board takes the other path. It's a local-first widget board you fully own, and it turns your income, pipeline, and goals into a single screen you control. It isn't invoicing software — it's the dashboard that sits above your invoices and tells you how the business is actually doing.

Your freelance business, as widgets

A freelance operation is a handful of moving parts. Each maps cleanly onto a widget:

• Pipeline → a Tasks widget. Every lead, proposal, and booked job becomes a task with a priority and a due date. Filter by priority or "this week" to see what needs a nudge before it goes cold.
• Monthly income → a KPI widget. Put this month's booked or paid total front and center, with your target beside it. One number, always visible, is the antidote to month-end surprise.
• Revenue goal → a Goal widget. Set an annual or quarterly income target and watch the progress bar fill as jobs land.
• Invoice due dates → a Countdown or Calendar widget. The day an invoice is due — or overdue — shouldn't live only in your inbox. Give it a countdown so it's impossible to miss.
• Client notes and links → Notes and Links widgets. Scope, rates, and portfolio links per client, kept on the same board as the money.

The north-star KPI tree: income and its drivers

Income is never one number — it's the product of the things underneath it. The KPI tree widget (Pro) lets you draw that structure and drag it into shape on the board itself:

Monthly income → number of clients × average project value → proposals sent, win rate, repeat work.

You build the tree by dragging cards: drop a card onto another to make it a child, drop it to the side to reorder, promote a card to the top to make it a new root. Each node can hold a target and show its progress, so you see not just that income dipped but which driver moved. It's the difference between "I made less this month" and "I sent half as many proposals" — the second one you can act on.

Numbers go in by hand, or you point a node at a KPI feed: a small JSON file you host, so a script you own can push updated figures onto the board without anyone else touching your data.

Why local-first matters for your money

Financial numbers are the most personal data a freelancer has. A tracker you own treats them accordingly:

• No account, no cloud. Your income history lives in this browser, on this device. There's nothing to sign up for and nothing to leak.
• No lock-in. Export the whole board to a data.json file whenever you want, and import it anywhere. Your records are a file you keep, not a database someone else holds.
• Yours to shape. Retainer, hourly, project, product — every freelancer's model is different. Because you arrange the widgets, the board matches your business, not an app author's idea of one.
• Humans and AI, one board. Ask the built-in AI assistant (Pro) to summarize the month or suggest next actions from your pipeline — reading the same board you do, with nothing sent to a server you don't control unless you opt in.

Set it up in five minutes

1. Add a KPI widget for this month's income and type in your target.
2. Add a Tasks widget named "Pipeline" and drop in every lead and open proposal with a priority.
3. Add a Goal widget for your yearly revenue target.
4. Add a KPI tree and break income down into its drivers — clients, average value, win rate.
5. Add a Countdown for your next invoice due date, and make one screen the truth about your business.

Frequently asked questions

Is Baton Board invoicing or accounting software?

No — it doesn't send invoices, process payments, or file taxes. It's a local-first dashboard that sits above those tools and shows your income, pipeline, and goals at a glance. You enter the numbers (by hand or via a KPI feed); it makes them visible and actionable.

Does it connect to my bank or Stripe automatically?

Not automatically. Baton Board is local-first by design — it doesn't reach into your accounts. You can push figures onto a KPI node from a KPI feed (a JSON file you host and control), so any automation stays on your side.

Where is my income data stored?

In your browser's local storage on this device. There's no account and no server copy. Export to a data.json file any time to back up or move your records.

Can I track multiple income streams or clients separately?

Yes. Use separate KPI or Tasks widgets per stream, or model them as branches in the KPI tree. Pro also unlocks unlimited boards, so a "money" board can stay separate from your project work.

Is it free?

The free plan covers one board with the seven free widgets — including the Tasks, Notes, Links, Calendar, and Countdown widgets a pipeline needs. The KPI, KPI tree, and Goal widgets that make it an income dashboard are Pro (¥980/month).

Pricing

Free covers one customizable board with the seven free widgets, export/import, automatic backups, board-wide search, and eight languages. Pro (¥980/month or ¥9,800/year) unlocks unlimited boards, the analytics widgets (KPI, KPI tree, goal, habit, agenda, activity, PDCA), the AI assistant, end-to-end sync, and deep customization. A ¥14,800 lifetime license is available. Polar handles payments and worldwide taxes.

Try it

Open Baton Board, add a KPI widget for this month's income, and drop your open proposals into a pipeline beside it. In five minutes you'll have a freelance income tracker on a board you own outright — with no account, no subscription to your own numbers, and nothing to lose.

Related reading: "Build Your Own Personal KPI Dashboard," "Break Your North-Star Metric Into Drivers: The KPI Tree Widget," and "A Goal Tracker That Connects to Your Real Work."